Sports Night fic: Shellshock
Title: Shellshock
Fandom: Sports Night
Pairing: Casey/Dan
Rating: PG
Category: Kind of fluff, really. Also, I regret to say, songfic. Everyone's allowed one. Aren't they? Oh.
Notes: Birthday fic for catwalksalone and lordessrenegade. Many thanks to quiesce for the read-through. For the record, songs abused are Gloria Jones: Tainted Love - Gloria Jones is famous for exactly two things, and this is the other; James: Say Something; and New Order: Shellshock.
Shellshock
It's an effort, but somehow they hold things together till the end of the show. They're professionals, after all - professionals who still have jobs, yet - and when it's showtime, it's showtime. There will be no victory dances on the anchor desk, no yells of glee, no high- or, indeed, low-fives - no fives of any description. . No cheers, no whoops, no hollers, no whistles and bells. No sirens.
The huge, shit-eating grins spread across both their faces? Maybe not so professional. But understandable. Nobody calls them on it. Tonight, no-one is calling anybody on anything.
After the show - ah, after the show, that's different. The studio erupts into a babble of voices, excited chatter, laughter, a burst of relieved, semi-hysterical sobbing from Rachael on the mixing console. Dave reaches across to pat her on the back, and she flings herself into his arms and weeps against his chest. He wraps her up, escorts her out of the room, and that's the last that's seen of either of them that night.
"In times of war …" Dan observes, leaning sideways to watch them go, his feet propped up on the anchor desk. He's already toed off his shoes, ready to drop his professional persona, get out on the street and party -
Maybe not literally on the street. Not until they get to meet Calvin Trager and find out what makes the guy tick. He can't be as big a pain in the butt as Luther - god; can he? - but other than that, he's still an unknown quantity.
"War's over," Casey reminds him, and the grins make a comeback.
"The relief troops get plenty," Dan says, straightens up, unwires himself, picks up his shoes and heads backstage. Casey follows him. They have some unfinished business; they both know it, and neither wants to be the first to broach the subject. Dan opens his mouth to speak, at exactly the same moment as Casey says, "I - " and then, "No, you - go on."
"No, you first," Dan says, and that's when it's obvious that things are not, after all, okay. When have they ever needed to be this polite, this formal, around one another?
"I was just thinking," Casey says, "There's time for you to call Rebecca. If she watched the show - she might want to know - "
"I tore up her number," Dan says flatly. Casey blinks.
"You did?" It takes him a beat, then it registers. "You couldn't see her, then leave her and go to California?"
Dan doesn't say anything at all for a long moment; just stands and watches Casey's face as if he's never seen it before, as if he's trying to imprint it on his memory. Finally, "I was never going to California, Casey," he says, very softly. "I would never have done that."
Casey looks at him, bewildered. "You'd've been crazy not to go."
Dan just laughs. "Your point?"
"What would you have done? There was nothing here for you."
"I'd've found something. Anything. It wouldn't have mattered what."
"To be with Rebecca?"
"Will you quit it with the Rebecca thing?" Dan barely raises his voice, but it slashes across the space between them like a whip. "Not to be with Rebecca. To be with you, Casey. God - " He steps forward, lays a hand against Casey's arm, rigid in its tailored jacket. "It's been more than ten years, Casey. One of us has to be the first to say it. I can't - "
"Don't!" Casey says, violently, unexpectedly, and he shakes Dan's hand away. "Whatever you're going to say - I don't want to hear it, whatever you think you know, it isn't true. Just - just - don't!" He turns his back and walks away, not quite running, nothing so graceless, nothing so obvious. Still, he almost cannons into Natalie as she comes through the door, Kim close on her heels. He rights himself, mutters something, and is gone. The two women barely seem to register him.
"Hey!" Natalie - well; squeals, is really the word for it. She bounces up, flings herself against Dan's chest, throws up her arms to wrap them around his neck. "We did it, baby! We are on!"
Dan had frozen for a moment, staring after Casey, his face suddenly, carefully blank, but now he shakes himself back into the moment, smiles down into Natalie's eyes, rests his hands on her shoulders. "Yes," he says, and he laughs, joyous and almost, almost wholehearted. "Yes, yes we are." He reaches down and hugs her, squeezing her tightly until she squeals again - "Danny!" and he lets her go, still laughing, and gathers Kim into his arms instead. Kim is marginally more dignified about the whole business than Natalie, but is nonetheless unaccustomedly huggable, and even plants a quick kiss to the underside of Dan's chin.
"I'm still not your secretary," she reminds him, as he lets her go. He smirks down at her.
"I know. Apparently Elliott is - "
"Assistant!" comes a voice from beyond the doorway.
"And I'm only allowed to sexually harass him in front of witnesses."
Kim and Natalie exchange glances and wrinkle noses. Dan looks wounded. "What? That's not hot?"
Kim pats him gently on the back. "Honey," she says, her voice pitying, "you have a lot to learn."
"Which is lucky," Natalie chips in, "Because we're going out to celebrate."
"I figured," Dan says, and he starts to tug at his tie. He pauses, fingers on his shirt buttons, and looks at the women meaningfully. "Would you two mind turning your backs?"
"Danny," Natalie points out reasonably, "Unless you're going commando tonight, we've seen it all."
"I've seen it all anyway," Kim adds.
Dan blinks. "You have?"
She shrugs. "Seen one, seen 'em all."
"Also," Natalie adds, "Commando under that suit? Monica would kill you."
"Could we change the subject, please?" Dan begs, looks at the two of them again, makes a resigned face, and carries on changing into his street clothes. "So," he says, muffled by his dress shirt, which he's dragging off over his head, only half the buttons undone, "Anthony's?"
"Change of pace," Natalie tells him. She's hopped up onto the make-up counter, and is sitting, swinging her legs. "This calls for some serious dancing. We're going to Brief Encounters."
Again, Dan freezes for a moment - literally, just a moment, enough that anyone noticing would think they'd imagined it. Neither Kim nor Natalie is watching that closely. "Brief Encounters is a gay club," he points out, shrugging into his red overshirt, unzipping his suit pants and stepping out of them.
Kim tilts her head to the side and regards his black Calvins with dispassionate, near-professional interest. "Then you and Elliott should feel right at home."
"We like gay clubs," Natalie tells him kindly. "We can dance together, and we don't get hit on by jerks."
Dan thinks about it. "What about jerk lesbians?"
"You think that might happen?" Natalie frowns.
"I don't know," Dan says, "but, just in case it does, let me run home and get my camcorder - ow!" He glares at Kim, who smiles sweetly back.
"Any more funny jokes?" she asks him.
He shakes his head and zips up his jeans. "Not a one." He pauses, then yells out the door, "Elliott? You got a handkerchief - ?"
***
The club … is a club: hot, sticky, sweaty, crowded, dark and noisy. Dan dances with Kim, with Natalie, with Dana, singly, together, in any combination. He doesn't know where the rest of the Sports Night party's vanished to, but he seems to be the only male who didn't have qualms about their choice of venue. Well, besides Will, who's off making some friends of his own, and Jeremy, who's hiding.
"It's just possible," he comments, as he stops by the bar to grab a bottle of water and catch his breath, "that tonight I'm an honorary lesbian." Then, once again, "Ow!" He hadn't seen Natalie slink up behind him.
She stands on tiptoe, wraps her arms around his chest, a tight band. "I love you, Danny. I am so, so glad that I'm not going to lose you."
"Uh-huh," he says carefully, lifts up his hands to loosen hers, and turns to face her. "No more tequila for you, young lady."
"I am not drunk!" she says with dignity, then tries to regain her balance and trips over her own feet. "Ooohhh …" She smirks lopsidedly up at him and lets out a kittenish little giggle.
He laughs, tucks her carefully into the shelter of his arm, and sweeps her away toward the door, finds Jeremy sitting at a lonely table as far from the amps as is physically possible, wadded-up tissue balls in his ears and a resigned, doomed expression on his face, scoops him up en route, flags down a cab, and sees both of them safely on their way. Then he steps back into the teeming throng; hesitates for a moment before he hurls himself into the crowd, swept up in the vibration, in the pulse.
Tonight - tonight, apparently, god really is a DJ.
Sometimes I feel I've got to
Run away, I've got to
Get away
From the pain
You drive into the heart of me
The love we share
Seems to go nowhere
And I've lost my light
And I toss and turn
I can't sleep at night …
It isn't that he wastes a lot of time thinking about Casey, and the way things might have been, if Casey … well, wasn't Casey, was someone a lot like Casey but without all of Casey's particular hang-ups and reservations and his peculiar brand of hypocrisy. Which would have meant they were not Casey at all.
Say something, say something, anything
I've shown you everything
Give me a sign
Say something, say something, anything
Your silence is deafening
Pay me in kind …
But there'd been an understanding. He'd thought there'd been an understanding. Maybe he'd been the only one who'd understood, and Casey's understanding was something quite different. Because 'you can do it without me' wasn't any part of what Dan had thought the understanding involved.
You call me on the phone, you left me all alone
All I get from you is shellshock
Another day goes by and all I do is cry
All I get from you is shellshock …
That's enough. He has to get out of there. He wades through the crowd, jostling, elbowing, impervious to the acres of bare, tanned, muscled chest on display, blind to the admiring, calculating glances thrown his way. He is not. In. The mood.
He swings open the door to the men's room, stumbles inside. It's deserted. Good. All he needs is a moment, maybe two: just long enough to collect himself, just long enough to get his game face back and go out there and face the world.
He takes the opportunity to use the facilities for their appointed purpose, leaning forward, turning to rest his cheek against the cool marble tiles, propping himself up with his free hand. Finished, he straightens, and catches a glimpse of himself in a mirror. He walks over to it, examines himself critically. He's looking older - he's been noticing it lately more and more. This past year hasn't been kind. Still: he's okay. Better than okay. Which reminds him of Abby, the late, unlamented Abby, and some of her dumber ideas.
He looks himself in the eye and recites, "You are a good and worthy person and fully deserving of happiness."
He waits for a moment; considers. He doesn't feel any different. Which is hardly surprising. This is about as effective as any of Abby's other attempts at therapy. If considerably less harmful than some of them.
Still, he says it again. Then, for variety, he tries, "You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars …" How does it go after that? "Um … whatever …"
That doesn't change anything either. There's a pain in his - in his chest? It's too high to be his stomach, too low to be his heart: a tight, knotted ball of anxiety and pain and guilt and many, many other things that he can't offhand name but which he knows should not be where they are, and which no amount of words will drive away. So because when things are bad - and, job or no job, network or no network, things are very bad just now, now that he's opened his big mouth, now that he's let the cat out of the bag, the worms out of the can, opened up Pandora's box, which, by the way, is another club they could have gone to if the girls had felt so inclined, maybe next time - because sometimes there is nothing to do but to be entirely stupid and see if perhaps he can at least amuse himself, he says, "I am woman! Hear me roar!"
He really isn't, not the last time he checked. Maybe he has feminine qualities. Maybe he's been put on this earth to counterbalance, well, not Dana, she has feminine qualities, but he's sure there are plenty of women who don't. In fact, come to think of it, he's met a few, interviewed some, been terrified by pretty much all of them. He doesn't see it as a bad thing, either in them or in him. Just maybe it makes him a little … sensitive. Not gay. Not even vaguely.
He says, "Candyman. Candyman. Candyman," and is ludicrously relieved when nothing happens. But he leans closer to the glass and just barely breathes, "Casey. Casey, Casey, Casey, Casey," leaving behind a fine mist of condensation. He looks at it thoughtfully, then plays a short game of Hangman with himself before it evaporates.
He turns away from the mirror, rests his head back against the wall, shuts his eyes and sighs. It'd been a stupid exercise anyway. He doesn't have issues. Not a one. Not with Rebecca, not with his father, not with his work, not with his place in life. Not with Casey. Not with Mr Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell. Not with Mr 'I'll fall to pieces and let my work go to shit and all my friends can go to hell but don't you step one foot out of line'. Not with Mr 'Twelve years? Ah, the hell with that, seeya!' Casey McCall.
Well. Maybe tiny issues.
He opens his eyes, straightens his shoulders. And blinks.
"Um," Casey says, sheepishly. "Hi?"
Apparently the magic works after all. Lucky he stopped short on the 'Candyman' thing.
Caught wrongfooted, Dan settles for glowering. "Did you hear any of that?"
Casey opens his eyes very wide, limpid and innocent. "Hear any of what?"
Dan relaxes. "Never mind. What're you doing here?" Casey had been conspicuous by his absence as they'd left the building. Conspicuous to Dan, that was. Casey wouldn't have been happy to know that no-one else had missed him until they were in the cab and halfway across town.
"Heard there was a party," Casey tells him. "Something to do with a whole bunch of people getting some good news and going out to celebrate?"
"Yeah?" Dan says. "Anyone we know?"
Casey comes closer and cuffs him lightly round the back of the head. That makes - how many times? - this evening alone. If this goes on, Dan's going to have to start wearing one of those special helmets.
"Idiot," Casey says softly. He's standing very close suddenly. "You've known me how long, Danny? Eleven years - twelve, nearly? Don't you know by now that it takes me time?"
Dan's heart is pounding; his head, too. "Twelve years isn't enough time?"
Casey's mouth is quirking up at one corner. "Apparently," he says, "Twelve years is just …" He brushes a kiss against Dan's temple. "Exactly …" Another, dry lips pressed against the hollow of his throat. "Enough …" And his mouth closes over Dan's, crushing, questing, demanding; Dan's hands clutch wildly at Casey's shoulder, and he opens before him.
Finally, a long, long time later - minutes, hours, it could be days if not that someone would've come looking for them by now - he finds breath, and pulls himself up. "And now?" he wants to know. "What happens now?"
Casey's hand slides into his own; he smiles, open and carefree and altogether wonderful. He swings open the door, and a wave of noise rushes in.
Hold on! It's never enough
It's never enough until your heart stops beating
The deeper you get, the sweeter the pain
Don't give up the game until your heart stops beating …
"Why don't we go and find out?" he says.
Until your heart ...
***
Fandom: Sports Night
Pairing: Casey/Dan
Rating: PG
Category: Kind of fluff, really. Also, I regret to say, songfic. Everyone's allowed one. Aren't they? Oh.
Notes: Birthday fic for catwalksalone and lordessrenegade. Many thanks to quiesce for the read-through. For the record, songs abused are Gloria Jones: Tainted Love - Gloria Jones is famous for exactly two things, and this is the other; James: Say Something; and New Order: Shellshock.
Shellshock
It's an effort, but somehow they hold things together till the end of the show. They're professionals, after all - professionals who still have jobs, yet - and when it's showtime, it's showtime. There will be no victory dances on the anchor desk, no yells of glee, no high- or, indeed, low-fives - no fives of any description. . No cheers, no whoops, no hollers, no whistles and bells. No sirens.
The huge, shit-eating grins spread across both their faces? Maybe not so professional. But understandable. Nobody calls them on it. Tonight, no-one is calling anybody on anything.
After the show - ah, after the show, that's different. The studio erupts into a babble of voices, excited chatter, laughter, a burst of relieved, semi-hysterical sobbing from Rachael on the mixing console. Dave reaches across to pat her on the back, and she flings herself into his arms and weeps against his chest. He wraps her up, escorts her out of the room, and that's the last that's seen of either of them that night.
"In times of war …" Dan observes, leaning sideways to watch them go, his feet propped up on the anchor desk. He's already toed off his shoes, ready to drop his professional persona, get out on the street and party -
Maybe not literally on the street. Not until they get to meet Calvin Trager and find out what makes the guy tick. He can't be as big a pain in the butt as Luther - god; can he? - but other than that, he's still an unknown quantity.
"War's over," Casey reminds him, and the grins make a comeback.
"The relief troops get plenty," Dan says, straightens up, unwires himself, picks up his shoes and heads backstage. Casey follows him. They have some unfinished business; they both know it, and neither wants to be the first to broach the subject. Dan opens his mouth to speak, at exactly the same moment as Casey says, "I - " and then, "No, you - go on."
"No, you first," Dan says, and that's when it's obvious that things are not, after all, okay. When have they ever needed to be this polite, this formal, around one another?
"I was just thinking," Casey says, "There's time for you to call Rebecca. If she watched the show - she might want to know - "
"I tore up her number," Dan says flatly. Casey blinks.
"You did?" It takes him a beat, then it registers. "You couldn't see her, then leave her and go to California?"
Dan doesn't say anything at all for a long moment; just stands and watches Casey's face as if he's never seen it before, as if he's trying to imprint it on his memory. Finally, "I was never going to California, Casey," he says, very softly. "I would never have done that."
Casey looks at him, bewildered. "You'd've been crazy not to go."
Dan just laughs. "Your point?"
"What would you have done? There was nothing here for you."
"I'd've found something. Anything. It wouldn't have mattered what."
"To be with Rebecca?"
"Will you quit it with the Rebecca thing?" Dan barely raises his voice, but it slashes across the space between them like a whip. "Not to be with Rebecca. To be with you, Casey. God - " He steps forward, lays a hand against Casey's arm, rigid in its tailored jacket. "It's been more than ten years, Casey. One of us has to be the first to say it. I can't - "
"Don't!" Casey says, violently, unexpectedly, and he shakes Dan's hand away. "Whatever you're going to say - I don't want to hear it, whatever you think you know, it isn't true. Just - just - don't!" He turns his back and walks away, not quite running, nothing so graceless, nothing so obvious. Still, he almost cannons into Natalie as she comes through the door, Kim close on her heels. He rights himself, mutters something, and is gone. The two women barely seem to register him.
"Hey!" Natalie - well; squeals, is really the word for it. She bounces up, flings herself against Dan's chest, throws up her arms to wrap them around his neck. "We did it, baby! We are on!"
Dan had frozen for a moment, staring after Casey, his face suddenly, carefully blank, but now he shakes himself back into the moment, smiles down into Natalie's eyes, rests his hands on her shoulders. "Yes," he says, and he laughs, joyous and almost, almost wholehearted. "Yes, yes we are." He reaches down and hugs her, squeezing her tightly until she squeals again - "Danny!" and he lets her go, still laughing, and gathers Kim into his arms instead. Kim is marginally more dignified about the whole business than Natalie, but is nonetheless unaccustomedly huggable, and even plants a quick kiss to the underside of Dan's chin.
"I'm still not your secretary," she reminds him, as he lets her go. He smirks down at her.
"I know. Apparently Elliott is - "
"Assistant!" comes a voice from beyond the doorway.
"And I'm only allowed to sexually harass him in front of witnesses."
Kim and Natalie exchange glances and wrinkle noses. Dan looks wounded. "What? That's not hot?"
Kim pats him gently on the back. "Honey," she says, her voice pitying, "you have a lot to learn."
"Which is lucky," Natalie chips in, "Because we're going out to celebrate."
"I figured," Dan says, and he starts to tug at his tie. He pauses, fingers on his shirt buttons, and looks at the women meaningfully. "Would you two mind turning your backs?"
"Danny," Natalie points out reasonably, "Unless you're going commando tonight, we've seen it all."
"I've seen it all anyway," Kim adds.
Dan blinks. "You have?"
She shrugs. "Seen one, seen 'em all."
"Also," Natalie adds, "Commando under that suit? Monica would kill you."
"Could we change the subject, please?" Dan begs, looks at the two of them again, makes a resigned face, and carries on changing into his street clothes. "So," he says, muffled by his dress shirt, which he's dragging off over his head, only half the buttons undone, "Anthony's?"
"Change of pace," Natalie tells him. She's hopped up onto the make-up counter, and is sitting, swinging her legs. "This calls for some serious dancing. We're going to Brief Encounters."
Again, Dan freezes for a moment - literally, just a moment, enough that anyone noticing would think they'd imagined it. Neither Kim nor Natalie is watching that closely. "Brief Encounters is a gay club," he points out, shrugging into his red overshirt, unzipping his suit pants and stepping out of them.
Kim tilts her head to the side and regards his black Calvins with dispassionate, near-professional interest. "Then you and Elliott should feel right at home."
"We like gay clubs," Natalie tells him kindly. "We can dance together, and we don't get hit on by jerks."
Dan thinks about it. "What about jerk lesbians?"
"You think that might happen?" Natalie frowns.
"I don't know," Dan says, "but, just in case it does, let me run home and get my camcorder - ow!" He glares at Kim, who smiles sweetly back.
"Any more funny jokes?" she asks him.
He shakes his head and zips up his jeans. "Not a one." He pauses, then yells out the door, "Elliott? You got a handkerchief - ?"
***
The club … is a club: hot, sticky, sweaty, crowded, dark and noisy. Dan dances with Kim, with Natalie, with Dana, singly, together, in any combination. He doesn't know where the rest of the Sports Night party's vanished to, but he seems to be the only male who didn't have qualms about their choice of venue. Well, besides Will, who's off making some friends of his own, and Jeremy, who's hiding.
"It's just possible," he comments, as he stops by the bar to grab a bottle of water and catch his breath, "that tonight I'm an honorary lesbian." Then, once again, "Ow!" He hadn't seen Natalie slink up behind him.
She stands on tiptoe, wraps her arms around his chest, a tight band. "I love you, Danny. I am so, so glad that I'm not going to lose you."
"Uh-huh," he says carefully, lifts up his hands to loosen hers, and turns to face her. "No more tequila for you, young lady."
"I am not drunk!" she says with dignity, then tries to regain her balance and trips over her own feet. "Ooohhh …" She smirks lopsidedly up at him and lets out a kittenish little giggle.
He laughs, tucks her carefully into the shelter of his arm, and sweeps her away toward the door, finds Jeremy sitting at a lonely table as far from the amps as is physically possible, wadded-up tissue balls in his ears and a resigned, doomed expression on his face, scoops him up en route, flags down a cab, and sees both of them safely on their way. Then he steps back into the teeming throng; hesitates for a moment before he hurls himself into the crowd, swept up in the vibration, in the pulse.
Tonight - tonight, apparently, god really is a DJ.
Sometimes I feel I've got to
Run away, I've got to
Get away
From the pain
You drive into the heart of me
The love we share
Seems to go nowhere
And I've lost my light
And I toss and turn
I can't sleep at night …
It isn't that he wastes a lot of time thinking about Casey, and the way things might have been, if Casey … well, wasn't Casey, was someone a lot like Casey but without all of Casey's particular hang-ups and reservations and his peculiar brand of hypocrisy. Which would have meant they were not Casey at all.
Say something, say something, anything
I've shown you everything
Give me a sign
Say something, say something, anything
Your silence is deafening
Pay me in kind …
But there'd been an understanding. He'd thought there'd been an understanding. Maybe he'd been the only one who'd understood, and Casey's understanding was something quite different. Because 'you can do it without me' wasn't any part of what Dan had thought the understanding involved.
You call me on the phone, you left me all alone
All I get from you is shellshock
Another day goes by and all I do is cry
All I get from you is shellshock …
That's enough. He has to get out of there. He wades through the crowd, jostling, elbowing, impervious to the acres of bare, tanned, muscled chest on display, blind to the admiring, calculating glances thrown his way. He is not. In. The mood.
He swings open the door to the men's room, stumbles inside. It's deserted. Good. All he needs is a moment, maybe two: just long enough to collect himself, just long enough to get his game face back and go out there and face the world.
He takes the opportunity to use the facilities for their appointed purpose, leaning forward, turning to rest his cheek against the cool marble tiles, propping himself up with his free hand. Finished, he straightens, and catches a glimpse of himself in a mirror. He walks over to it, examines himself critically. He's looking older - he's been noticing it lately more and more. This past year hasn't been kind. Still: he's okay. Better than okay. Which reminds him of Abby, the late, unlamented Abby, and some of her dumber ideas.
He looks himself in the eye and recites, "You are a good and worthy person and fully deserving of happiness."
He waits for a moment; considers. He doesn't feel any different. Which is hardly surprising. This is about as effective as any of Abby's other attempts at therapy. If considerably less harmful than some of them.
Still, he says it again. Then, for variety, he tries, "You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars …" How does it go after that? "Um … whatever …"
That doesn't change anything either. There's a pain in his - in his chest? It's too high to be his stomach, too low to be his heart: a tight, knotted ball of anxiety and pain and guilt and many, many other things that he can't offhand name but which he knows should not be where they are, and which no amount of words will drive away. So because when things are bad - and, job or no job, network or no network, things are very bad just now, now that he's opened his big mouth, now that he's let the cat out of the bag, the worms out of the can, opened up Pandora's box, which, by the way, is another club they could have gone to if the girls had felt so inclined, maybe next time - because sometimes there is nothing to do but to be entirely stupid and see if perhaps he can at least amuse himself, he says, "I am woman! Hear me roar!"
He really isn't, not the last time he checked. Maybe he has feminine qualities. Maybe he's been put on this earth to counterbalance, well, not Dana, she has feminine qualities, but he's sure there are plenty of women who don't. In fact, come to think of it, he's met a few, interviewed some, been terrified by pretty much all of them. He doesn't see it as a bad thing, either in them or in him. Just maybe it makes him a little … sensitive. Not gay. Not even vaguely.
He says, "Candyman. Candyman. Candyman," and is ludicrously relieved when nothing happens. But he leans closer to the glass and just barely breathes, "Casey. Casey, Casey, Casey, Casey," leaving behind a fine mist of condensation. He looks at it thoughtfully, then plays a short game of Hangman with himself before it evaporates.
He turns away from the mirror, rests his head back against the wall, shuts his eyes and sighs. It'd been a stupid exercise anyway. He doesn't have issues. Not a one. Not with Rebecca, not with his father, not with his work, not with his place in life. Not with Casey. Not with Mr Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell. Not with Mr 'I'll fall to pieces and let my work go to shit and all my friends can go to hell but don't you step one foot out of line'. Not with Mr 'Twelve years? Ah, the hell with that, seeya!' Casey McCall.
Well. Maybe tiny issues.
He opens his eyes, straightens his shoulders. And blinks.
"Um," Casey says, sheepishly. "Hi?"
Apparently the magic works after all. Lucky he stopped short on the 'Candyman' thing.
Caught wrongfooted, Dan settles for glowering. "Did you hear any of that?"
Casey opens his eyes very wide, limpid and innocent. "Hear any of what?"
Dan relaxes. "Never mind. What're you doing here?" Casey had been conspicuous by his absence as they'd left the building. Conspicuous to Dan, that was. Casey wouldn't have been happy to know that no-one else had missed him until they were in the cab and halfway across town.
"Heard there was a party," Casey tells him. "Something to do with a whole bunch of people getting some good news and going out to celebrate?"
"Yeah?" Dan says. "Anyone we know?"
Casey comes closer and cuffs him lightly round the back of the head. That makes - how many times? - this evening alone. If this goes on, Dan's going to have to start wearing one of those special helmets.
"Idiot," Casey says softly. He's standing very close suddenly. "You've known me how long, Danny? Eleven years - twelve, nearly? Don't you know by now that it takes me time?"
Dan's heart is pounding; his head, too. "Twelve years isn't enough time?"
Casey's mouth is quirking up at one corner. "Apparently," he says, "Twelve years is just …" He brushes a kiss against Dan's temple. "Exactly …" Another, dry lips pressed against the hollow of his throat. "Enough …" And his mouth closes over Dan's, crushing, questing, demanding; Dan's hands clutch wildly at Casey's shoulder, and he opens before him.
Finally, a long, long time later - minutes, hours, it could be days if not that someone would've come looking for them by now - he finds breath, and pulls himself up. "And now?" he wants to know. "What happens now?"
Casey's hand slides into his own; he smiles, open and carefree and altogether wonderful. He swings open the door, and a wave of noise rushes in.
Hold on! It's never enough
It's never enough until your heart stops beating
The deeper you get, the sweeter the pain
Don't give up the game until your heart stops beating …
"Why don't we go and find out?" he says.
Until your heart ...
***