Fic: Since Feeling is First
Title: Since Feeling is First
Author: saucydiva
Word count: 1.8K
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Clearly I don’t own it or I'd buy everyone a bon voyage cake
Timeline: all of season one
Summary: Five times Mindy and Danny fight
Author’s Note: This one’s for Rikyl, who got me started on this show. I have no idea why I let you talk me into it, but I guess your plan worked because now I wrote you some fic. Thanks to throwingpens for the encouragement, and lauren2347 for the beta! Title comes from an ee cummings poem, and yes, Danny’s trick is possible.
Cross-posted to Ao3.
(five)
She’s trying to convince Shauna that watching Friends is not only a thing, but an important thing, something she should’ve done when the episodes were new, or at least when they came out on DVD, god, and these days don’t kids just illegally download everything anyway? She tells Shauna to just skip out of here early and watch everything on her iPad when Danny comes in, back from lunch.
“Friends was a stupid show,” he says to her, not looking up from the medical journal he probably spent all of his lunch reading.
“You know what, Danny? It was a very important show, and a good two-thirds of the reason I moved here.”
“That’s dumb. No one in charge of that thing had ever even been to New York, you know.”
“That’s not even a little-”
“Somehow the entirety of New York lacked an entire black person,” he says, finally throwing her a glance. “And I don’t recall one lady that looked like you.”
“Charlie was black!”
“I’m sure he was.”
Mindy glares at the door he slips through.
(four)
“Of course we want a Thanksgiving party,” she says. “It’s the Thanksgiving season.”
He frowns, his face looking almost comically stretched, as if he couldn’t contain his disappointment in her. “Thanksgiving is a day, not a season.”
“Just because your people served you spaghetti with alfredo doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t celebrate, often into the weekend, usually with mashed potatoes and occasionally with costumes. Sometimes sexy costumes.”
“I don’t even want to know what costumes you and that creep are- Ugh. Aren’t you too busy shopping the death sales to care about a little office shindig?”
“Please, Black Friday is so not cool. Everyone knows the good sales are on Cyber Monday.”
“If you spend the day hiding in your office buying spangly shit instead of helping patients-”
“Oh, like you and your life-consuming fantasy football-”
“Can we focus?” he asks, putting up his hands. Mindy rolls her eyes at his diversionary tactics, but lets it be in hopes that they wouldn’t have to discuss sports. “Let’s just agree that a neutral party should decide. Like our third doctor.”
“Oh Doctor Reed?” she says sweetly, focusing her eyes laser-like on his head, thinking convincing thoughts at him.
“I don’t care about this,” Jeremy says, not even glancing at them. “This isn’t even my country’s holiday. It’s just an excuse for Americans to eat the way they wish they were eating all the time”
Danny sighs. “He better not get Boxing Day off this year.”
(three)
It’s around the fourteenth time that “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree” plays that Danny storms out of his office, grabs the iPod off the sound dock, and stuffs it angrily into his coat pocket.
She’s sure he can hear her smirk, because he snarls right at her. He’s got a sixth sense for these things, and not even the cool Bruce Willis sixth sense. “There will be no more Christmas music. Or music of any kind. Or talking. Or laughter.”
Mindy snorts, she just can’t help it.
Betsy gasps. When Danny whips his head around to her, she squeals, then dives under the desk.
“And you!” he says, pulling the iPod out to shake at Mindy. “You’ll get this back in January. Or never.”
She gives him a big smile as she strokes the back-up iPod in her pocket.
(two)
“It’s a menace!”
Mindy sighs. “It’s a dog, Danny. Everyone loves dogs.”
“I’m fine with them, just not here, in this office, where we practice medicine. And not weird fleabags he picked up God knows where.”
“Puppies have been proven to lower blood pressure... as does a good massage circle,” Morgan says.
“Ugh, no, massage circles are weird and I don’t understand why you think you need to remove your shoes in the process. No,” she says to Morgan before focusing back on Danny, who was now looking at Morgan’s feet with some mild disgust. “Just stop worrying about the puppy, ok?”
“Oh yeah, telling people not to worry works-”
“You get way too worried-”
“That’s how I deal with my patients. You feel a lump on your breast, Mrs. Chang? Just don’t worry about it! Dr. Lahiri doesn’t-”
“Well I’m certainly not going to tell Mrs. C to panic, either, and for another thing-”
“I know how to talk to patients!”
“Oh yeah, you’re really sensitive, I can totally see why you went into gynecology-”
Morgan gets up from the floor and scoops up his dog, taking a moment to snuggle into him. “Guys, I’m going to go, I have to meet a guy down at the quarry, not for anything weird, but I will need to borrow a few popsicle sticks, three things of band aids, and ton of cotton balls, so bye.”
Mindy waves briefly over her shoulder without breaking her monologue, “And you have no idea what women go through-”
“At least I know how to focus on patients instead of what dress I’ll be wearing when I-”
(one)
“I could’ve told you this wasn’t going to happen,” Danny says, looking her over.
“Thanks a lot,” Mindy retorts, then balls another kleenex into her eyes. “It’s really fucking helpful.”
He waits in the doorway as she collects herself, because Danny Castellano is not going to see her cry.
Mostly.
She pulls out a makeup mirror from her desk drawer, along with those makeup wipes from Target and her emergency eye makeup kit. She gets to work, because having something to do means she can’t focus on how Casey’s going to Haiti without her.
“I don’t get why women wear all that goop,” Danny says conversationally.
She applies fresh eyeliner to her waterline before dignifying that with a response.
“I was going to give it all up,” she answers. “In Haiti.” She’s not lying, exactly, because she was going to give some of it up, even if she was going to be sneaking in mascara and lipstick and foundation. But she was going to give up blush. And that Chanel lipstick that looked awful on her and that was Gwen’s besides.
Well. No reason not to wear blush right now, so she reaches back into her desk for her emergency foundation bag.
Danny walks right in, taking a seat across from her. “Was Haiti really... wasn’t that Casey’s idea?”
“Couples decide things together.” She weighs two blushes in her hands, a Benefit and a T. LeClerc, because one’s a little pinker, and one’s a little more apricot, and now that Casey’s out of the running to be father to her babies, she’s going to need perfect blush so she can have her Meet Cute followed by her Quick Yet Elegant Wedding (to someone who isn’t a priest).
But would she meet cuter in apricot or pink...?
“You are spending more time picking face powder-”
“You’ve had girlfriends, pretty ones, so why don’t you know what makeup is?”
“-Then you did deciding to upend your life and follow Jesus Christ’s superstar into a disaster area.”
Mindy puts down the blushes carefully so she doesn’t jam them down Danny’s throat. Instead, she focuses her energies on some cheap pens, focuses on clicking the clicky part instead of him. “That is none of your business.”
“You made it my business- our business, the whole practice’s business, when you decided to take off for a year.”
“Just more patients for you, I bet you were thrilled.”
“Plus I had to throw you a party, and do you know how much that cake cost?”
“Are you really making my pain about you?”
“Are you really coming down on someone else for being self-centered?”
Mindy clicks her pen really hard, then puts her head down and weeps loudly.
“Shit,” Danny mutters. She peeks out through a cloud of dark hair and smirks at how freaked out he looks. She wonders, not for the first time, how the hell he’s a gyno. Probably pays women to pretend to be his clients.
He gets up, walks around her desk to- pat her shoulder? He does that for a moment, then starts rubbing her back in tight, small circles. “Come on,” he says, and even though she has every intention of sitting up, it actually feels pretty good. She hunches her back a little in hopes he’ll get the rest of her.
Not that Danny’s really what she wants, but- she hasn’t had sex in several days, actually, and that has to be why she’s reacting to it. When she was with Casey, even when they were breaking up and getting back together and breaking up again, she’d never had to go this long without. She tries sobbing louder.
“You know what, I’m going to go get us some beers, and then maybe you can come out of there and we can sit in silence and not address it,” he says, and fairly runs from the room.
“I prefer vodka,” she yells after him. She sits up, and her back feels cold against the leather seat. No time to contemplate how nice his hands had been when she only has a moment to herself. The peach blush, that’s the one.
“I knew it,” Danny says, back in the doorway again way too soon.
“Damn it.”
“Knew it! Faker. You have to get up pretty early to fool a Castellano.”
“Fine, you win. You’re the best at telling when women are-”
“Not listening. I’ll go get those beers anyway, because I’m a gentleman.”
She finishes her face, and looks way better than she feels. Hot, like a woman who didn’t get dumped today. Which is excellent.
He comes back with two cheap-looking beers, then jimmies the tops off somehow with a lighter. They drink in silence, and- and it actually helps, that’s the thing, it helps to sit with him in silence and drink shitty beer and for a little while, not think about how her life just got upended.
“For what it’s worth, I really am sorry,” Danny says, flicking his thumb nail over the label of his beer.
She looks him over, sighs over his ridiculous dark blue sweater that’s just a little too worn at the elbows, and realizes that she’d rather be here, with him, than alone tonight.
And maybe, just maybe, she just enjoys being with him sometimes. When he’s not being too awful. Which is most times. “It’s worth nothing, but... thank you,” she answers.