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[fic] A Long Time Coming [PG13: Danny/Martin] 2/5ish
Title: A Long Time Coming
By: HF
Email: hfox@ontheqt.org
Rating/Warnings: PG13 for now. Minor swearing, heaping cupfuls of UST.
Disclaimers: Without a Trace belongs to CBS, Jerry Bruckheimer, and very likely many other people.
Previous parts: Chapter One*
Notes: The first chapter has been revised, for reasons of plot and Martin!torture. On with the show...
CHAPTER TWO
Even looking, filling up his eyes with the sight of Martin, Danny couldn’t believe it. Even touching, feeling the firmness of flesh and bone under his fingers. He stared at Martin’s face, at the layers of hospital-issue thermal blankets piled on top of him, held his hand, and waited for him to disappear.
“God,” he said again. “Martin.”
“You do know this man.” Sorensen’s voice seemed to come from very far away.
“I... yeah.” Danny fought to control his voice before speaking anymore. “His name is Martin Fitzgerald. We were – we worked together for a while, in the FBI. Missing Persons.” A long time, not long enough.
“Missing Persons?” Sorensen laughed slightly, and Danny had to grin. “I take it you haven’t seen him for some time.” And was that a hint of speculation in the doctor’s voice? Danny looked up, but Sorensen’s face, thin and a bit haggard, was unreadable.
“He moved to Washington D.C. a year and a half ago.” Martin had left, and there was a lot more in that sentence than only saying it made it sound. Danny had never worked his way past his own pride to tell Martin anything, and there he was, half-dead, fallen back into Danny’s life. “I haven’t seen him since he moved.”
“Ah.”
“What happened to him?
Sorensen’s dark eyes flickered between Danny and the man on the bed. “I can tell you what he was brought in for, but as to what happened... I suppose the authorities will need to figure that out.” He paused. “He was brought in for hypothermia; a woman walking her dog this morning saw him lying in an alley and called the paramedics.”
“An alley?” And Danny did look up at that. He glanced at the window behind him, and the grey, cold ferocity of a January day that lay beyond it. The thought of Martin outside in that... Windburn on Martin’s cheeks, and Danny thought he felt a fugitive iciness in Martin’s fingers where he held them in his own. He looked more closely, saw that Martin’s face was thinner than it had been, the eyes slightly sunken.
“Near Harley and Madison.” Sorensen set down Martin’s chart and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “He was hypothermic when the ambulance brought him in. We managed to raise his body temperature, but there were other problems. Are, still, I suppose; he’s exhausted, and slightly anemic. Malnourished and dehydrated, though not badly.”
“What drugs were in his system, Dr. Sorensen?”
“Cocaine,” Sorensen said, voice slow and careful, as though Danny might not understand. “Traces of it, taken intravenously.”
“I – cocaine?” He wondered why his voice was so calm and professional. Somewhere inside him, where he was still the scared, angry, streetwise kid he’d always been, he knew what cocaine meant.
“Does he have a history of drug abuse?” Sorensen asked. His voice was kind and understanding, which only made Danny angrier.
He wanted to snap off a hostile “Of course not,” because this was Martin, not some junkie and how dare Sorensen even suggest it? But the memory of the number of times he’d gotten the same response from someone who knew a missing person who’d ended up being mired in drugs or alcohol made him stop. “He wasn’t like that,” he muttered reluctantly, “but I haven’t seen him for a long time; things might have changed.”
But he couldn’t and wouldn’t believe it, even if Martin came up to him with a needle in his arm and a backpack full of cocaine. Whenever they’d hung out together, Martin had drunk soda or iced tea, in part because he didn’t want to drink in front of Danny and in part (Danny suspected)because he didn’t really like anything eroding that sharp edge of Fitzgerald control.
The strongest drink in that photograph was ginger ale; they’d had it instead of champagne, and he couldn’t think about this now.
“Tests indicate that the cocaine was administered two to three hours before he was found,” Sorensen said quietly. “Maybe around three or four in the morning, depending.”
“What else did you find?” Danny still read people well enough to tell when they were withholding information, and the part of him that had never turned in his badge started racing, cataloguing Martin’s appearance, the clues offered by flesh and bone, considering possibilities. God. Cocaine.
Sorensen sighed. “Bruises on his wrists, multiple ones on the upper torso. Sprained ankle. There’s evidence of trauma to the back of his head, but no concussion; he was probably only hit hard enough to be stunned.”
Danny nodded absently. “Long enough for them to dump him there.”
“Excuse me?”
“Old ligature marks – the bruises, I mean.” And Danny knew those marks intimately, had seen them on bodies alive and dead, raw red reminders of captivity. He ran a finger over the one on Martin’s right wrist, a fading nebula of yellow and purple and blue. A matching one decorated his left – thick and edged with abraded skin. Rope, maybe.
“You think this was deliberate?”
“Mmm.” Martin’s nails were scratched short; someone had cleaned them, but grime had gotten deep under, between nail and skin. Maybe blood too, and he wondered if Martin had fought, if that’s where those other bruises had come from. “Yeah. They might have held him for a time – would explain the malnourishment and the anemia.”
“What about the cocaine?”
Danny shrugged uncomfortably. He wasn’t ready to think about that, yet. “Working on it.”
“I’ll need to contact the authorities, then” – and that was another kick, because if Danny’d still been with the Bureau that would have saved Sorensen a step – “and his family, if he has any.”
“Oh, he has family.” Unfortunately for Martin. Danny tried to imagine what the elder Fitzgerald’s reaction to this would be, if he had any. “Try the FBI switchboard in D.C.; ask for Victor Fitzgerald.”
Sorensen made a small, startled sound in his throat, and Danny nodded. Had to smile; the man’s reaction was certainly gratifying. “You should tell your staff to treat this with the utmost discretion,” he said with a certain ominous, federal sort of solemnity. And wouldn’t Tarney be proud of that?
“I’ll... uh, I’ll see to it. Thank you, Mr. Taylor.”
“How long will he sleep?” Danny asked. Sorensen, already turned around to head out of the room, paused and looked back.
“He’s lightly sedated; we needed to calm him down when he woke up the first time. But I think exhaustion is taking care of most of it; he needs sleep desperately.” Sorensen tapped the chart. “Once the sedative wears off he’ll probably wake, but he’ll need to sleep again.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“My pleasure, Mr. Taylor. There’s water in the pitcher behind your shoulder; when he wakes, just press the call button, and I’ll be back.”
Sorensen left, moving with the quiet sort of efficiency that Danny had always associated with doctors. The moment he turned the corner, though, the echoing, chill quality of a hospital room returned, and all thoughts of procedure and timelines fled, leaving Danny alone with Martin and a jumble of half-formed fears and memories.
He stared at the man lying on the bed, tried to figure out if he was imagining the deepening shadows around Martin’s eyes. Was his skin colder? Danny touched a limp hand. Surely not.
“God, Martin, what did you get yourself into?” He had to say it aloud, because keeping the question inside was somehow worse, now that he was alone and couldn’t hide behind the guise of the federal agent he’d once been. And suddenly he wanted to be angry with Martin, first for leaving (and never mind that it was Danny who’d left first; we’re talking about Martin here) and then coming back in this way, for making Danny worry. For making him care, and not being able to do damn-all about it.
It was easy to do. Easy to be Martin’s friend again, to want to be more, and he was terrified by that.
Scowling at Martin’s sleeping face, he picked up his briefcase and sorted through it for something to do. He still had work to do, starting with the Treharne case. He flipped through the file to his notes from the hearing and began to read.
They wouldn’t have had to do anything fancy; the delirium, fear, and loss of control brought on by the drug would have been enough. People could die from their first dose of cocaine, he knew. He’d seen it happen. Died because they were so fucking terrified that their hearts reached a terminal, deadly rhythm and then crashed.
Rick Treharne’s wife had divorced him five years ago, and had died three years ago of a drug overdose. Custody had reverted back to Rick; Maryanne had never remarried. Why had she divorced him again? Oh yeah: complete and utter bastard.
He’d never really seen fear in Martin before. Partly, that was because what Martin felt and what he allowed the world to see were two entirely different things. But also it was because Danny was fairly sure that it took a lot to scare Martin – at least, scare him enough to put him off his stride. No sense of self-preservation; that was what made him barge into situations without backup, or tackle pedophiles into ponds, or climb into a car with a gun-toting, suicidal, and grieving father. No sense of self-preservation at all.
If he could establish a history of spousal abuse, that would be enough not only to get Mark out of his father’s custody, but maybe even get jail time for Rick Treharne. A bonus. If Mark could corroborate any police records, that would put a lock on the case. And on Treharne, for that matter.
Dumped like trash in an icy alley with the wind howling through it. The entire city was a wind tunnel, sometimes, and Danny knew what it was like, to be out in that wind and feel like you’d never be warm again.
The next thing to do would be to get Elaine working on any police records for Treharne and his wife, and he’d have to go talk to Mark himself.
No fucking sense of self-preservation. Suicidal tendencies lay just a fine line away from recklessness. Danny looked up from his case notes, saw the small, dark bruise under a piece of gauze and adhesive. Was that where the bastards had shot him up? How much had they given him? How long had he been on it? What if –
Martin shifted, body tensing against the mattress.
Danny made himself be very still.
A soft, tormented sound escaped from Martin’s lips and his eyelids flickered. His right hand, the one closest to Danny, moved, brushing against the cold metal of the bed railing. As though contact with that were an anchor, pulling him back into reality, Martin’s eyes opened slightly, enough to reveal red-rimmed streaks of blue.
Danny braced himself for the panic Sorensen said Martin had exhibited the first time he’d woken, but Martin remained still, aside from slowly turning his head to take in his surroundings. Slowly, slowly his eyes tracked back and forth, and only when they fixed on him did Danny speak.
A thousand words were on his tongue, but all he said was, “Hey.”
He wanted very badly to move, to touch, because he was a great believer in human contact. But Martin wasn’t, and Danny could read the confusion behind the weariness in Martin’s eyes. Slowly, slowly, though, Martin’s gaze turned to him and sharpened and he seemed to see Danny for the first time, and frozen, Danny looked at Martin looking at him.
“Danny.” Martin’s eyelids wavered to half-mast and he sighed, a relieved and shaky exhalation.
“I’m calling the doctor, okay?” Danny reached for the call button on its hook by Martin’s shoulder. “Do you want something to drink?”
“No.. wait... give me a moment.” And if Martin had been upright, he’d be drawing himself up and squaring his shoulders, fear and weakness buried somewhere deep inside. “Where am I?” Voice still rough with dehydration and abuse, but firmer.
“St. Jude’s Hospital. Do you want something to drink?”
Martin nodded, and Danny turned to pour a cup of water with hands (he was proud of this) that did not shake as badly as he had feared they would. He offered the cup to Martin, knowing that the other man would not appreciate being treated like an invalid. And Martin gave him a grateful look as he took the cup with hands that did shake, and was it wrong that Danny’s heart jumped like that?
Martin drank the whole cup, though his hand shook so badly he spilled a bit of water down his chin. Danny made a gruff, impatient noise in the back of his throat and brushed at the moisture with a napkin, had to grin at the indignant look on Martin’s face.
“Fucking can’t leave you alone for five minutes, Fitzie,” he muttered as he wadded the napkin up and tossed it away. Gruff and impatient because first he’d been terrified and then overwhelmed with gratitude that Martin was alive and looking at him with something like his old spirit behind his weariness.
They sat there for a minute like that.
“Where...” Martin coughed painfully, and this time Danny did press the button. Twice, and very hard. “You – how did you get here?” Looking at Danny now like he materialized out of thin air, or been magically teleported.
Danny explained about the photo, and to his surprise, Martin turned faintly red. Reassuring, in an oddly Martin sort of way, to know that he could still blush.
“Did you fly?” Martin asked, struggling to sit upright. He shuffled awkwardly upward on his pillow, grimacing with the effort. Danny’s gestures from him to be still went ignored.
“Did I what?” Danny blinked.
“Fly.” Even exhausted and sick, Martin managed to be impatient. “In a plane.”
“Martin, we’re in New York.” And now his throat was dry. “Where... where do you think we are?”
Before Martin could answer, Dr. Sorensen came striding in, lab coat billowing out behind him. He slowed as he approached Martin’s bed, donning the slight, confident smile doctors put on when they wanted to seem reassuring.
“Mr. Fitzgerald, I’m Nathan Sorensen. How are you feeling?”
“I’m...” Martin stared hard at Danny, as if trying to figure out if Danny was lying, but when he turned back to Sorensen, he had his game face on. “I’m okay.”
Sorensen nodded, the kind of nod doctors used when they wanted to make it clear they were humoring a difficult patient. “You had a close call there,” he said conversationally. “Do you know why you’re here?”
Martin shook his head.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
“I... Leaving the Federal Building in New York,” Martin said slowly. The furrow between his brows appeared, a sign of deep thought that Danny knew well. “I was supposed to catch a flight home, but I guess I never made it.”
“When was this?”
“Monday.”
“I see,” Sorensen said heavily. “I should let you rest some more, and see about getting you some food. Mr. Taylor, could I speak with you a moment?”
“Yeah. Hang on, Martin.” Danny abandoned his post by Martin’s bed, acutely aware of Martin’s eyes tracking him across the room, and followed Sorensen out the door.
Sorensen turned back to direct another confident smile at Martin – who obviously wasn’t buying it – but it faded slightly as he faced Danny again. “He’s lost at least four days, then. I, uh, spoke with the... the deputy director, and he confirms that Mr. Fitzgerald was at the Jacob Javitz building on Monday, and was supposed to catch a flight back to D.C.”
“And nobody reported that a federal agent had gone missing?” Danny whispered, furious and disbelieving.
“The deputy director didn’t exactly give me the specifics,” Sorensen replied, “but the impression I got was that, if Mr. Fitzgerald was reported missing, it was not until maybe Wednesday. Possibly even yesterday.”
“Christ.” Not like a missing persons agent could have gotten a whole lot done when it came to finding out what the hell was going on, but it would have been a damn sight more than he, civilian lawyer Danny Taylor, could.
“The deputy director is coming up on the next flight; he should be here in a few more hours, but until then, I think that Mr. Fitzgerald would take it better, hearing all of this from you. From a friend,” Sorensen said softly.
“He won’t take it well at all,” Danny said, “but yeah... yeah, I’ll tell him.”
tbc.
By: HF
Email: hfox@ontheqt.org
Rating/Warnings: PG13 for now. Minor swearing, heaping cupfuls of UST.
Disclaimers: Without a Trace belongs to CBS, Jerry Bruckheimer, and very likely many other people.
Previous parts: Chapter One*
Notes: The first chapter has been revised, for reasons of plot and Martin!torture. On with the show...
CHAPTER TWO
Even looking, filling up his eyes with the sight of Martin, Danny couldn’t believe it. Even touching, feeling the firmness of flesh and bone under his fingers. He stared at Martin’s face, at the layers of hospital-issue thermal blankets piled on top of him, held his hand, and waited for him to disappear.
“God,” he said again. “Martin.”
“You do know this man.” Sorensen’s voice seemed to come from very far away.
“I... yeah.” Danny fought to control his voice before speaking anymore. “His name is Martin Fitzgerald. We were – we worked together for a while, in the FBI. Missing Persons.” A long time, not long enough.
“Missing Persons?” Sorensen laughed slightly, and Danny had to grin. “I take it you haven’t seen him for some time.” And was that a hint of speculation in the doctor’s voice? Danny looked up, but Sorensen’s face, thin and a bit haggard, was unreadable.
“He moved to Washington D.C. a year and a half ago.” Martin had left, and there was a lot more in that sentence than only saying it made it sound. Danny had never worked his way past his own pride to tell Martin anything, and there he was, half-dead, fallen back into Danny’s life. “I haven’t seen him since he moved.”
“Ah.”
“What happened to him?
Sorensen’s dark eyes flickered between Danny and the man on the bed. “I can tell you what he was brought in for, but as to what happened... I suppose the authorities will need to figure that out.” He paused. “He was brought in for hypothermia; a woman walking her dog this morning saw him lying in an alley and called the paramedics.”
“An alley?” And Danny did look up at that. He glanced at the window behind him, and the grey, cold ferocity of a January day that lay beyond it. The thought of Martin outside in that... Windburn on Martin’s cheeks, and Danny thought he felt a fugitive iciness in Martin’s fingers where he held them in his own. He looked more closely, saw that Martin’s face was thinner than it had been, the eyes slightly sunken.
“Near Harley and Madison.” Sorensen set down Martin’s chart and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “He was hypothermic when the ambulance brought him in. We managed to raise his body temperature, but there were other problems. Are, still, I suppose; he’s exhausted, and slightly anemic. Malnourished and dehydrated, though not badly.”
“What drugs were in his system, Dr. Sorensen?”
“Cocaine,” Sorensen said, voice slow and careful, as though Danny might not understand. “Traces of it, taken intravenously.”
“I – cocaine?” He wondered why his voice was so calm and professional. Somewhere inside him, where he was still the scared, angry, streetwise kid he’d always been, he knew what cocaine meant.
“Does he have a history of drug abuse?” Sorensen asked. His voice was kind and understanding, which only made Danny angrier.
He wanted to snap off a hostile “Of course not,” because this was Martin, not some junkie and how dare Sorensen even suggest it? But the memory of the number of times he’d gotten the same response from someone who knew a missing person who’d ended up being mired in drugs or alcohol made him stop. “He wasn’t like that,” he muttered reluctantly, “but I haven’t seen him for a long time; things might have changed.”
But he couldn’t and wouldn’t believe it, even if Martin came up to him with a needle in his arm and a backpack full of cocaine. Whenever they’d hung out together, Martin had drunk soda or iced tea, in part because he didn’t want to drink in front of Danny and in part (Danny suspected)because he didn’t really like anything eroding that sharp edge of Fitzgerald control.
The strongest drink in that photograph was ginger ale; they’d had it instead of champagne, and he couldn’t think about this now.
“Tests indicate that the cocaine was administered two to three hours before he was found,” Sorensen said quietly. “Maybe around three or four in the morning, depending.”
“What else did you find?” Danny still read people well enough to tell when they were withholding information, and the part of him that had never turned in his badge started racing, cataloguing Martin’s appearance, the clues offered by flesh and bone, considering possibilities. God. Cocaine.
Sorensen sighed. “Bruises on his wrists, multiple ones on the upper torso. Sprained ankle. There’s evidence of trauma to the back of his head, but no concussion; he was probably only hit hard enough to be stunned.”
Danny nodded absently. “Long enough for them to dump him there.”
“Excuse me?”
“Old ligature marks – the bruises, I mean.” And Danny knew those marks intimately, had seen them on bodies alive and dead, raw red reminders of captivity. He ran a finger over the one on Martin’s right wrist, a fading nebula of yellow and purple and blue. A matching one decorated his left – thick and edged with abraded skin. Rope, maybe.
“You think this was deliberate?”
“Mmm.” Martin’s nails were scratched short; someone had cleaned them, but grime had gotten deep under, between nail and skin. Maybe blood too, and he wondered if Martin had fought, if that’s where those other bruises had come from. “Yeah. They might have held him for a time – would explain the malnourishment and the anemia.”
“What about the cocaine?”
Danny shrugged uncomfortably. He wasn’t ready to think about that, yet. “Working on it.”
“I’ll need to contact the authorities, then” – and that was another kick, because if Danny’d still been with the Bureau that would have saved Sorensen a step – “and his family, if he has any.”
“Oh, he has family.” Unfortunately for Martin. Danny tried to imagine what the elder Fitzgerald’s reaction to this would be, if he had any. “Try the FBI switchboard in D.C.; ask for Victor Fitzgerald.”
Sorensen made a small, startled sound in his throat, and Danny nodded. Had to smile; the man’s reaction was certainly gratifying. “You should tell your staff to treat this with the utmost discretion,” he said with a certain ominous, federal sort of solemnity. And wouldn’t Tarney be proud of that?
“I’ll... uh, I’ll see to it. Thank you, Mr. Taylor.”
“How long will he sleep?” Danny asked. Sorensen, already turned around to head out of the room, paused and looked back.
“He’s lightly sedated; we needed to calm him down when he woke up the first time. But I think exhaustion is taking care of most of it; he needs sleep desperately.” Sorensen tapped the chart. “Once the sedative wears off he’ll probably wake, but he’ll need to sleep again.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“My pleasure, Mr. Taylor. There’s water in the pitcher behind your shoulder; when he wakes, just press the call button, and I’ll be back.”
Sorensen left, moving with the quiet sort of efficiency that Danny had always associated with doctors. The moment he turned the corner, though, the echoing, chill quality of a hospital room returned, and all thoughts of procedure and timelines fled, leaving Danny alone with Martin and a jumble of half-formed fears and memories.
He stared at the man lying on the bed, tried to figure out if he was imagining the deepening shadows around Martin’s eyes. Was his skin colder? Danny touched a limp hand. Surely not.
“God, Martin, what did you get yourself into?” He had to say it aloud, because keeping the question inside was somehow worse, now that he was alone and couldn’t hide behind the guise of the federal agent he’d once been. And suddenly he wanted to be angry with Martin, first for leaving (and never mind that it was Danny who’d left first; we’re talking about Martin here) and then coming back in this way, for making Danny worry. For making him care, and not being able to do damn-all about it.
It was easy to do. Easy to be Martin’s friend again, to want to be more, and he was terrified by that.
Scowling at Martin’s sleeping face, he picked up his briefcase and sorted through it for something to do. He still had work to do, starting with the Treharne case. He flipped through the file to his notes from the hearing and began to read.
They wouldn’t have had to do anything fancy; the delirium, fear, and loss of control brought on by the drug would have been enough. People could die from their first dose of cocaine, he knew. He’d seen it happen. Died because they were so fucking terrified that their hearts reached a terminal, deadly rhythm and then crashed.
Rick Treharne’s wife had divorced him five years ago, and had died three years ago of a drug overdose. Custody had reverted back to Rick; Maryanne had never remarried. Why had she divorced him again? Oh yeah: complete and utter bastard.
He’d never really seen fear in Martin before. Partly, that was because what Martin felt and what he allowed the world to see were two entirely different things. But also it was because Danny was fairly sure that it took a lot to scare Martin – at least, scare him enough to put him off his stride. No sense of self-preservation; that was what made him barge into situations without backup, or tackle pedophiles into ponds, or climb into a car with a gun-toting, suicidal, and grieving father. No sense of self-preservation at all.
If he could establish a history of spousal abuse, that would be enough not only to get Mark out of his father’s custody, but maybe even get jail time for Rick Treharne. A bonus. If Mark could corroborate any police records, that would put a lock on the case. And on Treharne, for that matter.
Dumped like trash in an icy alley with the wind howling through it. The entire city was a wind tunnel, sometimes, and Danny knew what it was like, to be out in that wind and feel like you’d never be warm again.
The next thing to do would be to get Elaine working on any police records for Treharne and his wife, and he’d have to go talk to Mark himself.
No fucking sense of self-preservation. Suicidal tendencies lay just a fine line away from recklessness. Danny looked up from his case notes, saw the small, dark bruise under a piece of gauze and adhesive. Was that where the bastards had shot him up? How much had they given him? How long had he been on it? What if –
Martin shifted, body tensing against the mattress.
Danny made himself be very still.
A soft, tormented sound escaped from Martin’s lips and his eyelids flickered. His right hand, the one closest to Danny, moved, brushing against the cold metal of the bed railing. As though contact with that were an anchor, pulling him back into reality, Martin’s eyes opened slightly, enough to reveal red-rimmed streaks of blue.
Danny braced himself for the panic Sorensen said Martin had exhibited the first time he’d woken, but Martin remained still, aside from slowly turning his head to take in his surroundings. Slowly, slowly his eyes tracked back and forth, and only when they fixed on him did Danny speak.
A thousand words were on his tongue, but all he said was, “Hey.”
He wanted very badly to move, to touch, because he was a great believer in human contact. But Martin wasn’t, and Danny could read the confusion behind the weariness in Martin’s eyes. Slowly, slowly, though, Martin’s gaze turned to him and sharpened and he seemed to see Danny for the first time, and frozen, Danny looked at Martin looking at him.
“Danny.” Martin’s eyelids wavered to half-mast and he sighed, a relieved and shaky exhalation.
“I’m calling the doctor, okay?” Danny reached for the call button on its hook by Martin’s shoulder. “Do you want something to drink?”
“No.. wait... give me a moment.” And if Martin had been upright, he’d be drawing himself up and squaring his shoulders, fear and weakness buried somewhere deep inside. “Where am I?” Voice still rough with dehydration and abuse, but firmer.
“St. Jude’s Hospital. Do you want something to drink?”
Martin nodded, and Danny turned to pour a cup of water with hands (he was proud of this) that did not shake as badly as he had feared they would. He offered the cup to Martin, knowing that the other man would not appreciate being treated like an invalid. And Martin gave him a grateful look as he took the cup with hands that did shake, and was it wrong that Danny’s heart jumped like that?
Martin drank the whole cup, though his hand shook so badly he spilled a bit of water down his chin. Danny made a gruff, impatient noise in the back of his throat and brushed at the moisture with a napkin, had to grin at the indignant look on Martin’s face.
“Fucking can’t leave you alone for five minutes, Fitzie,” he muttered as he wadded the napkin up and tossed it away. Gruff and impatient because first he’d been terrified and then overwhelmed with gratitude that Martin was alive and looking at him with something like his old spirit behind his weariness.
They sat there for a minute like that.
“Where...” Martin coughed painfully, and this time Danny did press the button. Twice, and very hard. “You – how did you get here?” Looking at Danny now like he materialized out of thin air, or been magically teleported.
Danny explained about the photo, and to his surprise, Martin turned faintly red. Reassuring, in an oddly Martin sort of way, to know that he could still blush.
“Did you fly?” Martin asked, struggling to sit upright. He shuffled awkwardly upward on his pillow, grimacing with the effort. Danny’s gestures from him to be still went ignored.
“Did I what?” Danny blinked.
“Fly.” Even exhausted and sick, Martin managed to be impatient. “In a plane.”
“Martin, we’re in New York.” And now his throat was dry. “Where... where do you think we are?”
Before Martin could answer, Dr. Sorensen came striding in, lab coat billowing out behind him. He slowed as he approached Martin’s bed, donning the slight, confident smile doctors put on when they wanted to seem reassuring.
“Mr. Fitzgerald, I’m Nathan Sorensen. How are you feeling?”
“I’m...” Martin stared hard at Danny, as if trying to figure out if Danny was lying, but when he turned back to Sorensen, he had his game face on. “I’m okay.”
Sorensen nodded, the kind of nod doctors used when they wanted to make it clear they were humoring a difficult patient. “You had a close call there,” he said conversationally. “Do you know why you’re here?”
Martin shook his head.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
“I... Leaving the Federal Building in New York,” Martin said slowly. The furrow between his brows appeared, a sign of deep thought that Danny knew well. “I was supposed to catch a flight home, but I guess I never made it.”
“When was this?”
“Monday.”
“I see,” Sorensen said heavily. “I should let you rest some more, and see about getting you some food. Mr. Taylor, could I speak with you a moment?”
“Yeah. Hang on, Martin.” Danny abandoned his post by Martin’s bed, acutely aware of Martin’s eyes tracking him across the room, and followed Sorensen out the door.
Sorensen turned back to direct another confident smile at Martin – who obviously wasn’t buying it – but it faded slightly as he faced Danny again. “He’s lost at least four days, then. I, uh, spoke with the... the deputy director, and he confirms that Mr. Fitzgerald was at the Jacob Javitz building on Monday, and was supposed to catch a flight back to D.C.”
“And nobody reported that a federal agent had gone missing?” Danny whispered, furious and disbelieving.
“The deputy director didn’t exactly give me the specifics,” Sorensen replied, “but the impression I got was that, if Mr. Fitzgerald was reported missing, it was not until maybe Wednesday. Possibly even yesterday.”
“Christ.” Not like a missing persons agent could have gotten a whole lot done when it came to finding out what the hell was going on, but it would have been a damn sight more than he, civilian lawyer Danny Taylor, could.
“The deputy director is coming up on the next flight; he should be here in a few more hours, but until then, I think that Mr. Fitzgerald would take it better, hearing all of this from you. From a friend,” Sorensen said softly.
“He won’t take it well at all,” Danny said, “but yeah... yeah, I’ll tell him.”
tbc.
no subject
Heh. Neither can I :)
Mind if I friend you as well so I can keep up with it?
Come on in! :)