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[fic] A Long Time Coming [PG13: Danny/Martin] 4/?
Title: A Long Time Coming
By: HF
Email: hfox @ ontheqt.org / aesc36 @ gmail.com
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; Chapter Two; Chapter Three
Notes: Apologies for the delay. Tremendous difficulties persuading this chapter to cohere.
CHAPTER FOUR
Sorensen appeared a few moments later, white-coated and concerned, and the second he strode through the door Martin dropped Danny’s hand as though he’d been burned.
“Is everything all right, Mr. Fitzgerald?” Sorensen asked, and for one supremely irritated moment Danny wanted to ask if everything looked all right, with Martin pale and looking more vulnerable than Danny had ever seen him before.
Martin must have caught onto his mood; the look he sent Danny was quelling, and reluctantly Danny stayed silent.
“I wanted to ask you about...” Martin drew an unsteady breath, but when he continued his voice was firmer, uncertainty and fear buried down deep where not even Danny could see them. “I wanted to ask you about the possibility of contracting... something from the...” He gestured to the bandage on his forearm, and his voice faltered a bit. “From the needle they used.”
Sorensen glanced at Danny, his expression unreadable. “This is probably something I should discuss with you priv – ”
“He can stay.” Martin’s tone suffered no contradiction, tense and sharp with impatience. Sorensen opened his mouth to protest, Martin repeated himself even more firmly, with a look so reminiscent of Victor that Danny was taken aback – eyes challenging and jaw set, and even lying down, something about Martin’s posture suggested resolution.
Seeing this, Sorensen sighed and acquiesced.
“I ran the labs for communicable blood-borne diseases, including a rapid test for HIV,” he said. “They all came back negative.”
Danny needed a moment to process the words.
All negative. That meant okay. Martin was okay –of course he was, and why wouldn’t he be? Martin was indestructible like that, and the fear of only a minute ago seemed a distant, foolish thing in the face of what should have been perfectly obvious.
“Thank God,” Martin whispered. Danny saw the briefest flicker of relief in his eyes, the loss of tension in his shoulders, before Martin covered it back up with a casual, “I was worried.”
Sorensen smiled. “Your concern is understandable, but you’ll need to be retested soon, though, and be tested regularly.”
“We have mandatory testing at work,” Martin replied. “What about preventative medication?”
“It depends on risk factors in your daily life,” Sorensen said. “Do you frequently engage in behavior that would put you at risk for infection – sharing needles, unprotected sex, multiple partners?” Martin shook his head, his expression dangerously blank, but Danny – who had grown accustomed to the minutiae of Martin’s physical reactions – saw the faint blush Martin acquired whenever questions became too personal.
“We usually don’t offer preventative treatment for HIV,” Sorensen continued, “and your history doesn’t require that we give it to you – other than dehydration and exhaustion, you’re perfectly healthy.”
“In that case, if I’m perfectly healthy, I’d like to be discharged.” Martin’s tone was more expectation of obedience than request, an attempt to reassert himself. Martin hated being fussed over, hated not being in control, and being in the hospital constituted both these things.
“I’d like you to stay overnight for observation,” Sorensen said, unfazed by his patient’s intractability, “and to make sure your fluid levels are stabilized. You’re still a bit dehydrated.”
“Fitz,” Danny said carefully, watching as Martin looked at him, tired still but ready to fight, determined to do what he wanted and advice be damned, “maybe you should – ”
“I want to go home, Danny,” Martin said, and this time the words were pleading instead of forceful.
“Okay,” he said at last. “I’ll get you signed out.” He glanced at Sorensen. “Is that okay?”
Sorensen sighed and ran a hand through thinning hair. “I’ll get the discharge papers ready, but I’m going to note that you’re leaving against medical advice.”
Martin didn’t say anything, just nodded and looked away.
* * *
Night was never really night in the city, more an absence of some of the brightness and noise of the day. The neighborhood in Queens that Danny now called home was darker and calmer in the evening than any place he’d lived in, ever – the darkness and stewing heat of his family’s apartment in Hialeah, the student ghetto he’d called home in Manhattan, the place he’d had while working for the FBI. He liked it, though sometimes the quiet was still strange to him; some nights he would find himself unexpectedly awake, straining to hear the sounds memory and long experience told him should be there.
His building also had an elevator, something for which Danny was profoundly grateful at the moment. Once they had gotten out of the hospital, Martin had seemed to revive a little despite the humiliation of being wheeled out to the curbside, and had accepted Sorensen’s lecture and prescriptions with good grace, but that burst of energy had faded on the cab ride home and now Martin was weaving a bit as the elevator lurched its way up to the sixth floor.
“Hey, stay with me man,” Danny muttered as they negotiated their way down the hall. “We’re almost there.” He managed to keep Martin steady, balance his briefcase and a duffle bag with emergency Martin supplies, and open his door without disaster, and had to sigh with relief as Martin shook himself, straightened, and walked in ahead of him.
“Welcome to Casa Taylor.”
“Got tired of the city, huh?” Martin asked, looking around as Danny turned on the lights. He moved slowly around the living room, acquainting himself with it, running his fingers over the side table, the back of the couch, peered at the few framed photos and prints on the wall, the lone and bedraggled spider plant hanging on its hook by the fire escape door. “It’s nice. Bigger than your last place.”
“You should know that the whole civil servant thing doesn’t pay very well,” Danny said, dumping their stuff by the door. “Kind of nice, having an apartment that isn’t a postage stamp. House in the Hamptons is going to be next.” He heard Martin’s appreciative snicker, had to laugh at the image himself, wandered over to the linen closet to dig out his spare sheets and a blanket. “The futon okay with you?”
Martin nodded thoughtfully by way of answer and – predictably – began to inspect the kitchen. “I hope you have decent food, at least.” The kitchen light flicked on and Danny heard the refrigerator door open. “God, Taylor. They are paying you to practice law, right? Or are you squatting?”
“Hey, there’s a reason they invented take-out.”
“Yeah, it’s called laziness.”
“No, it’s called sixty-hour work weeks.” Down from eighty the first year he’d spent at the firm, but he didn’t say that. Danny wrestled open the futon, which had a mind of its own, refusing to cooperate before suddenly unfolding and attempting to crack Danny across the shins. Silently cursing the thing, he put on the sheets and blankets in record time before it could attack again.
He walked into the kitchen and found Martin unsteadily pouring a glass of orange juice and going through take-out menus, leaned in the doorway and just watched him for a moment.
Now he was seriously doubting the wisdom of going against Sorensen’s advice. Martin’s skin, always fair anyway, was far too pale and there were shadows under his eyes. He was thinner, Danny saw, body a bit too lanky under the hospital-donated scrubs and the t-shirt Danny’d gotten him in the gift shop, his eyes glassy and dark with weariness.
“Hey, you okay?”
“Pretty tired,” Martin said. A breath of air carried the words, making them wispy and insubstantial, and Danny knew Martin had to be feeling like crap to be admitting to feeling “pretty tired.” Dark eyes slid over to him, and a soft smile played at the corners of Martin’s mouth. “You don’t look so hot yourself.”
“I always look hot. Now, c’mon, drink your juice and get your ass in the goddamned bed.” Danny pointed commandingly back in the direction of the living room, and despite the veil of irritation he watched in concern as Martin obeyed the order with an uncharacteristic docility. Wordlessly Martin climbed under the covers, settling back with a wince at the protest of stiff muscles, and Danny felt him watching as he moved to turn off one of the floor lamps.
“D’you have my picture?” The question was hesitant, with an edge of embarrassment.
“Yeah... Here.” Danny broke off his mission to turn down the lights and walked over to where he’d dumped his briefcase, rummaged in it until he found the photograph tucked into his notes. He took it back to the couch and handed it to Martin, watched him unfold it and couldn’t leave, found himself sitting on the arm of the futon to look over Martin’s shoulder.
“The Cortez case,” Martin said, voice soft with memory. “That was a good one.”
“I can’t believe you thought it would be a good idea for me to pretend I was an English instructor to get in the house.”
“Hey, you went along with it.”
“I can’t believe I did that, either.” Martin laughed at that, and Danny allowed himself a soft, aggrieved sigh.
They studied the picture in silence, Danny leaning against the back of the couch, Martin propped up on his pillows.
Martin smiled slightly, one of his barely-there smiles that said he was feeling much more than he was letting on. “It seems like a long time ago,” he said after a moment.
“Yeah,” Danny said quietly. “Yeah, it does.”
The photo was creased and worn soft at the edges, a bit smudged in one corner where something liquid had spilled. Their waitress had taken it with the digital camera over which Martin had cooed with all his old, slightly nerdy enthusiasm.
God, that night seemed like it had happened a century ago, Martin dressed down for once in jeans and dark blue t-shirt and Danny in his favorite leather jacket and high as a kite on elation and caffeine. They looked bizarrely young, happy and unafraid to show it – strange, because that night lay only three years in the past – though Martin’s eyes had that shadow in them, like he had seen the future, this moment, maybe.
And here they were, quietly and inexorably creeping on to forty, sitting in the half-light of Danny’s apartment, looking at themselves.
He wondered how long that photo had lived in Martin’s coat pocket, if it had lived there as long as its twin on his own desk, if Martin looked at it as often as he did. Glancing between Martin and the photo, Danny could chart the changes in his friend, follow them in the lines around his eyes and the way his brow furrowed – always characteristic of Martin in thought – a certain absence in Martin’s eyes, a retreating from something.
Pain, maybe. Danny could relate; there are some things you deal with by not dealing with them.
He recalled very clearly the day he’d told Martin he was an alcoholic. He’d been expecting Martin’s judgment, because Martin valued control above all other things and would see addiction as a colossal failure, but staring into Martin’s eyes he’d seen only acceptance, and maybe satisfaction, like he’d been happy that Danny had told him this. Not because it gave him leverage or the satisfaction of being morally superior, but because Danny had told him something, an actual real thing about his life.
The crazy thing (he’d told this to Martin much, much later; Viv was the only other person to hear it, ever) was that he’d been a “functional addict,” the kind of addict who still had a life and wasn’t doing things like selling himself or stealing cars for money to get what he wanted – the best kind of lie to convince himself that he was in control, that he wasn’t like his brother at all, because he had gotten into a good law school and had kept up his marks. And he’d been a functional addict right up until the day he’d crashed into that car and fucked himself over, out of a career in law and into the FBI.
Then he’d met Martin a few years after that, and he’d had to redefine what addiction meant, when he couldn’t even get a taste of what he wanted. And eventually lust and wanting had faded into the patterns of a steady friendship, pulsing sometimes in their occasional exchanges of insults and rarer, probing conversations, and then in unexpected nights after they’d moved on to law and counter terrorism, when Danny found himself awake and alone in the darkness.
And this was the part he’d never, ever told Martin. Or anybody else, for that matter.
He’d never carried a torch for anybody in his life, and couldn’t understand why, no matter what he did, his mind relentlessly circled back to Martin Fitzgerald, why in odd moments he’d glance at that picture, or see a Star Trek rerun or some guy in a brown suit and think about Martin. After a while he’d resigned himself to living with this, with having Martin in his life permanently even though he was never there, like the ghost of rum he could taste in the back of his mouth.
Martin’s sigh broke him out of his reverie; he blinked and refocused in time enough to see Martin set the photo – carefully – on the side table.
“Hey, I’m gonna turn in, okay?” Martin slid down the pillows, still wincing a bit, and it was saying something that Martin trusted him enough to relax this much. “Tomorrow I’ll catch a flight back to D.C.”
“You aren’t going back to Washington.” The statement was startled out of Danny.
Martin looked up at him, eyes narrow and appraising, and dammit he had to stop doing that. “What d’you mean? I’ve got work to do – God knows I’ve fucking missed a week.”
“For Christ’s sake, Martin, you were kidnapped.” Danny could feel anger start to exert control over his mouth, which was never a good thing; he tended to say what was on his mind anyway, and anger and frustration only made it worse. “We’ve got to figure out who did this to you, and for all you know they’re still looking for you.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Martin said, tone repressive and warning Danny that he wasn’t going to tolerate his concern much longer.
“You can’t do this on your own,” Danny said quietly, in what he hoped was a reasonable tone.
“The hell? Did my dad put you up to this?” Martin demanded, glaring at Danny.
“Your dad didn’t ‘put me up to’ anything,” Danny snapped back. “He wants you safe, Martin, and he wants to find out what’s going on – and you’re going to have to tell someone before you end up dying for real this time.” Couldn’t keep the desperation and fear out of his voice, and maybe that worked better than reason; the momentary heat and anger faded from Martin’s eyes and he slumped, defeated, against the arm of the couch.
“Danny, it’s not that I don’t want to tell you, it’s that...” Martin sighed and shook his head. “Some things I can’t tell you, either because they’re classified, or I don’t know... Or because I can’t tell anyone right now.”
“You’re going to have to give me something,” Danny said, not satisfied in the least. “Whatever it was, someone got pissed off enough to want to take you out, or get rid of you, and I don’t think they’re just going to go away once they find out it didn’t work. We’re going to have to find out who did it.”
“Tomorrow,” Martin said into the arm of the couch. “I’ll tell you everything I can.”
“Yeah,” Danny said, finding it in him to be a bit frosty, unaccountably upset at how their quiet accord had so swiftly fallen apart. “You’d better.”
He stood up and turned off the light, found his way back to his bedroom in the dark, and found no sleep waiting for him. Instead, he laid awake in tangled covers, straining to hear Martin’s breathing in the next room.
tbc.
In other news: This will end up being more than five chapters. In case you, y'know, couldn't tell.
By: HF
Email: hfox @ ontheqt.org / aesc36 @ gmail.com
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; Chapter Two; Chapter Three
Notes: Apologies for the delay. Tremendous difficulties persuading this chapter to cohere.
CHAPTER FOUR
Sorensen appeared a few moments later, white-coated and concerned, and the second he strode through the door Martin dropped Danny’s hand as though he’d been burned.
“Is everything all right, Mr. Fitzgerald?” Sorensen asked, and for one supremely irritated moment Danny wanted to ask if everything looked all right, with Martin pale and looking more vulnerable than Danny had ever seen him before.
Martin must have caught onto his mood; the look he sent Danny was quelling, and reluctantly Danny stayed silent.
“I wanted to ask you about...” Martin drew an unsteady breath, but when he continued his voice was firmer, uncertainty and fear buried down deep where not even Danny could see them. “I wanted to ask you about the possibility of contracting... something from the...” He gestured to the bandage on his forearm, and his voice faltered a bit. “From the needle they used.”
Sorensen glanced at Danny, his expression unreadable. “This is probably something I should discuss with you priv – ”
“He can stay.” Martin’s tone suffered no contradiction, tense and sharp with impatience. Sorensen opened his mouth to protest, Martin repeated himself even more firmly, with a look so reminiscent of Victor that Danny was taken aback – eyes challenging and jaw set, and even lying down, something about Martin’s posture suggested resolution.
Seeing this, Sorensen sighed and acquiesced.
“I ran the labs for communicable blood-borne diseases, including a rapid test for HIV,” he said. “They all came back negative.”
Danny needed a moment to process the words.
All negative. That meant okay. Martin was okay –of course he was, and why wouldn’t he be? Martin was indestructible like that, and the fear of only a minute ago seemed a distant, foolish thing in the face of what should have been perfectly obvious.
“Thank God,” Martin whispered. Danny saw the briefest flicker of relief in his eyes, the loss of tension in his shoulders, before Martin covered it back up with a casual, “I was worried.”
Sorensen smiled. “Your concern is understandable, but you’ll need to be retested soon, though, and be tested regularly.”
“We have mandatory testing at work,” Martin replied. “What about preventative medication?”
“It depends on risk factors in your daily life,” Sorensen said. “Do you frequently engage in behavior that would put you at risk for infection – sharing needles, unprotected sex, multiple partners?” Martin shook his head, his expression dangerously blank, but Danny – who had grown accustomed to the minutiae of Martin’s physical reactions – saw the faint blush Martin acquired whenever questions became too personal.
“We usually don’t offer preventative treatment for HIV,” Sorensen continued, “and your history doesn’t require that we give it to you – other than dehydration and exhaustion, you’re perfectly healthy.”
“In that case, if I’m perfectly healthy, I’d like to be discharged.” Martin’s tone was more expectation of obedience than request, an attempt to reassert himself. Martin hated being fussed over, hated not being in control, and being in the hospital constituted both these things.
“I’d like you to stay overnight for observation,” Sorensen said, unfazed by his patient’s intractability, “and to make sure your fluid levels are stabilized. You’re still a bit dehydrated.”
“Fitz,” Danny said carefully, watching as Martin looked at him, tired still but ready to fight, determined to do what he wanted and advice be damned, “maybe you should – ”
“I want to go home, Danny,” Martin said, and this time the words were pleading instead of forceful.
“Okay,” he said at last. “I’ll get you signed out.” He glanced at Sorensen. “Is that okay?”
Sorensen sighed and ran a hand through thinning hair. “I’ll get the discharge papers ready, but I’m going to note that you’re leaving against medical advice.”
Martin didn’t say anything, just nodded and looked away.
Night was never really night in the city, more an absence of some of the brightness and noise of the day. The neighborhood in Queens that Danny now called home was darker and calmer in the evening than any place he’d lived in, ever – the darkness and stewing heat of his family’s apartment in Hialeah, the student ghetto he’d called home in Manhattan, the place he’d had while working for the FBI. He liked it, though sometimes the quiet was still strange to him; some nights he would find himself unexpectedly awake, straining to hear the sounds memory and long experience told him should be there.
His building also had an elevator, something for which Danny was profoundly grateful at the moment. Once they had gotten out of the hospital, Martin had seemed to revive a little despite the humiliation of being wheeled out to the curbside, and had accepted Sorensen’s lecture and prescriptions with good grace, but that burst of energy had faded on the cab ride home and now Martin was weaving a bit as the elevator lurched its way up to the sixth floor.
“Hey, stay with me man,” Danny muttered as they negotiated their way down the hall. “We’re almost there.” He managed to keep Martin steady, balance his briefcase and a duffle bag with emergency Martin supplies, and open his door without disaster, and had to sigh with relief as Martin shook himself, straightened, and walked in ahead of him.
“Welcome to Casa Taylor.”
“Got tired of the city, huh?” Martin asked, looking around as Danny turned on the lights. He moved slowly around the living room, acquainting himself with it, running his fingers over the side table, the back of the couch, peered at the few framed photos and prints on the wall, the lone and bedraggled spider plant hanging on its hook by the fire escape door. “It’s nice. Bigger than your last place.”
“You should know that the whole civil servant thing doesn’t pay very well,” Danny said, dumping their stuff by the door. “Kind of nice, having an apartment that isn’t a postage stamp. House in the Hamptons is going to be next.” He heard Martin’s appreciative snicker, had to laugh at the image himself, wandered over to the linen closet to dig out his spare sheets and a blanket. “The futon okay with you?”
Martin nodded thoughtfully by way of answer and – predictably – began to inspect the kitchen. “I hope you have decent food, at least.” The kitchen light flicked on and Danny heard the refrigerator door open. “God, Taylor. They are paying you to practice law, right? Or are you squatting?”
“Hey, there’s a reason they invented take-out.”
“Yeah, it’s called laziness.”
“No, it’s called sixty-hour work weeks.” Down from eighty the first year he’d spent at the firm, but he didn’t say that. Danny wrestled open the futon, which had a mind of its own, refusing to cooperate before suddenly unfolding and attempting to crack Danny across the shins. Silently cursing the thing, he put on the sheets and blankets in record time before it could attack again.
He walked into the kitchen and found Martin unsteadily pouring a glass of orange juice and going through take-out menus, leaned in the doorway and just watched him for a moment.
Now he was seriously doubting the wisdom of going against Sorensen’s advice. Martin’s skin, always fair anyway, was far too pale and there were shadows under his eyes. He was thinner, Danny saw, body a bit too lanky under the hospital-donated scrubs and the t-shirt Danny’d gotten him in the gift shop, his eyes glassy and dark with weariness.
“Hey, you okay?”
“Pretty tired,” Martin said. A breath of air carried the words, making them wispy and insubstantial, and Danny knew Martin had to be feeling like crap to be admitting to feeling “pretty tired.” Dark eyes slid over to him, and a soft smile played at the corners of Martin’s mouth. “You don’t look so hot yourself.”
“I always look hot. Now, c’mon, drink your juice and get your ass in the goddamned bed.” Danny pointed commandingly back in the direction of the living room, and despite the veil of irritation he watched in concern as Martin obeyed the order with an uncharacteristic docility. Wordlessly Martin climbed under the covers, settling back with a wince at the protest of stiff muscles, and Danny felt him watching as he moved to turn off one of the floor lamps.
“D’you have my picture?” The question was hesitant, with an edge of embarrassment.
“Yeah... Here.” Danny broke off his mission to turn down the lights and walked over to where he’d dumped his briefcase, rummaged in it until he found the photograph tucked into his notes. He took it back to the couch and handed it to Martin, watched him unfold it and couldn’t leave, found himself sitting on the arm of the futon to look over Martin’s shoulder.
“The Cortez case,” Martin said, voice soft with memory. “That was a good one.”
“I can’t believe you thought it would be a good idea for me to pretend I was an English instructor to get in the house.”
“Hey, you went along with it.”
“I can’t believe I did that, either.” Martin laughed at that, and Danny allowed himself a soft, aggrieved sigh.
They studied the picture in silence, Danny leaning against the back of the couch, Martin propped up on his pillows.
Martin smiled slightly, one of his barely-there smiles that said he was feeling much more than he was letting on. “It seems like a long time ago,” he said after a moment.
“Yeah,” Danny said quietly. “Yeah, it does.”
The photo was creased and worn soft at the edges, a bit smudged in one corner where something liquid had spilled. Their waitress had taken it with the digital camera over which Martin had cooed with all his old, slightly nerdy enthusiasm.
God, that night seemed like it had happened a century ago, Martin dressed down for once in jeans and dark blue t-shirt and Danny in his favorite leather jacket and high as a kite on elation and caffeine. They looked bizarrely young, happy and unafraid to show it – strange, because that night lay only three years in the past – though Martin’s eyes had that shadow in them, like he had seen the future, this moment, maybe.
And here they were, quietly and inexorably creeping on to forty, sitting in the half-light of Danny’s apartment, looking at themselves.
He wondered how long that photo had lived in Martin’s coat pocket, if it had lived there as long as its twin on his own desk, if Martin looked at it as often as he did. Glancing between Martin and the photo, Danny could chart the changes in his friend, follow them in the lines around his eyes and the way his brow furrowed – always characteristic of Martin in thought – a certain absence in Martin’s eyes, a retreating from something.
Pain, maybe. Danny could relate; there are some things you deal with by not dealing with them.
He recalled very clearly the day he’d told Martin he was an alcoholic. He’d been expecting Martin’s judgment, because Martin valued control above all other things and would see addiction as a colossal failure, but staring into Martin’s eyes he’d seen only acceptance, and maybe satisfaction, like he’d been happy that Danny had told him this. Not because it gave him leverage or the satisfaction of being morally superior, but because Danny had told him something, an actual real thing about his life.
The crazy thing (he’d told this to Martin much, much later; Viv was the only other person to hear it, ever) was that he’d been a “functional addict,” the kind of addict who still had a life and wasn’t doing things like selling himself or stealing cars for money to get what he wanted – the best kind of lie to convince himself that he was in control, that he wasn’t like his brother at all, because he had gotten into a good law school and had kept up his marks. And he’d been a functional addict right up until the day he’d crashed into that car and fucked himself over, out of a career in law and into the FBI.
Then he’d met Martin a few years after that, and he’d had to redefine what addiction meant, when he couldn’t even get a taste of what he wanted. And eventually lust and wanting had faded into the patterns of a steady friendship, pulsing sometimes in their occasional exchanges of insults and rarer, probing conversations, and then in unexpected nights after they’d moved on to law and counter terrorism, when Danny found himself awake and alone in the darkness.
And this was the part he’d never, ever told Martin. Or anybody else, for that matter.
He’d never carried a torch for anybody in his life, and couldn’t understand why, no matter what he did, his mind relentlessly circled back to Martin Fitzgerald, why in odd moments he’d glance at that picture, or see a Star Trek rerun or some guy in a brown suit and think about Martin. After a while he’d resigned himself to living with this, with having Martin in his life permanently even though he was never there, like the ghost of rum he could taste in the back of his mouth.
Martin’s sigh broke him out of his reverie; he blinked and refocused in time enough to see Martin set the photo – carefully – on the side table.
“Hey, I’m gonna turn in, okay?” Martin slid down the pillows, still wincing a bit, and it was saying something that Martin trusted him enough to relax this much. “Tomorrow I’ll catch a flight back to D.C.”
“You aren’t going back to Washington.” The statement was startled out of Danny.
Martin looked up at him, eyes narrow and appraising, and dammit he had to stop doing that. “What d’you mean? I’ve got work to do – God knows I’ve fucking missed a week.”
“For Christ’s sake, Martin, you were kidnapped.” Danny could feel anger start to exert control over his mouth, which was never a good thing; he tended to say what was on his mind anyway, and anger and frustration only made it worse. “We’ve got to figure out who did this to you, and for all you know they’re still looking for you.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Martin said, tone repressive and warning Danny that he wasn’t going to tolerate his concern much longer.
“You can’t do this on your own,” Danny said quietly, in what he hoped was a reasonable tone.
“The hell? Did my dad put you up to this?” Martin demanded, glaring at Danny.
“Your dad didn’t ‘put me up to’ anything,” Danny snapped back. “He wants you safe, Martin, and he wants to find out what’s going on – and you’re going to have to tell someone before you end up dying for real this time.” Couldn’t keep the desperation and fear out of his voice, and maybe that worked better than reason; the momentary heat and anger faded from Martin’s eyes and he slumped, defeated, against the arm of the couch.
“Danny, it’s not that I don’t want to tell you, it’s that...” Martin sighed and shook his head. “Some things I can’t tell you, either because they’re classified, or I don’t know... Or because I can’t tell anyone right now.”
“You’re going to have to give me something,” Danny said, not satisfied in the least. “Whatever it was, someone got pissed off enough to want to take you out, or get rid of you, and I don’t think they’re just going to go away once they find out it didn’t work. We’re going to have to find out who did it.”
“Tomorrow,” Martin said into the arm of the couch. “I’ll tell you everything I can.”
“Yeah,” Danny said, finding it in him to be a bit frosty, unaccountably upset at how their quiet accord had so swiftly fallen apart. “You’d better.”
He stood up and turned off the light, found his way back to his bedroom in the dark, and found no sleep waiting for him. Instead, he laid awake in tangled covers, straining to hear Martin’s breathing in the next room.
tbc.
In other news: This will end up being more than five chapters. In case you, y'know, couldn't tell.
no subject
(and ps: Martin, fucking talk to Danny --he loves you)
The problem, of course, is that Martin is very stubborn. Silly, silly boy.