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Entry tags:
.fic: Every Distance: PG13/R D/M 2.?
Title: Every Distance
By: HF
Email: aesc36 @gmail.com
Pairing: Danny/Martin
Rating/Warnings: PG13/Rish; language, maybe some smut, violence, angst, etc.
Disclaimer: Without a Trace belongs to Jerry Bruckheimer, CBS, and very likely many other people.
Advertisements: Sequel/companion to A Long Time Coming, set during and after the events of ALTC 10.
Notes: Time for some Vivian. Why, you ask? Because Vivian rules. And I love her relationship with Martin.
CHAPTER TWO
The building had the strange, subdued weekend buzz – activity brisk but reluctant, a concession of free time to the demands of the world. Martin wound his way unnoticed through the honeycomb of offices and cubicles to his own department, still half-wanting to follow the signs to Missing Persons.
No, he was Counter Terrorism now, and that was a big step up in a world still dominated by crudely-formed fears and myriad dangers, where missing kids and single moms faded beside fears of the next suicide bombing or 9/11. Necessary work, important work, and he’d told himself that almost every day since he’d been handed his reassignment. Not from Jack – though he wondered if Jack would have fought to keep him, if he’d still been their supervisory agent, if there’d still been a team after Danny and Viv had gone – but from his new S.A., who hadn’t said anything about who Martin’s father was, but Martin had still seen the accusation, silent and bitter, in his eyes.
Martin dropped his gym bag and backpack – he still carried it, still garnered strange looks from his fellow agents, and still didn’t care – at his desk and continued to the coffee room. Someone had already started a pot, and one cup gulped down during that terrible conversation with Victor was not going to get him through the next hour, much less the rest of the morning.
He walked by the Nebraska Cornhuskers shrine that was Matt’s desk but paused a few steps past it and turned back. A sea of orange and navy blue covered almost every available surface, but Martin’s eye skipped by the memorabilia and fastened on the newspaper clipping taped to the corner of the computer monitor.
The newsprint photograph had faded out and was ragged under the protective cover of scotch tape and plastic. It had been there since Matt had joined the team – a year before Martin did, and Martin knew that because Matt had told him. No one else even glanced at the picture, or mentioned it, whether as a tragedy or something to avoid discussing.
Matt had told him a lot of things, including whose picture that was: his older brother David, dead almost fifteen ago now. A lot like Matt, with wild black hair and dark, dark eyes, tall but not as imposing (Matt had played defense for the Cornhuskers – second line in ’95 – and it still showed), grin so much like Matt’s that it was uncanny.
Gay, unlike Matt, and very dead now, killed by three drunk freshmen. He’d been a senior when that photo had been snapped, and Matt in his sophomore year, arm wrapped around Matt’s neck, Sun Devil Stadium behind them, two brothers celebrating Nebraska’s huge win over Florida in the national championship.* Two weeks later he’d been reported missing; two days after that they’d found his body, face beaten almost beyond recognition, both hands broken.
A rib had punctured his lung. The doctors had said he’d died from that, from suffocation.
“The police said it was just three drunk guys – frat pledges who got out of control,” Matt had told Martin. “It wasn’t that at all.”
Martin swallowed and turned away from Matt’s desk. Coffee, he reminded himself and headed for the cramped closet that constituted the break room.
Matt was one of only two people in the Bureau, other than Victor, whom Martin had told about himself. Ed O’Malley – his S.A. – suspected, and more people speculated why a good-looking, eminently available guy like Martin Fitzgerald wasn’t married or dating, but no one knew, except for Matt. He’d earned that much, and Martin, who never told anybody anything so personal, had felt compelled to pay in kind.
It had helped, though he’d never really thanked Matt for it right out, helped relieve some of the crushing, terrible loneliness that so constantly threatened to overwhelm him.
Quit thinking about that, goddammit.
He poured a cup automatically and added sugar. Would have preferred it black, but he didn’t trust coffee brewed by other people to be strong enough and the coffee they had – the bulk-purchase stuff that the coffee people had the nerve to call ‘finest Colombian roast’ – tasted like burnt battery acid. The only person he’d ever known in the Bureau who brewed coffee the way he liked it was Danny, and there’d been a time – once, long ago – when he’d, in a brief fit of foolishness, wondered if maybe that meant something.
“Thinking dark thoughts?” a familiar, though unexpected voice, asked from behind his right shoulder.
Tired and still on edge from the night and Victor and Danny, Martin started violently and almost spilled the scalding coffee all over his hand; it slopped over the rim and landed on the counter instead. Whipped around and had to gape at the person standing there, smile warm and welcome on a grey day.
“I thought I might find you here,” Vivian Johnson said, laughing as she handed him a paper towel.
“What made you think that?” he asked, suppressing a grin. He swiped at the coffee on the counter and tossed the soggy towel into the trash.
“Call it a hunch.” Viv pursued him back to his desk, and he could feel her smile prickling between his shoulder blades. He’d always hated people laughing at him – too much like being vulnerable – but with Viv, it had always been okay. And Danny. Merciless, the two of them.
He collapsed into his chair and swung around, watched as she perched on the corner of his desk and took a moment to study her as she situated herself. A little thinner than the last time he’d seen her – before Christmas; their schedules kept them busy – but still with that glint in her dark eyes and that knowing tilt to her head that told him she was doing the same thing to him, cataloging changes.
“I’m not dying yet,” she told him dryly, frowning at his inspection.
“And I’m not dead.”
“Yeah, well.” Viv gave him another Look. “Now that you mention it, you look like you just rejoined the living.”
“Rough night,” he said, tone clipped and he hoped she’d take the hint and let it drop.
Not that Vivian ever did. He couldn’t ever remember her leaving Jack alone whenever she’d decided that he needed to tell her something, and if Jack Malone wasn’t able to put Viv off, Martin Fitzgerald certainly wasn’t capable of it. She’d probably heard confessions of all their deepest darkest secrets, and she hadn’t betrayed any of them.
She’d kept her own, though, and almost too well.
“You should talk to Carolin,” Vivian told him (easily the tenth time she’d said this, but the first time in person – he’d been chewed out on the phone about his reluctance to speak to anybody about what he’d been through), “... if you’re not going to talk to Danny about it.”
“Danny’s got his own problems,” Martin muttered, swiveling back to his computer monitor. “And I have talked to Carolin.”
Viv was Looking at him again, a tangible weight pressing down on him, its own sort of silent interrogation. He fought the urge to shrug uncomfortably, and settled for glaring at her out of the corner of his eye. Unperturbed, she settled herself more comfortably and folded her arms over her chest.
“Have you talked to Jack or Sam lately?” he asked. He’d had a Christmas card from Sam and an email from Jack sometime in January.
“Jack’s doing fine; I talked to him last week. The girls are doing well, don’t know if he’s too crazy about St. Louis, but at least they’re closer. Sam’s up for a supervisory position in Boston... She’ll have to crack the door to the old boys’ club, though, to get it.” Small hint of bitterness, there; Viv herself had never been promoted to supervisory agent, kept from it by Jack’s vacillating (something Martin knew she’d never really forgiven him for doing, though she’d put it behind her) and her own illness, and ‘the old boys’ club.’
“She’ll break the door down,” he commented absently. Sam still made him uncomfortable; he never really liked having his past mistakes brought up by other people, either, even though Vivian hadn’t so much as breathed a syllable about his and Sam’s weird, abortive relationship.
“So she will,” Viv agreed. “They’re both worried about you, you know. We all are, sweetie.”
With an effort, Martin kept back the surge of warmth that rose up at her words. Sweetie; she’d called him that a couple times before, once when she’d kindly refused his offer to find a cardiologist for a second opinion. It had been weird, in a good way that he couldn’t quite qualify or even understand, like being someone’s kid again at thirty-one.
And trust Vivian to play on that, was the sudden, cynical thought. He wanted to summon up anything – indignation, anger, anything except the sudden rush of guilt and gratitude – but couldn’t, could only stare at his monitor as his computer ran through its start-up routine.
“Viv,” he said, helplessly, when she wouldn’t say anything and the silence became unendurable.
“Don’t Viv me.”
He had to look at her now, and he saw she was fairly close to being angry – her lips thinned and her brows drawn down in something like a scowl. Disappointment in her eyes, and that stung, unexpectedly, worse than her anger ever would, stronger than the anger he’d been trying to hold on to to defend himself. Like disappointing Jack, and even worse than that, maybe.
“You need to talk to Danny, Martin,” she said, voice gentler now that she had his attention. He wondered briefly how she did it – must be a mother thing, or maybe just a Viv thing, making him ashamed of snapping and acting like a five-year-old. She had probably made Jack feel the same way. “Even if you’re going to blow off Carolin, you really need to talk to him. Get things figured out.”
Viv was the second person in the Bureau who knew, and the only person – other than Matt, who had worked things out for himself in New York – who knew how he felt about Danny. She’d probably figured him out ages ago, before she’d left to take up her instructorship in Quantico, but hadn’t said anything until he’d confessed it to her a month after his own move to D.C.
Oh, sweetie, good for you. She’d said that, proud as a parent whose kid has figured out, all unexpectedly, something difficult or hidden, thought to be beyond him.
“He’s busy.” Martin fiddled with the mouse, watching the cursor loop crazily around the screen. “God knows I took up enough of his time when I was up there – he’s probably still playing catch-up. His boss sounds like a slave driver.”
“Oh, Martin.” Viv sighed, a resigned sigh not unlike Victor’s. “If you think he resents that...”
He shrugged, letting Viv make what she would of that. Far better for her to think him misguided than what he really was – terrified of seeing Danny again. Memories of their few nights together threaded through his awareness, thin veins of fire through his agitation and unhappiness, and God, it was probably not a good idea to be thinking about those hours with Viv so close, but the images were insistent.
The only way he’d been able to get through those nights had been by taking charge, and he’d known Danny had wanted what they’d found together as much as he did because he’d given up that control to Martin, unhesitatingly. And that had reassured him, keeping some of his defenses up... But Danny had still found a way in, and Martin had found himself promising things, things he didn’t know if he could ever give, but desperately wanted to.
I'm not going anywhere, Fitz. Danny had said that, and Martin had believed it. Still did, and he wanted so much to say that he didn't want to leave, didn't want to go anywhere, either. He, Martin Fitzgerald, who’d been through four passports by his twenty-fifth birthday, wanted to say that. And he might have left New York for a bit, but he could feel Danny drawing him inexorably back, like gravity, and his promise hadn’t been so much a promise as an acknowledgment of some immutable physical law.
“If you think he resents that, you’re an idiot,” Vivian concluded, frowning at him. A slight laugh softened the criticism, but not by much. “You were always the smart one, Martin.”
“I’ll see him when I go to New York on Monday,” he told her after a moment, when he had regained himself. “I promise.” Dinner. He’d call Danny for dinner; more than likely he could endure a couple hours in Danny’s company without falling apart. And that would give Danny only two hours to yell at him for not calling or writing, or anything.
“You’d better.” Viv sighed and brushed at some imaginary lint on her sleeve. She’d always been tidy, self-possessed and together in a way that always made Martin rough at the edges and somehow not as controlled as he would have liked. “With Reggie off at school, I’m officially on mothering leave.” An arch look again that made him flush.
“How’s he doing, by the way?”
“Just fine; he thinks he wants to be an engineer, but I think the math’s starting to be too much for him.” She paused. “And don’t even try to change the subject, Fitzgerald.”
“Me?” He gave her his best innocent look, eyes wide and guileless. Viv snorted.
“If you’re not going to listen to me or the shrink, you should at least listen to Danny,” she told him sternly. “You owe him that much.”
“How’d they let you start corrupting the next generation of agents, anyway?” Martin asked.
“Must be my charm,” she said airily, patting him on the shoulder. “There are worse fates than instructing at Quantico – like babysitting you and Danny all the time.” Three choices for Viv: retirement, an instructorship, or riding a desk for the rest of her career. She’d chosen the second, the least of three evils.
“So what’re you doing here anyway, besides bothering me?”
“I needed to drop some things off, some recommendations for new assignments,” Viv replied, “and invite you to lunch, if you wanted. Or whatever you try to pass off as lunch.”
“Sounds good,” he told her, “but only if you stay off my case.” Repressive now, and faintly warning.
If she heard it, she gave no indication. Viv never took even Jack’s cease-and-desist mandates seriously; he’d been treated to the same tolerant smile and persistent questioning as the rest of them, fearsome scowls and supervisory agent status aside. And now, Viv was doing the same –smiling her trademark smile and sliding off Martin’s desk, straightening her jacket needlessly as she did so..
“Meet you at the usual place?” She meant Mancino’s, a small Italian cafe not far from the federal center.
“Yup. One o’clock okay?”
She glanced in the general direction of his midriff. “Your stomach going to last that long?”
“Maybe.”
She laughed again, and he had to grin. Viv’s laugh reminded him, in a sad and distant way, of his aunt – the kind of warm, gentle laugh he could only vaguely remember hearing from his own mother, filled with kind amusement.
“I’ll see you later, then,” Viv said. Touched him briefly on the shoulder, offered him one last, reproving look, and left, her boots clicking efficiently on the tiled floor. Short, brisk, efficient, that was Viv. Intolerant of bullshit, stalking right to the heart of the matter.
Martin watched her go until the last door swung shut behind her and the echoes of her footsteps faded, then swung back to his computer. Fiddling with the mouse cleared his screen saver – a panoramic shot of the Himalayas, Everest in the far distance, and he really needed to go back some time, to the clarity of thin mountain air – and revealed, depressingly, a pile of emails waiting in his inbox.
He flipped through most of them, disengaging his mind as he looked over notices for new protocols, a pair of insistent emails from Dwyer... Then he saw Peter Dempsey’s name, paused and stared at it a moment.
“Christ, Martin, I’m so sorry.” Pete was short and skinny, pale with the paleness that came from a life spent almost wholly in New York, but his voice was unexpectedly deep, like someone had fiddled with the bass tuner in his vocal cords. “I swear to God we didn’t know what Chris was doing.”
“Yeah,” Martin said, not really comprehending the apology; they were words washing over him, meaningless. One room away Victor was conducting the initial interrogation; he’d wanted to be there, wanted to hear exactly what Silverman had tried to do to him, but Victor had asked (asked, not ordered) him to talk to Pete instead, at least at first.
He knew why – the cold logic that had kept him going forward for the entire morning, after he and Danny had pulled themselves from bed, was cracking under the pressure of the realization that a fellow agent, a friend almost, had conspired against him. Against him and all of them – Matt, Angela, Pete who was watching him anxiously now.
“God.” He closed his eyes against the sudden rush of fear, the memory of the dark and the cold. He rode out the worst of it, breathing air he had to convince himself was the dry and stale air of central heating, and when he opened his eyes, his office was an office again.
“Get it together, Fitzgerald,” he muttered to himself, brushing a hand across his eyes and forcing himself to refocus on his computer.
Pete’s email was brief, depressingly formal – he’d used to slip in sly comments and observations, but those were gone –; Christopher Silverman’s wife was asking for government protection for herself and her children. Martin remembered her from six months or so back – Whitney Silverman, tall and severe-looking, except for an unexpected warmth in her eyes when she’d looked at Chris across the room at the New York office Christmas party. Austin and Mandy, their two kids, and all four of them were as close to the all-American family as you could get.
She claims that she’s being followed by a man, Pete had written, mid-forties, tall and heavyset, with a mustache; she saw him once while taking the kids to school, and again at the store that weekend. Have put surveillance on her & the kids for the time being.
Martin shook his head as he hit the ‘reply’ button. You think you know a person. He began to type, quick recommendations to get a more detailed statement from Whitney. Silverman’s arrest was now a matter of public knowledge, although the details – mostly those concerning the why and the how – remained nebulous to all but the few involved in the investigation.
Still... The Tigers would have reason to fear Silverman turning over and selling them out. He already had, though no one knew to what extent he’d revealed the workings of their organization – not many names, but he’d known a good deal about weapons trafficking and the network of explosives dealers whose goods eventually made their way into Tigers compounds. But the possibility of Silverman revealing any or all of this would be enough to provoke action, and threatening Christopher’s family could certainly shut him up.
It might even be reprisal. You’re dumb enough to get arrested. Look what happens to stupid people in our organization.
His fingers flew over his keyboard as he completed the email to Pete, then pulled up the interrogation notes from Matt’s last go-round with Oliver White. They’d picked him up at a cousin’s apartment in Queens the day after Silverman’s arrest, and he’d said something that was tickling at Martin’s memory. And as Martin filtered through the transcription, everything fell away except the words and the theories – Viv, the fear, the nightmares, Victor, Danny, the darkness, all of it.
-tbc-
Post-fic notes:
* = I had to research this, as I know pretty much nothing about college football, other than that a friend of mine is a huge fan of the U Nebraska team.
I've kind of drawn my own fanon from some of the mentions of Martin's nomadic past--hitchhiking across the country, the incongruity of his backpack, his references to leaving a place to start over elsewhere. I kind of like the idea of Martin as a world traveler, if only because it would piss Victor off, having a son who won't settle down and behave himself.
Speaking of traveling, next time: Martin goes to New York. This chapter is the companion chapter for ALTC 10; subsequent chapters will take place after the end of ALTC.
Recs and more fic eventually, as soon as I get my modem to behave itself. Now, if you will excuse me, it's been a rough week and I'm off to bed. Good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.
By: HF
Email: aesc36 @gmail.com
Pairing: Danny/Martin
Rating/Warnings: PG13/Rish; language, maybe some smut, violence, angst, etc.
Disclaimer: Without a Trace belongs to Jerry Bruckheimer, CBS, and very likely many other people.
Advertisements: Sequel/companion to A Long Time Coming, set during and after the events of ALTC 10.
Notes: Time for some Vivian. Why, you ask? Because Vivian rules. And I love her relationship with Martin.
CHAPTER TWO
The building had the strange, subdued weekend buzz – activity brisk but reluctant, a concession of free time to the demands of the world. Martin wound his way unnoticed through the honeycomb of offices and cubicles to his own department, still half-wanting to follow the signs to Missing Persons.
No, he was Counter Terrorism now, and that was a big step up in a world still dominated by crudely-formed fears and myriad dangers, where missing kids and single moms faded beside fears of the next suicide bombing or 9/11. Necessary work, important work, and he’d told himself that almost every day since he’d been handed his reassignment. Not from Jack – though he wondered if Jack would have fought to keep him, if he’d still been their supervisory agent, if there’d still been a team after Danny and Viv had gone – but from his new S.A., who hadn’t said anything about who Martin’s father was, but Martin had still seen the accusation, silent and bitter, in his eyes.
Martin dropped his gym bag and backpack – he still carried it, still garnered strange looks from his fellow agents, and still didn’t care – at his desk and continued to the coffee room. Someone had already started a pot, and one cup gulped down during that terrible conversation with Victor was not going to get him through the next hour, much less the rest of the morning.
He walked by the Nebraska Cornhuskers shrine that was Matt’s desk but paused a few steps past it and turned back. A sea of orange and navy blue covered almost every available surface, but Martin’s eye skipped by the memorabilia and fastened on the newspaper clipping taped to the corner of the computer monitor.
The newsprint photograph had faded out and was ragged under the protective cover of scotch tape and plastic. It had been there since Matt had joined the team – a year before Martin did, and Martin knew that because Matt had told him. No one else even glanced at the picture, or mentioned it, whether as a tragedy or something to avoid discussing.
Matt had told him a lot of things, including whose picture that was: his older brother David, dead almost fifteen ago now. A lot like Matt, with wild black hair and dark, dark eyes, tall but not as imposing (Matt had played defense for the Cornhuskers – second line in ’95 – and it still showed), grin so much like Matt’s that it was uncanny.
Gay, unlike Matt, and very dead now, killed by three drunk freshmen. He’d been a senior when that photo had been snapped, and Matt in his sophomore year, arm wrapped around Matt’s neck, Sun Devil Stadium behind them, two brothers celebrating Nebraska’s huge win over Florida in the national championship.* Two weeks later he’d been reported missing; two days after that they’d found his body, face beaten almost beyond recognition, both hands broken.
A rib had punctured his lung. The doctors had said he’d died from that, from suffocation.
“The police said it was just three drunk guys – frat pledges who got out of control,” Matt had told Martin. “It wasn’t that at all.”
Martin swallowed and turned away from Matt’s desk. Coffee, he reminded himself and headed for the cramped closet that constituted the break room.
Matt was one of only two people in the Bureau, other than Victor, whom Martin had told about himself. Ed O’Malley – his S.A. – suspected, and more people speculated why a good-looking, eminently available guy like Martin Fitzgerald wasn’t married or dating, but no one knew, except for Matt. He’d earned that much, and Martin, who never told anybody anything so personal, had felt compelled to pay in kind.
It had helped, though he’d never really thanked Matt for it right out, helped relieve some of the crushing, terrible loneliness that so constantly threatened to overwhelm him.
Quit thinking about that, goddammit.
He poured a cup automatically and added sugar. Would have preferred it black, but he didn’t trust coffee brewed by other people to be strong enough and the coffee they had – the bulk-purchase stuff that the coffee people had the nerve to call ‘finest Colombian roast’ – tasted like burnt battery acid. The only person he’d ever known in the Bureau who brewed coffee the way he liked it was Danny, and there’d been a time – once, long ago – when he’d, in a brief fit of foolishness, wondered if maybe that meant something.
“Thinking dark thoughts?” a familiar, though unexpected voice, asked from behind his right shoulder.
Tired and still on edge from the night and Victor and Danny, Martin started violently and almost spilled the scalding coffee all over his hand; it slopped over the rim and landed on the counter instead. Whipped around and had to gape at the person standing there, smile warm and welcome on a grey day.
“I thought I might find you here,” Vivian Johnson said, laughing as she handed him a paper towel.
“What made you think that?” he asked, suppressing a grin. He swiped at the coffee on the counter and tossed the soggy towel into the trash.
“Call it a hunch.” Viv pursued him back to his desk, and he could feel her smile prickling between his shoulder blades. He’d always hated people laughing at him – too much like being vulnerable – but with Viv, it had always been okay. And Danny. Merciless, the two of them.
He collapsed into his chair and swung around, watched as she perched on the corner of his desk and took a moment to study her as she situated herself. A little thinner than the last time he’d seen her – before Christmas; their schedules kept them busy – but still with that glint in her dark eyes and that knowing tilt to her head that told him she was doing the same thing to him, cataloging changes.
“I’m not dying yet,” she told him dryly, frowning at his inspection.
“And I’m not dead.”
“Yeah, well.” Viv gave him another Look. “Now that you mention it, you look like you just rejoined the living.”
“Rough night,” he said, tone clipped and he hoped she’d take the hint and let it drop.
Not that Vivian ever did. He couldn’t ever remember her leaving Jack alone whenever she’d decided that he needed to tell her something, and if Jack Malone wasn’t able to put Viv off, Martin Fitzgerald certainly wasn’t capable of it. She’d probably heard confessions of all their deepest darkest secrets, and she hadn’t betrayed any of them.
She’d kept her own, though, and almost too well.
“You should talk to Carolin,” Vivian told him (easily the tenth time she’d said this, but the first time in person – he’d been chewed out on the phone about his reluctance to speak to anybody about what he’d been through), “... if you’re not going to talk to Danny about it.”
“Danny’s got his own problems,” Martin muttered, swiveling back to his computer monitor. “And I have talked to Carolin.”
Viv was Looking at him again, a tangible weight pressing down on him, its own sort of silent interrogation. He fought the urge to shrug uncomfortably, and settled for glaring at her out of the corner of his eye. Unperturbed, she settled herself more comfortably and folded her arms over her chest.
“Have you talked to Jack or Sam lately?” he asked. He’d had a Christmas card from Sam and an email from Jack sometime in January.
“Jack’s doing fine; I talked to him last week. The girls are doing well, don’t know if he’s too crazy about St. Louis, but at least they’re closer. Sam’s up for a supervisory position in Boston... She’ll have to crack the door to the old boys’ club, though, to get it.” Small hint of bitterness, there; Viv herself had never been promoted to supervisory agent, kept from it by Jack’s vacillating (something Martin knew she’d never really forgiven him for doing, though she’d put it behind her) and her own illness, and ‘the old boys’ club.’
“She’ll break the door down,” he commented absently. Sam still made him uncomfortable; he never really liked having his past mistakes brought up by other people, either, even though Vivian hadn’t so much as breathed a syllable about his and Sam’s weird, abortive relationship.
“So she will,” Viv agreed. “They’re both worried about you, you know. We all are, sweetie.”
With an effort, Martin kept back the surge of warmth that rose up at her words. Sweetie; she’d called him that a couple times before, once when she’d kindly refused his offer to find a cardiologist for a second opinion. It had been weird, in a good way that he couldn’t quite qualify or even understand, like being someone’s kid again at thirty-one.
And trust Vivian to play on that, was the sudden, cynical thought. He wanted to summon up anything – indignation, anger, anything except the sudden rush of guilt and gratitude – but couldn’t, could only stare at his monitor as his computer ran through its start-up routine.
“Viv,” he said, helplessly, when she wouldn’t say anything and the silence became unendurable.
“Don’t Viv me.”
He had to look at her now, and he saw she was fairly close to being angry – her lips thinned and her brows drawn down in something like a scowl. Disappointment in her eyes, and that stung, unexpectedly, worse than her anger ever would, stronger than the anger he’d been trying to hold on to to defend himself. Like disappointing Jack, and even worse than that, maybe.
“You need to talk to Danny, Martin,” she said, voice gentler now that she had his attention. He wondered briefly how she did it – must be a mother thing, or maybe just a Viv thing, making him ashamed of snapping and acting like a five-year-old. She had probably made Jack feel the same way. “Even if you’re going to blow off Carolin, you really need to talk to him. Get things figured out.”
Viv was the second person in the Bureau who knew, and the only person – other than Matt, who had worked things out for himself in New York – who knew how he felt about Danny. She’d probably figured him out ages ago, before she’d left to take up her instructorship in Quantico, but hadn’t said anything until he’d confessed it to her a month after his own move to D.C.
Oh, sweetie, good for you. She’d said that, proud as a parent whose kid has figured out, all unexpectedly, something difficult or hidden, thought to be beyond him.
“He’s busy.” Martin fiddled with the mouse, watching the cursor loop crazily around the screen. “God knows I took up enough of his time when I was up there – he’s probably still playing catch-up. His boss sounds like a slave driver.”
“Oh, Martin.” Viv sighed, a resigned sigh not unlike Victor’s. “If you think he resents that...”
He shrugged, letting Viv make what she would of that. Far better for her to think him misguided than what he really was – terrified of seeing Danny again. Memories of their few nights together threaded through his awareness, thin veins of fire through his agitation and unhappiness, and God, it was probably not a good idea to be thinking about those hours with Viv so close, but the images were insistent.
The only way he’d been able to get through those nights had been by taking charge, and he’d known Danny had wanted what they’d found together as much as he did because he’d given up that control to Martin, unhesitatingly. And that had reassured him, keeping some of his defenses up... But Danny had still found a way in, and Martin had found himself promising things, things he didn’t know if he could ever give, but desperately wanted to.
I'm not going anywhere, Fitz. Danny had said that, and Martin had believed it. Still did, and he wanted so much to say that he didn't want to leave, didn't want to go anywhere, either. He, Martin Fitzgerald, who’d been through four passports by his twenty-fifth birthday, wanted to say that. And he might have left New York for a bit, but he could feel Danny drawing him inexorably back, like gravity, and his promise hadn’t been so much a promise as an acknowledgment of some immutable physical law.
“If you think he resents that, you’re an idiot,” Vivian concluded, frowning at him. A slight laugh softened the criticism, but not by much. “You were always the smart one, Martin.”
“I’ll see him when I go to New York on Monday,” he told her after a moment, when he had regained himself. “I promise.” Dinner. He’d call Danny for dinner; more than likely he could endure a couple hours in Danny’s company without falling apart. And that would give Danny only two hours to yell at him for not calling or writing, or anything.
“You’d better.” Viv sighed and brushed at some imaginary lint on her sleeve. She’d always been tidy, self-possessed and together in a way that always made Martin rough at the edges and somehow not as controlled as he would have liked. “With Reggie off at school, I’m officially on mothering leave.” An arch look again that made him flush.
“How’s he doing, by the way?”
“Just fine; he thinks he wants to be an engineer, but I think the math’s starting to be too much for him.” She paused. “And don’t even try to change the subject, Fitzgerald.”
“Me?” He gave her his best innocent look, eyes wide and guileless. Viv snorted.
“If you’re not going to listen to me or the shrink, you should at least listen to Danny,” she told him sternly. “You owe him that much.”
“How’d they let you start corrupting the next generation of agents, anyway?” Martin asked.
“Must be my charm,” she said airily, patting him on the shoulder. “There are worse fates than instructing at Quantico – like babysitting you and Danny all the time.” Three choices for Viv: retirement, an instructorship, or riding a desk for the rest of her career. She’d chosen the second, the least of three evils.
“So what’re you doing here anyway, besides bothering me?”
“I needed to drop some things off, some recommendations for new assignments,” Viv replied, “and invite you to lunch, if you wanted. Or whatever you try to pass off as lunch.”
“Sounds good,” he told her, “but only if you stay off my case.” Repressive now, and faintly warning.
If she heard it, she gave no indication. Viv never took even Jack’s cease-and-desist mandates seriously; he’d been treated to the same tolerant smile and persistent questioning as the rest of them, fearsome scowls and supervisory agent status aside. And now, Viv was doing the same –smiling her trademark smile and sliding off Martin’s desk, straightening her jacket needlessly as she did so..
“Meet you at the usual place?” She meant Mancino’s, a small Italian cafe not far from the federal center.
“Yup. One o’clock okay?”
She glanced in the general direction of his midriff. “Your stomach going to last that long?”
“Maybe.”
She laughed again, and he had to grin. Viv’s laugh reminded him, in a sad and distant way, of his aunt – the kind of warm, gentle laugh he could only vaguely remember hearing from his own mother, filled with kind amusement.
“I’ll see you later, then,” Viv said. Touched him briefly on the shoulder, offered him one last, reproving look, and left, her boots clicking efficiently on the tiled floor. Short, brisk, efficient, that was Viv. Intolerant of bullshit, stalking right to the heart of the matter.
Martin watched her go until the last door swung shut behind her and the echoes of her footsteps faded, then swung back to his computer. Fiddling with the mouse cleared his screen saver – a panoramic shot of the Himalayas, Everest in the far distance, and he really needed to go back some time, to the clarity of thin mountain air – and revealed, depressingly, a pile of emails waiting in his inbox.
He flipped through most of them, disengaging his mind as he looked over notices for new protocols, a pair of insistent emails from Dwyer... Then he saw Peter Dempsey’s name, paused and stared at it a moment.
“Christ, Martin, I’m so sorry.” Pete was short and skinny, pale with the paleness that came from a life spent almost wholly in New York, but his voice was unexpectedly deep, like someone had fiddled with the bass tuner in his vocal cords. “I swear to God we didn’t know what Chris was doing.”
“Yeah,” Martin said, not really comprehending the apology; they were words washing over him, meaningless. One room away Victor was conducting the initial interrogation; he’d wanted to be there, wanted to hear exactly what Silverman had tried to do to him, but Victor had asked (asked, not ordered) him to talk to Pete instead, at least at first.
He knew why – the cold logic that had kept him going forward for the entire morning, after he and Danny had pulled themselves from bed, was cracking under the pressure of the realization that a fellow agent, a friend almost, had conspired against him. Against him and all of them – Matt, Angela, Pete who was watching him anxiously now.
“God.” He closed his eyes against the sudden rush of fear, the memory of the dark and the cold. He rode out the worst of it, breathing air he had to convince himself was the dry and stale air of central heating, and when he opened his eyes, his office was an office again.
“Get it together, Fitzgerald,” he muttered to himself, brushing a hand across his eyes and forcing himself to refocus on his computer.
Pete’s email was brief, depressingly formal – he’d used to slip in sly comments and observations, but those were gone –; Christopher Silverman’s wife was asking for government protection for herself and her children. Martin remembered her from six months or so back – Whitney Silverman, tall and severe-looking, except for an unexpected warmth in her eyes when she’d looked at Chris across the room at the New York office Christmas party. Austin and Mandy, their two kids, and all four of them were as close to the all-American family as you could get.
She claims that she’s being followed by a man, Pete had written, mid-forties, tall and heavyset, with a mustache; she saw him once while taking the kids to school, and again at the store that weekend. Have put surveillance on her & the kids for the time being.
Martin shook his head as he hit the ‘reply’ button. You think you know a person. He began to type, quick recommendations to get a more detailed statement from Whitney. Silverman’s arrest was now a matter of public knowledge, although the details – mostly those concerning the why and the how – remained nebulous to all but the few involved in the investigation.
Still... The Tigers would have reason to fear Silverman turning over and selling them out. He already had, though no one knew to what extent he’d revealed the workings of their organization – not many names, but he’d known a good deal about weapons trafficking and the network of explosives dealers whose goods eventually made their way into Tigers compounds. But the possibility of Silverman revealing any or all of this would be enough to provoke action, and threatening Christopher’s family could certainly shut him up.
It might even be reprisal. You’re dumb enough to get arrested. Look what happens to stupid people in our organization.
His fingers flew over his keyboard as he completed the email to Pete, then pulled up the interrogation notes from Matt’s last go-round with Oliver White. They’d picked him up at a cousin’s apartment in Queens the day after Silverman’s arrest, and he’d said something that was tickling at Martin’s memory. And as Martin filtered through the transcription, everything fell away except the words and the theories – Viv, the fear, the nightmares, Victor, Danny, the darkness, all of it.
-tbc-
Post-fic notes:
* = I had to research this, as I know pretty much nothing about college football, other than that a friend of mine is a huge fan of the U Nebraska team.
I've kind of drawn my own fanon from some of the mentions of Martin's nomadic past--hitchhiking across the country, the incongruity of his backpack, his references to leaving a place to start over elsewhere. I kind of like the idea of Martin as a world traveler, if only because it would piss Victor off, having a son who won't settle down and behave himself.
Speaking of traveling, next time: Martin goes to New York. This chapter is the companion chapter for ALTC 10; subsequent chapters will take place after the end of ALTC.
Recs and more fic eventually, as soon as I get my modem to behave itself. Now, if you will excuse me, it's been a rough week and I'm off to bed. Good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.
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I really like the idea of tricking Martin. Maybe Danny should do it more often. :-D
If the flirting isn't going to work, then Danny definitely needs to bring in the big guns *g*