Drache-Königin (edincoat) wrote in makrothumia, @ 2009-01-11 04:25:00 |
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Entry tags: | ff-fandom: without a trace, ff-length: 1 to 5k, ff-rating: frt, ff-type: slash |
wat/ rolling with the punches
Title: rolling with the punches
Author: Kjata (makrothumia)
Characters & Pairings: slight Martin Fitzgerald & Danny Taylor
Fandom: Without A Trace
Rating & Warnings: PG-13 for language and sexual situations (nothing overly descriptive, however).
Theme & Community: 18. Rolling With The Punches [Gallows], Warped Tour 07 Compilation, album_mix
Words: ~2300
Disclaimer: Characters, Setting, and Original Content that this fic is based upon belongs to those who own them - Namely, anyone but me.
Original Post: here
So.
This is what happens when this sort of thing happens, and all goes to hell just like it should. There are reasons for such a consequence, and even though he doesn't want to contemplate it, think about it, acknowledge it, he needs to and eventually does, with all the ill humour he can afford.
Because this is what happens when he does everything he can, and still doesn't get anywhere he wants to go. He cannot keep his job free from scorn, cannot keep those fabled relationships for longer than a moment, cannot keep a friend to save him. The wheel of karma turns and spins, it rotates and wobbles a little, and he's left in the centre doing his best to stand up straight and feeling like he might just throw up all over fate and its little friends too.
Danny sits with his back to him, focusing on harsh light from a computer screen and tiny letters that have long ago ceased to make sense to him. He could try to look again, see if the U and the Y are still making out in front of the other vowels like the exhibitionists they are, with the other letters doing other odd (and most likely lewd) things around them, but he doesn't want to. Doesn't want to wonder if maybe he should relapse with the pills, just to make the damn pixels stay still while he finishes his job and wanders back to a sterile apartment that he doesn't feel the slightest bit welcome in.
So.
His friend Danny is three feet away from him, back turned and head bowed as he focuses, and he wants to roll over in his chair as quick as his feet can push him and whack the man upside his head. With a rolled up newspaper, with his half-empty mug of stone-cold coffee, with the palm of his hand. Just wants to jet over there, like a fucking thunderbolt, and use a well-timed bit of violence to insert some activity into his stale life.
His feet find purchase on the thinning carpet, he lets the muscles in his legs tense to ready for quick movement (his hip protests mildly at this, but it's a token protest, so who cares what that part of his body says?), and relaxes his arms so he can hit pummel slap grapple sink into the man as soon as he reaches him.
Jack's door opens with a loud click, everyone but him jumps and turns to see what the bastard boss wants, and he holds for just a second, looking straight at a Danny looking most decidedly not at him. Breathes in and out, then turns to look at the fallen golden child of the Missing Persons Unit ten seconds too late.
He probably would have been fired if he had done it, anyway.
Somewhere in Mississippi there is a mother waiting for her daughter to return to her, anticipating the moment when her lovely seventeen year old will walk back into that door with a smile on her face and forgiveness in her heart. Somewhere in the southern United States is an open door for this corpse, and he wonders who will draw the short straw this time and have to call that hopeful mother and tell her that she's wasted her time, her life, her breath on a wasted case of hooker scams client and receives bullet in head as result.
This was the case, as it should have been, but he can't help the impatience and the loathing and the sheer disgust towards his job and the people they search for and the people around him and he's turning into his father isn't he? Getting contemptuous towards the human race has always been the older Fitzgerald's job, not his, and he is suddenly aware of what he will be like in ten years.
Lurking around Missing Persons, even though he probably promoted years ago. Always holding a cane and a cup of coffee in his hand, though by then he won’t need either. Running up to whack his old partner with a blunt object and then running away before he gets shot in return.
It is enough to make him swallow a note of delirious laughter, and get Danny to look at him suspiciously. Always with the suspicions, Special Agent Taylor. Never you mind that they are standing over the corpse of their person in a rotting warehouse, never you mind that this is supposed to be a sombre occasion and all weird sounds should be dismissed as rookies seeing their first body that is leaking and not breathing at all.
Never you mind that Martin is as far from a rookie as one can get at this point, and that he can feel the corners of his lips twitch upwards.
He coughs to hide another note, this one a bit too shrill to cover with a faux bad immune system, but it is all he has, so he works with it.
So.
At some moment in time, between the journey from crime scene to office, Danny decided to speak to him for the first time in three weeks. This is such a momentous moment, that he decides when he gets home that he will mark it on his calendar using a deep red marker.
'DANNY BREAKS SILENCE, TRIES TO SALVAGE THINGS, SUPERGLUE USED. BADLY.'
Too long for a tiny square of a day, but he's willing to spread it around the entire month, if it will amuse him.
"What was that earlier?"
He looks up at the taller man, taller because he himself is sitting and Mister Cold Shoulder is leaning against the edge of his desk a scant inch away from him. He looks up at Danny and smiles that smile of his, the one that doesn't come close to reaching his eyes and only Danny will know it because he sees that sort of thing, and shrugs.
"I have no idea what you're talking about, man."
Danny's mouth works for a moment, like he expected something else as a reply and was already giving a response to something unsaid, then stops and narrows his eyes and crosses his arms and looks like a petulant five year old.
"Don't give me that, Martin. You looked like you wanted to hit me earlier, I want to know why."
Ah. So he did see, even though he was making sure he was very much not looking at Martin the entire time he was turned away from his desk. He wonders if maybe Danny noticed other looks, perhaps the speak or I'm going to pour scalding hot coffee over your head look, but then dismisses the thought. If he did, he obviously ignored it, and he can always reuse that one (that look) later when enough time has passed that no one will notice that his mental musings are set on repeat. And perhaps shuffle.
He raises his eyebrows to show surprise, because isn't that what surprise is? Raised eyebrows? And says, "I did? When was this, exactly?"
Danny still sulks, but now he wants to modify his original assumption of what he looked like. He doesn't look like a petulant five year old, he looks like a prissy teenage girl, one who got her period for the first time years after all the other girls, and is ticked off that all the fuss was for blood and snickers from the other children in the class. He thinks that maybe, just maybe he will add to his notation on the calendar 'ALSO: FORGETS MIDOL AT HOME AND IS PISSED AT FRIENDS WHO GIVE HIM DIRTY LOOKS COS HE'S BEEN IGNORING THEM FOR THE PAST THREE-FUCKING-WEEKS.'
No maybes, he'll add it, then bring it in to work to show everyone. And maybe he'll pick up some Midol and drop it into Danny's coffee right in front of him, telling him that he needs a diuretic cos there is some serious bloating going on around his head.
Danny glares at him in that teenage Goth girl pissy way, and sneers a bit. "Right before we got the case in, Martin. Don't think I didn't notice."
Ah. So now he thinks that he is stupid. Going to add 'STUPIDHEAD' to notation. Right there at the end. Underline it, even.
"Danny, if I hit you every time I wanted to, you'd be black and blue twenty-four-seven."
And Jack bellows from his lair, so there the conversation ends.
He's sitting on his sofa watching the playoffs of some sport on the television, not really paying attention because the glaring letters on his calendar are amusing him too much to let his attention wander towards anything normal when there is a firm knock on the front door to his flat.
It takes a moment to get to his feet, cranky hip and all, so as he totters to the door the banging escalates to a pounding and Danny's voice is higher than normal demanding to be let in or so help him God he will break down the door and then shoot him.
He puts a mild smile on, and opens the door wide so that he won't have to move when his partner storms in. And storm in he does, cartoon cloud and everything hovering over his head as he keeps his head low so that he can look at Martin right in the eyes from under his brow and look very evil while doing it.
He closes the door gently, and leans against it as nonchalantly as he can manage. Damn rain, damn ambushing mercenary, damn guns in the first place.
Danny holds the menacing look for another moment, then probably gets tired, and stops. Stands up straight so that he can look down at him just a bit, crosses his arms, and glares.
"You want to hit me a lot?"
There is a time when every man needs to take a stand, and now is not one of those times. Unfortunately, the words are out of his mouth before he can bother to stop them. It's like his self-control is moseying after him, not really catching up, but close enough to whine when something bad happens that it was supposed to prevent by doing the job it is paid for.
"More than you will ever know."
A gleam sparks in Danny's eyes, and his self-control whimpers a few feet from where it needs to be to keep this from happening. What he should really do it open the door, invite his partner out of his flat firmly, then burn the calendar before he really does take it into work and tack it onto Jack's office door.
Instead he just stands there as Danny crosses the distance between them with one big step and pins him against the door, body along body, head dipped just low enough that the man's breath ghosts his cheek from a smirking mouth. The same mouth that hasn't smirked in his presence for three weeks.
"So you look at me and say to yourself, "I'd hit that"?"
He laughs a little, relaxes into the door as much as he can, and drapes an arm around Danny's shoulders.
"You wish. Three weeks of silence doesn't allow this."
Damn, he was supposed to stiffen and shove off at that, not sink in further and almost lick him. He hears his self-control give up the ghost and die on him back there, and the little resistance he has throws its hands up and stalks off.
He grinds his hips a little into Danny's, and almost doesn't hear him when he starts to speak again.
"The three weeks of silence was because you're an ass, and no it doesn't. But I won't hold it against you if you won't."
That gets his hackles up a bit, but not enough as Danny presses closer and grinds back. Yes, that is a tongue on his neck. Yes, that is a hand reaching around to press fingers roughly into the small of his back. Yes, that is him moaning low in his throat.
"You're a teenage girl," he manages to gasp out, and thank god that stops Danny dead cold so that he can gather his thoughts and decide if he wants to give him the calendar and shove him out the door, or if he wants Danny on his back right there on the floor where he can ruin that expensive suit by ripping it to shreds.
Danny pulls his head back, looks at Martin steadily with his brow furrowed, and hmms. "I don't know what to say to that, Martin."
He catches his breath just a little, and points in the general direction of the calendar.
"You are acting like a teenage girl, like those weepy chicks from the television."
His partner peels himself off of him, takes a step back, and looks where he is pointing. Sees the calendar, walks over to it, reads the letters. Breaks out into hysterics right then and there, and wobbles a little as he himself slides down the door to the floor.
Danny continues to wobble, turns to him, and laughs in between words.
"What are you, five?"
He grins up at him, and shakes his head. "No, that's what you are."
"I thought I was a teenage girl."
"You're both."
Danny looks from the red letters to Martin, and back again, then walks over and slides down next to him, pressing their limbs together a little more than necessary but its all right because something is working out without having to resort to hit-and-runs.
"And yet you still lust after me? Pervert."
He shrugs, shoulder pressing too hard against Danny’s shoulder for much movement, and lets his head fall back against the door with a thump.
They sit in relative silence for a beat, then he rolls his head to the left to look at his partner and grin.
“You do know I need a better explanation than that, right?”
Danny nods, not looking at him, and slumps against him. Just leans over, presses in even closer with legs tight against his legs and elbow digging into his elbow.
And he stays that way.
So.