Title: Birthdays
Author: Miss Capitaine/deliciouslycrzy
Rating: Light M
Genre: Angst/Hurt/Comfort
Pairings: Ross/Rodgers
Summary: Danny Ross hated his birthday.
Warnings: Some swears, a hint of spousal abuse, Wikipedia-level knowledge of Israel
Spoilers: None really.
Note: I wrote this to the theme of 'birthday' because it's Eric Bogosian's birthday today! It was supposed to be a sort of tribute, but... it's kind of angst-ridden for a birthday ficlet. This could be seen as happening before the events in " Naughty Boys, Too Tight Ties And A Teddy Bear."
Danny Ross hated his birthday. Things always seemed to go wrong on April 24.
When Danny was ten, his parents had been in the middle of a messy divorce. Subtle loathing, fights and yelling had been in the background of his life for years, but it had all come to a culmination in his tenth year.
It happened on his birthday. His mother had been planning his party for months, had invited all of the family, most of the neighbors, hired caterers and had spent the whole week preceding the party cleaning the house and doing preparation.
Danny had been playing in the back yard with his younger sister while their mother had been putting finishing touches on the house; their father hadn't been home yet that day, and Danny could tell that Mother was worried. He had dragged his sister out of the house without complaint when Mother had asked, politely, for them to get out.
It was the slamming of the door that alerted him that, a) His father was home, and b) He was angry about something. A few seconds passed, and then Danny could hear his father yelling, screaming about something indistinct. It was never good when his father yelled, so Danny pulled his sister as far away from the house as possible; they sat at the picnic table where Mother had already laid out his birthday cake.
The fighting had gone on for hours.
Danny couldn't hear it anymore, but he could see the shadows in the windows, his parents silhouettes, and knew they were still yelling. He figured his mother must have called all of the party guests, because no one showed. His sister kept whining that she was hungry, so he finally cut into the cake and gave her a piece. He did it again a few hours later when dinner-time rolled around.
It was dark and cold when Danny heard the door slam again; this time he was heading out. He saw his father for a moment, and he was scared at how furious his father looked. He watched him climb into the car, and was only slightly saddened when he saw him start the car and pull out of the driveway.
His mother came out of the house shortly after, and Danny tried to ignore the red that rimmed her eyes and the dark bruises on her wrists as she tearfully ushered them into the house and upstairs to pack.
They next day, Danny celebrated his birthday with his mother and sister at a rest-stop in New Hampshire. He blew out a match his mother had hastily stuck in a Twinkie and wished that his father would come back, if only so his mother would stop crying.
He never got his wish.
He lost his virginity on his seventeenth birthday.
It was in the back of his girlfriend's car, parked out behind the local high school after a varsity football game.
He felt amazing, like the king of the world for maybe three seconds, until he looked over at his girlfriend and saw that she was crying. He then felt like an ass for three months, until the end of the school year, at which point his family moved again and he never saw her again.
He didn't have sex again until after he graduated from high school.
He had planned to go to college immediately after graduating, but his father had other plans.
He'd decided that he wanted to bond with his only son, so he had planned a year long stay in Israel for the both of them. They had left the States in the fall and by the time spring and his birthday had rolled around, Danny was itching to get home.
They had been staying at a kibbutz for the duration of their stay, the novelty of which had delighted his father and evaded Danny. He didn't mind the hard work, but the communal living was something he knew he would never get used to. He had no privacy, which wasn't something he had ever worried about before going to Israel, and it had quickly become apparent to him that he needed to get out of there.
He had spent the better part of seven months saving up for a plane ticket home, waiting for his eighteenth birthday, when he would finally be an adult and be able to leave the country without his father. He had expected to be glad to leave.
He hadn't expected, however, his friends from the kibbutz to throw him a secret coming-of-age part the night before his birthday, complete with alcohol and women. He hadn't expected to wake up at two in the afternoon the next day, completely hung-over, laying next to a beautiful woman whose name he didn't know.
He still can't remember that night, all that he knew for sure was that he had missed his flight and he didn't have enough money to buy another ticket, so he was stuck in Israel.
In 1997, Danny celebrated his birthday at a sleazy bar in lower Manhattan, drinking and flirting and getting tongued by guys he had only known for a few seconds. It had culminated in a quick, messy, embarrassing fuck with a bear of a man, and Danny still had a scar on his back from where he had collided with a particularly sharp fixture in the bar's bathroom.
Later, he had nursed his wounds in a dingy hotel room, drinking cheap wine and eating stale pizza whilst looking through real-estate listings whilst steadfastly ignoring the divorce papers on his bedside table.
This year wasn't looking as if it would end up being any better than any of his previous birthdays. A long, tiresome day; a high-profile case had been assigned to Major Case, the murder of a a former statesman, and he had been harangued constantly by government officials who wanted him to make the case either a) disappear, or b) go faster, his ex-wife had called, telling him at the last minute that she, and Todd, were taking his kids out of state to visit her relatives for two weeks, and both Detective Goren and Detective Nichols had both decided to call in a sick day, which translated into his other two detectives having to make up the slack.
He had gone home that night, intent on collapsing in bed immediately after a glass or two of scotch.
Elizabeth Rodgers, however, had other ideas.
She stood in his doorway, wearing what appeared to be the tan coat he had left at her house previously; from what she had whispered in his ear only seconds before, Danny had reason to believe that she wasn't wearing much more than that.
Moments later, when she had finally shed his coat, his suspicions were proven correct, and he would have thought more on how beautiful she looked in black lace, but his thoughts were interrupted by a quick, searing kiss, followed by her deft hands quickly unzipping his pants, and the last thing he heard before her hot, wet mouth was had engulfed him and he couldn't think anymore was, "Happy Birthday, Danny."
Danny Ross's outlook on birthdays changed drastically that day.