Title: Graphic Detail
Author: Zubeneschamali
Rating: K+ (language)
Summary: One-shot missing scene from 'Graphic'. Towards the end of the episode, Charlie told Seth, "Your friend from prison almost shot my brother." The straightforwardness of that line really struck me, especially considering Charlie's reaction way back in "Uncertainty Principle" to Don actually getting shot. What would Charlie's reaction have been like upon finding out what almost happened here? And what was Don's reaction to the same events?

A/N: Since the address given in the show for the assisted living center doesn't really exist, I'm using my geographer's prerogative to set it where the location was shot: Castle Green in Pasadena.

Thanks to ritt and Kiki for the beta reading and for the title.

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He's in his FBI-issue SUV, watching David and Colby pull away from the scene, watching the coroner's van drive away, watching the senior citizens standing out on the front steps of their assisted living mansion and gaping at the remnants of the scene before them. Bright yellow crime scene tape blocks off the side door and half the alley, and two splotches of darkening red blood mark where Gordon Garrity's life ended and where his own so nearly did. He stares at the blood spots, the whole scene replaying in his mind in slow motion, from the sudden debilitating pain in his head to the horrible certainty that Garrity's trigger finger was going to move that critical half-inch before David's body could travel the twenty-some feet it would take to save his life.

His legs are as weak as they were half an hour ago, when he confirmed Garrity was dead and all but collapsed on top of the corpse, bowing his head to the concrete and taking a deep breath to stop his life flashing before his eyes. He'd waved off David and Colby, and they'd given him a few minutes to collect himself, calling in the rest of the team who'd showed up to search the premises, sending the EMTs away at his insistence and calling for the coroner instead. Then the familiar rituals of dealing with a crime scene had shifted his concentration away from the terror lurking at the back of his mind, right up to the point where he climbed inside his vehicle and shut the door, where now it's just him, alone with his thoughts.

Which is not really a place he wants to be right now.

He stares at the dashboard, feeling the car keys inside his pants pocket digging into his upper thigh, feeling the weight of the Kevlar that he hasn't yet removed even though his teammates took their vests off twenty minutes ago, feeling the dull ache at the back of his head that the ice pack and the extra-strength Tylenol haven't done squat to get rid of,

feeling the blood sticky on his fingers and the useless weight of the backup piece holstered against his chest as he stares up into the barrel of the pistol—

He pounds a fist on the steering wheel, once, and digs into his pocket for the car keys, his hand brushing against his cell phone. David had tentatively suggested he drive him back to the office, but he'd declined the offer. He wonders if he called now, if they'd give him a hard time about it later. Maybe they'd suggest that he start talking to Bradford again. Maybe he should.

He wonders what he's going to tell Charlie. If he's going to tell Charlie.

Before he knows it, the phone is open in his hand, his thumb pressing "1" on the speed dial. It starts to ring, and for a second he contemplates flipping it shut and later claiming that he misdialed. Then the familiar voice says, "Don?"

What had he told that magazine writer? Charlie is my friend. And he sure could use a friend right now.

"Yeah, Charlie, it's me."

"What's up?" He hears papers rustling, pictures his brother shuffling through the stacks of papers and books on his desk that should have been declared a fire hazard by now.

"Not much." He hears the words come out of his mouth and barely manages to hold back a snort of laughter at his understatement. No, I think that qualifies as a bald-faced lie. Outside the building, the residents are slowly moving around, talking to each other and gesturing as wildly as their various walking implements allow them to. He wonders if any of them saw what happened, saw the struggle in their back alley,

saw an FBI agent get overpowered by the oldest trick in the book and lie there helplessly waiting for—

"So, have you found any evidence to back up my hunch?" Charlie's light tone of voice draws him back to the present with a snap.

He tries to match the teasing note but can't pull it off. "No, uh, not yet. We did find Garrity, chased him for a while, but it, uh, it ended with him dead."

There's a sharp intake of breath. He can almost hear the gears whirring in Charlie's mind, reading between the lines and filling in the blanks of Don's cautious phrasing. "Is everything okay?" he asks.

I almost died today, he thinks. A man aimed a gun at my head and was about to pull the trigger. Statistically, I'm dead twice over. Instead he says, "Yeah, sure, everything's fine."

"Okay," comes the wary, only-half-believing reply.

"We, uh, we found some stuff in his mom's apartment that we're gonna have to take a look at." There are boxes of stuff in the back of the SUV, and he should be heading right back to the office with them to be picked apart and analyzed by a team of techs who would never know what it had almost cost to get that evidence.

Instead he looks at his watch. CalSci is less than two miles away, and the techs can get busy on the boxes in the back of the other SUV, the one that's probably already zipping down the Pasadena Freeway while he sits here like a lump.

"Do you need some help with that? I can work up a sorting algorithm to—"

"No, Charlie, that's okay." That's not what I need your help with, he thinks but doesn't voice. Properly speaking, if it's bothering him this much, he should be calling Doc Bradford, should at least be talking to Megan rather that contemplating dumping his raw emotions on the guy who's prone to vanishing inside his own head at the first sign of emotional trauma.

No, that wasn't fair. His brother isn't remotely the same man he was two-and-a-half years ago, which was the last time Don looked up into the barrel of a gun at close range. Then, the weapon had actually fired as he dodged out of the way, the bullet grazing his arm and sending Charlie into a fugue state. No, Charlie's much stronger now than he was then, even if the price is a certain amount of detachment that he occasionally frets over. Besides, he's not visibly injured this time, except for the bump on the back of his head, and better that his brother hear what happened straight from him instead of a well-meaning member of his team casually tossing off a reference to him nearly dying. Not that they would do that. They knew how protective he was of his little brother.

Even if he didn't really need to be anymore.

If he and Liz were still together, he'd be with her right now—or at least planning on it later tonight—busy chasing away the memory of the gaping maw of the gun muzzle about to take his head off. He'd almost called her before dialing Charlie's number, almost said he was sorry and he wanted to take back what he'd said, but then it had struck him that it really would be the adrenaline talking, and that wasn't fair to either of them.

"Don, are you there?"

His brother's voice cuts into his thoughts and he gives his head a brief shake. "Yeah, I'm here. Listen, where are you?"

"I'm at my office."

"Can I come over there for a few minutes?" He tries to sound casual, but is aware that his voice is a little too tense to be believable.

There's a short pause. "Don, you can always come over. Any time."

"I know that. I mean, do you have class or a publicity interview or something going on?"

"No, I'll be here." There's a rustle of paper, and then, "Are you sure you're okay?'

"Yeah, I'm fine. I'll be there in a few minutes." He hangs up without waiting for a reply and stares out at the old folks again. One of them is lifting a shaky hand to point in his direction, and he abruptly turns the key in the ignition and drives off in a squeal of tires. Give 'em something else to talk about, he thinks. Probably the most excitement they've had in years.

It's certainly the most excitement he's had in years. Where "excitement" means "being sure you're going to die." It's been a long time since he's felt that cold certainty chilling his blood, since he's sent up a desperate prayer to anyone who might be listening to get him out of this in one piece, since he's heard the litany of regrets and wishes cycling through his head even faster than he can run through a tactical analysis of the situation that concludes with, I'm screwed. Even Chandler Yates sticking a needle full of morphine into his neck hadn't done it to him; the adrenaline had lasted long enough to take down the bad guy and radio for help, and then he'd been out like a light. None of this horrible anticipation, this impossibility of bargaining with the gunman—or with fate.

He slams on the brakes as he realizes he's about to plow through the red light at California Boulevard. That's a level of irony he really doesn't need to experience right now: walking away from one near-death situation only to place himself in the path of another, much more mundane threat to his life. He turns when the light changes, bounces across the railroad tracks and heads up the mile or so of road to CalSci, past the burrito joint with those good margaritas and the most expensive Amoco station in town and the dozens of people in their cars who have no idea that he almost died a few minutes ago. And he can't even get that slightly-smug feeling of satisfaction from knowing that he was protecting them all from a danger that they would never know about but would remain locked away in his mind as one of those reasons he was proud of his job.

No, he'd almost been shot to death over a goddamn comic book.

He forces himself to pay attention to the traffic instead of sliding back into that dark place in his mind that's clamoring for attention. How had he put it to Charlie that one time? Once everything was calm, his head was a bad neighborhood? They were boarding up the windows inside his mind right now, that was for sure. South Central was about to have nothing on him.

He parks across the street from the math building, ignoring the No Parking signs and slapping the FBI placard that he never uses for personal purposes on the dashboard. Well, almost never. He figures he's earned it today.

When he gets inside the building, he's shocked at how normal everything looks, from students sitting on the floor waiting for the class before theirs to vacate the lecture hall to white-haired professors climbing the stairs and providing a vivid image of Charlie in thirty years. They all stare at him as he passes, and it takes a few paces before he remembers he's still wearing his Kevlar. He gives a pair of undergraduates a quick smile as he hastily takes off the vest. They eye him warily, but one whispers something to the other, and he hears "Professor Eppes" as he passes by. He's not sure if he should be reassured or not that it's normal for an FBI agent in tactical gear to be on his way to Professor Eppes' office.

He turns the corner and pauses, watching through the half-open door. Charlie's alone in his sanctum, standing in front of a chalkboard, scratching the back of his head. He didn't know people actually did that when they were deep in thought, although come to think of it, he'd noticed Charlie doing it on more than one occasion and had figured it was dried hair gel or something causing an itch. Charlie's hand pauses, then opens wide as if to signal that whatever was blocking his thought processes has cleared. He starts writing on the chalkboard, then pauses and cocks his head to the side. Turning to look over his shoulder, his face lights up. "Hey, bro. Come in."

He accepts the invitation, shutting the door behind him. Charlie doesn't miss the motion, but he gestures to a chair without saying anything. Don drops his vest on the floor and sinks into the seat, sliding down so the back of his head is resting against the back of the seat, but then jerks back up again as the sore bump contacts the leather.

"You okay?" Charlie asks with concern, placing the chalk on the rail.

"Yeah, I'm all right." He nods at the second chair in front of the desk. "You wanna sit?"

"Should I?" Charlie asks, eyebrows raised but not moving.

For a moment he wonders, Who is this self-possessed, confident man in front of me who's not afraid to hear what I have to say? Then he notices the concern and the tiny shadow of fear buried behind the confidence in those familiar dark brown eyes, and he exhales. "First of all, Charlie, I'm fine," he starts.

His brother licks his lips. "That implies there's some reason to believe you might not be."

He lets out a huff of breath, leaning forward and resting his forearms on the tops of his legs, and the words start to come out. "We were chasing Garrity through this assisted living facility—ask David sometime about how Mrs. Garrity treated him when he approached her—and all these old people were trying to scatter, but they couldn't move too fast, you know?" He'd registered their attempts at flight out of the corner of his eye, but his attention had been focused solely on his target. At least, until he opened that door and turned his attention away like a dummy.

Charlie was nodding encouragingly, so he went on, "So I burst out this door where Garrity had gone, and then—God, I'm so stupid. I looked away to the right, and he was behind the door to the left." He matches his words with gestures, hand sweeping to one side and then the other. "He clubbed me on the back of the head, and I went down like a rock."

He flings himself up out of the chair and starts to pace across the institutional tile floor. "He told me to tell my team that he's on the other side of the building, and I refused. He kept shouting, 'Do it now, do it now,' and I finally opened my eyes and looked at him."

He's skipped over the part where the distinctive sound of a gun cocking registered even over the overwhelming pain in his head, the sound that told him he was in big trouble. Besides, Charlie can probably guess that something happened to put him in a position where Garrity could be making demands of him. He's pretty smart, his little brother.

"What did he look like?" Charlie asks softly from behind him.

"He looked like his mug shot. He looked mean, determined, like he knew what he was doing and he wasn't going to hesitate." He pauses and bites his lip, briefly closing his eyes. He's here telling Charlie the story and he still can't bring himself to say all of the words or look him in the eye. He's not going to hesitate to shoot me is what he means, but he trusts his brother to fill in the blanks.

Clearing his throat, he goes on, "Then I saw David, up on the balcony off the second story. Then he leapt off the side, and everything went into slow motion, like when you're in a dream, you know? When you know what's going to happen but you can't do anything about it?" The vision of David falling out of the sky like a dark angel sinks into his mind. He'd finally opened his eyes, squinting past the pain throbbing through his skull just in time to see Garrity's finger begin to tighten on the trigger. His head hurt so badly he didn't think he was going to be able to move out of the way, to rearrange himself so the coming bullet would either miss him and strike the concrete below or thud into the Kevlar, although at such close range, even the bulletproof vest might not be bulletproof. All he could do was hope that the speed of gravity was sufficient to bring David down on the killer standing over him before five-and-a-half pounds of pressure sent a metal projectile hurtling his way faster than the speed of sound.

"David landed on him while he was pointing a gun at you?" There's the slightest tremor in his brother's voice, and he's not so far gone that he doesn't register it. He whirls around and sees Charlie still standing, still strong, but with his eyes wider and his face a shade paler than a minute ago.

"Yeah, but he did it textbook-style. Grabbed Garrity's arm as he hit him, made sure the gun was pointed away from me and then rolled over on top of him." His own voice was growing stronger as he spoke. "The gun went off, and we all fell back. Garrity must have pulled the trigger when it was underneath him, and..." He shrugs. "That was that."

There's silence for a moment. He can hear people walking by in the hallway outside, laughter and conversations unimpeded by what was going on inside this office. They'll never know, he thought. And I could have made it so Charlie never knew. He was the team leader, he could order his people not to breathe a word of today's events to anyone else with the last name Eppes. But he didn't. And he still isn't quite sure what he's doing here, spilling his guts to his brother.

Finally, Charlie says something, and it's uncanny how similar their thought processes are here. "Why are you telling me this?" he asks quietly.

Suddenly he's afraid that he made a mistake, that Charlie wasn't as strong as he thought and that he's blown it big-time. Then he realizes the quiet isn't from fear, but calm. "What—what do you mean?"

Charlie takes a step forward. "Two years ago, you would have tried to deny anything like this happened. Heck, six months ago you would have completely covered it up." He tilts his head to the side. "You haven't even made your official statement yet, have you? You came here right from the scene."

He blinks. "How'd you know that?"

That gets him a mildly exasperated glare. "The vest was a big clue. Besides, I've seen you working on your statement before, remember? You wouldn't be so—" He gestures, a fluid, rolling motion of one hand over the other. "So much like a waterfall."

"A waterfall, huh?" He eyes the mathematician. "Is that your way of telling me I'm being chaotic or...or incoherent?"

"Unrestrained." He comes forward another step. "You're being unrestrained, Don. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. But it's...it's not like you."

He lets out a soft snort. "No, I suppose it's not." He studies Charlie's face, reassures himself that the self-assurance and calm hasn't left, and then says, "It's just that the rest of the team has been, like, walking on eggshells around me ever since I broke up with Liz." He hasn't discussed that with anyone yet, and he's not about to get into it right now, but it has to be said. "So now if I go to them with this, Megan'll probably start profiling me or something. Make it so I have to go to Bradford again."

"Are you sure you don't need that?"

"Naw, are you kidding?" He scrunches up his forehead. "I need a little time to process it, that's all. So that when I do make my statement, I'm not—" he repeats Charlie's rolling gesture.

A strange smile curls Charlie's mouth. "And so you came to me."

He returns the smile somewhat sheepishly. "Yeah, I guess I did," he replies softly, aware that he's admitting a lot here.

They look at each other for a moment. Then Charlie says, "Do you mind if I, uh, if we..." He raises both arms and extends them like parentheses, hands open.

"Not at all," he replies, stepping forward into his brother's open arms, and they embrace. He closes his eyes, the brief affectionate contact doing more to restore his spirit than any conversation could, and it takes a second pat on his back for him to let go.

Stepping back, they share quick, self-conscious grins. He runs a hand through his hair, remembering at the last minute not to touch the back of his head. "Sorry to dump all this on you," he says.

Charlie shakes his head. "It's not dumping, Don. It's—it's the kind of thing we've been trying to get you to do for years."

"What, talk about how close I came to getting shot to death?" he rejoinders.

Charlie flinches, but goes on, "If that's what it takes, yeah. I've got a pretty vivid imagination, and so does Dad, so not telling us something might actually be worse."

He raises a finger in the air. "Yeah, but I am not telling Dad about this." Then he points at Charlie. "And neither are you."

His brother's hands go up as he says, "If that's what you want, fine."

He regards Charlie. "When did you get to be so..." He trails off, not sure how to put it.

"Agreeable?"

That time, the snort he lets out is louder. "Yeah, Mr. 'those are both excellent professional opinions to consider' and then ignore, 'agreeable'. No, I think what I want to say is something along the lines of 'tough'."

Charlie blinks in surprise. "You're kidding, right?"

He shakes his head. "You're right, six months ago I never would have dreamed of telling you about this at all, much less in graphic detail." Or semi-graphic detail, to be more accurate. He shrugs. "You're not the same person you were then."

That gets him a slow nod. "You know, sometimes I do feel like…like I've lost a lot of my innocence working with you, it's true." Charlie quickly holds up a hand, and the comment Don's about to make dies on his lips. He adds, "But if it makes a difference in the work that you do, and if it helps you to get through what you have to do..." He lowers his hand and says softly, "I don't mind."

"Charlie," he says in response, then stops. What else can he say to that?

He thinks of the conversation he had that morning with the Vanity Fair writer. He wasn't used to putting his feelings into words like that, telling a stranger personal information about one of the most important people in his life. It was one thing to talk to a therapist who promised utter confidentiality, another thing completely to say stuff that you knew full well might end up on the newsstands. And since he hadn't been to Bradford since before the whole Colby thing (as he'd taken to referring to it), the last time he'd really faced up to what he thought of Charlie was their conversation about the disastrous camping trip so many years ago.

So he'd been surprised to hear some of the words coming out of his own mouth this morning, surprised at the truths he'd never verbalized before. And he'd also realized that those truths about what his brother meant to him were not only there because of the shared history that no family members could avoid, but because of the relationship they were forging now, every day, working together and hanging out and being there for each other.

Based on what Charlie just said, the feelings were entirely mutual.

He feels a warm smile spreading across his face, banishing the last of the darkness from the corners of his mind. "You are really something else, Professor Eppes, you know that?"

"I'll take that as a compliment," Charlie beams.

He leans forward and gives his brother's shoulder a light slug. "Modest, too."

"But of course." He grins cheekily. "I try to be like my older brother in all things."

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't necessarily recommend that," he replies, thinking of Liz again. But that's a conversation for another day. He looks at his watch. "Listen, I gotta get going down to the office."

"Okay, sure."

There's a brief silence. He reaches out again, putting his hand on Charlie's shoulder and giving it a firm squeeze. "Thank you," he says in the most heartfelt tone he can.

"Any time." Charlie gives him a quick smile tinged with nervousness. "Well, not that I want to be hearing about your near-death experiences every day of the week."

"Believe me, I don't wanna be having them every day of the week." Once a year is enough, he thinks. Once every other year would be even better.

He lets himself out and leaves the door half open like it was when he arrived. He waits around the corner for thirty seconds, then slips back and peers through the doorway. Charlie's standing in front of the chalkboard again, scrawling a series of Greek letters. As he watches, the chalk lowers, and Charlie's hands clench into fists, his head dropping, his shoulders hunching forward like he's carrying a burden that suddenly got too heavy.

He bites his lip and puts one hand on the door, shifting his weight to take a step forward and enter the office, ready to apologize for sharing things that he didn't even ask if Charlie wanted to hear. But then the professor shakes his head and raises it, curls bouncing with the motion, and goes back to the expression he was writing. Another sixty seconds pass with no discernible change, and finally Don slips quietly away, a smile on his face. He has no way of knowing that right now, the two of them are thinking the exact same thing.

My brother really is something else.

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