Spoilers: Nothing grave. I.e.: No.
Disclaimer: Nada, zip, zero, zilch, rien.
Author's Note: This story just sort of... happened? Enjoy.
Danny flipped open the manila folder lying pointlessly on his desk, only to flip it shut again. He opened it a second time, drumming the fingers of his free hand on his desk before flipping it shut again, flicking his wrist as if throwing a basketball. He wished he were throwing a basketball. Anything, really, would be better than this.
And he knew he'd sunk pretty far into his job when he wished someone would go missing, but this…
Honestly. Not one single person, out of the millions in the city – hell, the state – had been late for work, or failed to return home last night? It didn't seem possible.
It wasn't so much that he wanted to play detective, it was just that he was a doing person. He did things; things that didn't involve drumming fingers and random bouts of awkward conversation with his colleagues.
Running his hands over his face, restless, he catalogued the room.
Vivian sat at her desk filling out paperwork with a neutral expression. Every now and then, though, as she flipped open a new file, she would smile a little, or wince just slightly – and Danny knew easily which case had ended well, and which had not.
Danny had never thought he'd ever regret finishing paperwork early, but man, he wished he still had some.
Jack, he surmised, was locked away in his office, toiling over all the mess that had been left behind by Medina. Every now and then he would emerge, wander into the bullpen, throw a few words or questions at Danny and Viv, and then smile secretively at Sam. Danny knew – though he'd never spoken about it aloud – that he wasn't the only one with suspicions as to what happened between Sam and Jack in California. Even people on the other floors talked about it.
Grimacing as he thought about rumour-mills and Samantha with Jack – not his favourite imagery – he turned back to observing the group.
Elena moved between her computer and a few open files on her desk, hair falling gracefully off her shoulders. Danny figured she was transcribing something; an interview, perhaps. He had, all day, been fighting the urge to move across and impose himself upon her desk, flirt a little. Ever since Jack had found out about the two of them, they'd not bothered concealing their relationship too much, but that didn't mean that they were christening office furniture.
No matter how many times Danny suggested it.
Samantha, ever the technical one of the team, was sitting at her desk typing furiously. Her expression, Danny knew, would have been unreadable to anyone who didn't know her as well as he did. But Danny and Samantha were friends, really. Colleagues, mostly, but they were – or had once been – close. Until, not so ironically, Martin had showed up at Missing Persons.
Which brought him to the next person in the office to catalogue.
Martin was… Well, Martin had disappeared a few minutes ago – seven: Danny had counted – and hadn't returned. Danny wondered if it were too early to start an investigation; send out a search party. He figured Martin was busy raiding the vending machine in the break room; stuffing all sorts of ungodly things into his mouth.
Danny nearly choked as the image of Martin's mouth and ungodly – and certainly not candy – things popped into his head.
Danny's jaw clenched in anger. What the hell was wrong with him? A few minutes ago he had been tempted to try and coerce Elena into something most probably not suited to the office, and now he was thinking about Martin. In That Way.
Again.
He'd thought that this would all stop when his relationship with Elena started. And it had; for a while. Quite honestly, Danny couldn't figure out why. It may have been the office romance thing; while he firmly believed in not holding relationships like that with colleagues, Elena had been there, been willing, and he'd been attracted to her. Martin, on the other hand, was untouchable. Not only the Deputy Director's kid, but a man – a straight man – and a colleague.
In the most horrible way, he felt incredibly guilty. His – feelings for? Attraction to? Lust over? – complex when it came to Martin was present, despite his relationship with Elena. It wasn't that he was using her; he was quite honestly attracter to her; quite unexpectedly in love with her. But there was something in his relationship with Martin that was lacking when it came to Elena.
And it killed him that he didn't know what.
But he knew on some level that it was more than that. Elena was – as much as he despised himself for it – the easier option. And he was happy with her, when Martin wasn't around. Or when he wasn't thinking about it. Thinking about It was just painful. He was selfish, and he knew that. Selfish and expectant, and how he ever managed to become reliant on others he didn't know.
God, that paperwork was starting to seem like a really, really good idea about now. Anything to distract him from this damned wallowing.
And with that, Danny suddenly realized that wallowing was exactly what he was doing. He was letting himself screw things up; letting himself take the easy road; letting himself lie. Which were all things that Danny Taylor had never expected himself to do. As the thought hit him, he realized that he couldn't do this anymore.
He couldn't allow himself the effortlessness of normality simply because it was effortless and normal. He sat up straighter in his chair and stared unseeingly but intently at the entrance to the break room.
Maybe he had something to do today, after all.