His Grief
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, merely borrowing the characters.
A/N: A follow up one-shot to 'Her Grief', so obviously there's spoilers for 4x16.
No one ever said love was easy. It's not. He could attest to that. One month past and he still hadn't really spoken to her since that night.
She said she had fallen in love with him. He hadn't said a word. After an hour of tense silence, she had slowly, woefully, left while he just stood there, trapped in his own fog of grief. He hadn't really paid attention; the cloud of guilt and sadness had still been too thick then, left him too self-absorbed in his emotions roiling within.
Danny wished that he had paid attention now. Wished he had heard what she was really saying. Wished that he had seen her own pain on her face. Wished that he had at least done something to acknowledge her words. That he hadn't just stood there.
One month past and Danny watches her now, from a distance. She moved the same, with a determined walk and head held high. Her hair still shines when it catches the light shining through the lab's windows. Her voice still carries that mixture of curiosity and conviction to her job.
Her smile is different, he notes. Only he alone could tell that the brightness behind it was forced. Her eyes, too. They've grown dark, bleak and despondent. She hides her grief better than he does. No one can tell as Danny watches her agree to go to lunch with that new detective from the precinct. Flack said he was a good guy. From the country too, no less.
Danny made sure he was busy for the rest of the day.
His feet drags, each step heavy with desolation as he lets himself into his cold apartment after work. It feels like he hasn't been here in days; a testament to how unaware of everything he is. Walking in a cloud - one loss replaced by another; the grief remains the same.
A voice calls his name before he has time to shut the door; his chance at physically blocking out the rest of the world interrupted. He's already done it mentally.
Bleak blue eyes take in a woman walking toward him, unceremoniously entering his apartment. He sees brown hair and brown eyes and for a moment, his heart lifts unbelievingly, hopeful. Could it be?
He is seeing things again. His vision betrays him and his hopes are dashed when he hazily recognizes Rikki. It's not her. And he sinks deeper into his foggy cloud.
"Here." Rikki hands him a picture frame. "Reuben would have wanted you to have this." Sunken eyes fixate on the little boy wielding a baseball bat, posing for the camera.
Weary hands gripped the frame. "Thanks." His voice, subdued as it had been for weeks past, adds to his broken persona. Various inflections that had been noted before: excitement, anger, sadness, teasing, loving, had all given way to monotone, flat and dull.
The woman beside him, hair up in a clip, sighs, mistaking his depressed state. She steps up, winding one hand to cup the back of his neck to coax his face down to hers. He doesn't resist; the rest of his body slumped and unmoving. Her face wasn't the one he needed to see. Rikki tilted her head and met his un-responding lips with hers softly. Her lips weren't the ones he wanted. His dull eyes remained opened, unblinking, unseeing. Pulling back, Rikki tucks herself against him, turning slightly so that she could see the picture of her son. "I miss him too Danny. But thankfully, you were here for me. We'll get through this together. I'm here." The words didn't come from the mouth that he wanted them to. She laid her head against his chest. His arms remain solidly at his sides. His arms yearned to hold another different warm body. He hasn't spoken a word, but agony shines from his eyes.
She thinks the sadness and pain in his eyes were because of the little boy grinning happily back at them from the picture. It's not. Time has passed and he has worked through it. At his own pace. He was okay now.
The eyes echoing despair, the repeated sharp stabs pricking his heart combined with the loneliness engulfing his insides come from something else entirely.
Danny grieves another loss in his life.
Rikki jabbers on, inviting him over for dinner and he forces the bile back down his throat. His stomach these days, it seems, feels like it's eating itself, but food makes him sick. He mumbles a refusal, citing exhaustion and a need for sleep. He has not looked straight at her, not once, averting his face as she made to give him a kiss goodbye; his unhappiness well hidden inside. She didn't belong here, not like that, not in that capacity.
She leaves and he locks the door, hoping she won't come back. Danny tiredly rubs at his burning eyes and wonders at that when the rest of his body feels so cold.
Trudging into the bathroom, he splashes icy cold water onto his face. A gaunt visage littered with creases stares blankly back at him from the mirror. The sterile light stretches the shadows on his face. His hair was longer than it had ever been; his appearance, once something that brought vainly pride, slips lower on his list of things to care about.
Switching off the bathroom light, the apartment resumes its darkness; the cold lingers.
The blankets of his bed are pristine, untouched. Sleep is an activity he partakes little in; allowing work to consume him, every hour of each day and night. Keeping busy means little time for other thoughts painfully laced with misery and guilt, though they filter in regardless at the sight of her every new torturous day.
Shuffling over to his bed, a hand reaches underneath his pillow, pulling out a white shirt. The gesture is automatic, a reflex, a routine that he has started only recently. Sinking heavily onto his bed, he lifts the shirt, too small to be his own, and inhales it. The scent drifting up is feminine, vanilla. He knows this because he's seen her shampoo. As always, he keeps his distance at the lab, but the office they share carries a scent of her too. This shirt was his only solace now. He had nothing else.
But one month past and the scent he so dearly loves is fading, as it naturally would.
Danny couldn't let it. He sets his glasses aside and unashamedly buries his face in the shirt; the owner having left him bereft of her presence these long weeks past. This was the only thing he had of her. A single shirt that she had left behind in her haste for work.
His hands clutch at it convulsively, wrinkling the cotton as the daily tears come. The hot droplets soak the fabric. A wrack shakes his body, leaving it trembling more than before. A sob erupts from his throat, loud throughout his apartment.
Danny Messer begins his nightly grieving as he had been for one month past.
He wished that he had told her that he loved her too.