This is a five-part fic that will likely be finished and posted within the week. It's Jack/Sam and Danny/Martin, through Sam's POV. Set about eighteen months after the start of season three. I don't own the characters and so on. Feedback would be very much appreciated.
This Brilliant Dance
(So this is odd,
the painful realization that has all gone wrong.
And nobody cares at all,
and nobody cares at all.)
Sam keeps the job transfer close to her chest to begin with, like a particularly good hand of cards that she wants to bluff with and then finally lay out on the table with a triumphant flourish. She knows about the transfer's finality for six weeks before it actually happens, and manages to keep it a secret from the rest of the office for five of those six until Jack bursts out of his office waving a sheet of paper and saying, "Sam, what the hell is this?"
She looks up from her computer, notices what he's waving around, and blinks for a second, trying to compose herself. Finally, "I don't know. I can't see it from here."
He goes slightly red and advances towards her. "You know what this is, Samantha. Why didn't you tell us about your transfer?"
Danny, who as far as Sam can tell, has been pretending to ignore them and smirking, which he's very good at, shoots his head up. "Samantha, you're transferring?"
"I, uh," she begins lamely. The combination of Danny's dark, slightly wounded gaze and Jack bearing down on her like an angel of doom is not a good one. She settles for a definite, "Well. Yeah."
Danny stands up quickly and strides over to Sam's desk, perching on the edge of it. "Seriously? When're you going?"
She's grateful for the distraction from Jack's steady glare and shrugs. "A week. I have to be in Florida next Monday."
"Florida?" Jack sputters for a second. "Florida. You've got to be goddamn kidding me. We only just lost Martin, and now you're going too?"
She opens her mouth but no words come out. Luckily Danny rescues her with a quick, "Wait, I thought he went back to Seattle."
"He did," Jack grunts, and turns around, beginning to head back to his office, shaking his head. Halfway there, he turns around, throws a quick glance at Sam, looks as if he's about to say something, but doesn't manage to force the words out.
He slams his office door with a resounding thud and beside her Danny mutters, "Hey, I think you just broke his stony cold heart."
"Just like you broke Martin's, then," she reacts coolly, bitingly, shuffling some papers on her desk with shaking fingers.
Danny makes a faint noise of denial and then spits out a quick "Whatever," before returning abruptly to his desk.
There is no sound in the office for about ten minutes, except Danny slamming files violently around and typing furiously; carefully, Sam builds up a little glass box around herself. Detach yourself, she tells herself, and for a little while it's easy to imagine leaving. That is, until Viv and Martin's-replacement-Rob come bursting back in and the box shatters and for a brief moment she feels very, very alone.
At lunchtime, Sam's about to leave as quickly as she can before she gets targeted by either Jack or Martin's-replacement-Rob, who's been asking her out since the day he arrived. At least Martin had the courtesy to leave it a few weeks, she's been thinking somewhat resentfully and bitterly, but she doesn't actually say it aloud. She went out with him once but it just resulted in forty-five minutes of martinis and no conversation before she made an excuse and left. It didn't work. She thinks that maybe she's been trying to fit every guy into the same mould, the prototype which would have worked in every way except it wasn't the right time.
She hates Jack, sometimes. Hates how she keeps matching every guy up to his shadow and none of them are ever good enough. Hates that he can't have been that great, anyway; and she doesn't think he was. Hopes, wishes, that he was, because if he wasn't, then she really has been dumb to waste all this time thinking about him.
So she grabs her jacket quickly and is about to slip quietly out of the door to a nearby sandwich bar when she hears Viv's voice ring out commandingly behind her. "Samantha! Wait for a second. I'll come with you. Let me just grab my purse."
Sam curses inside as she turns and pastes a welcoming smile onto her face. "Sure."
Viv rejoins her in a few moments, and they stand in silence as they wait for the elevator. Sam can't help but glance sideways a couple of times, but the other woman's face is blank, impassive. Sam wishes she could do such a good poker face, but she has the habit of letting her emotions get the better of her. She's not as bad as Danny, or as bad as Martin was, even, but she's definitely been known to let the cases get to her a little too much. It's the small-town girl ones that always tend to do it. It's easy to see herself in their clear, innocent faces.
Making a little smalltalk and speculating about the case, they make their way to a small sandwich bar on the corner. Sam picks a chicken salad sandwich and fresh orange juice, and queues behind Viv. She doesn't want to stay there and talk, but her hopes of making an escape back to the office are dashed when Viv says, very firmly, "We'll eat in," to the cashier.
Feeling martyred and with a cold sensation of dread in her stomach, she follows Viv over to a small table in the corner of the window. She's facing the glass and she can see hordes of people walking past outside, all thoroughly self-absorbed in their own business, their own lives.
She thinks it must be nice, to not have to interfere in anyone else's private business. Over the last few months she's begun to develop a great distaste for rummaging through people's personal lives, the things they want to keep under lock and key.
God knows, she'd hate it if someone did it to her.
Viv takes a purposeful sip of her coffee.
"Espresso good?" Sam asks half-heartedly.
"It's a cappuccino," Viv tells her. "And it's a little heavy on the foam but other than that it's pretty good."
"Great." Sam begins to pour her orange juice into a plastic cup. It's healthy; she's trying not to drink too much caffeine at the moment. She needs more vitamins, or something. And anyway, it tastes good.
"So, you're leaving." Viv looks vaguely reproachful as she carefully unpacks her sandwich from its plastic box.
Sam shrugs, shoulders awkward and graceless. "I guess I am."
"Any particular reason?"
And Sam's totally lost. There were once a million reasons, but for the life of her she's forgotten them all. "The city," she finally manages to force out. "The property's not too hot. Rent's up at the moment."
"So you're moving to Florida?" Viv raises an eyebrow. "Try Brooklyn. Or Queens. Danny lives in Queens, he likes it."
"Good for Danny. And anyway, he only likes living there because he's a block away from his favourite queer bar." And she doesn't mean to sound either bitchy or sarcastic, but it just comes out that way. Viv's lips narrow. "I guess I just want to get away from here, you know?" she tries feebly after an uncomfortable pause.
Viv takes a bite of her lunch, drawing a piece of basil leaf into her mouth with the practised ease of one who is used to eating exceedingly messy sandwiches. After she chews and swallows, she says, "I guess you'd have cause to."
"What?"
"It must be hard being around Jack." And the expression in Viv's eyes is horribly matter-of-fact and knowing.
Sam takes a deep breath. "Yeah," she admits in a rush. "Yeah, it is. And it was hard being around Martin and now it's not great being around Danny, and as for Rob, who likes him, anyway?"
"If he wasn't an agent I'd take him for a pervert," Viv says lightly, and then pauses. "Well, he could be, anyway."
Sam lets out a startled, relieved laugh. "Exactly. I mean, after I refuse to go out with him for the eighth time he could finally get the message, you know?"
"I know! He's almost as bad as Martin was," Viv says, drawing the conversation smoothly back onto topic.
Damn, Sam's glad that Viv isn't interrogating her. She'd break in a second.
"Yeah," she agrees. "Except I actually liked Martin."
"Past tense?"
"Mmhm," Sam agrees. "Past tense. I couldn't screw the same guy as Danny and keep a straight face."
"Straight face," Viv points out, and chuckles lightly. "You know, Jack told me that when he first heard about your transfer he thought you were going to join Martin."
"He's goddamn paranoid then," Sam says flatly. "I don't understand why people keep thinking that." She bounces exasperatedly off Viv's gaze, and continues, "I mean, yeah, we went out, but for god's sake, it wasn't eternal love. It'd be great to see him again but as friends. I think we work better that way."
"It would've been good if he'd never left," Viv muses. "I think the whole team worked better that way."
And it's true. Martin fit in a way that Rob probably never will. Despite the whole silver-spoon thing, Sam thinks that he somehow managed to make himself fit in by trying desperately and finally proving himself. Rob just tags after Danny in an awestruck, envious kind of way; Sam wants to break his illusions and tell him that Danny's a fag.
She gets the impression that Rob wouldn't like him quite so much after that. She thinks that Rob's probably an asshole like that.
"You're right," Sam agrees belatedly, and takes a bite of her sandwich. It tastes slightly stale in her mouth, and she realises she isn't hungry anymore; maybe she wasn't to begin with. So she finishes her orange juice, and then smiles weakly. "Think we better head back now?"
"Sure." Viv stacks her serviette and empty plate carefully onto a tray. "Let's go."
They walk silently back to the office, but this time it's more of a companionable silence. When they get out of the elevator Sam begins to walk back towards the office, but Viv lays a hand on her arm. "Samantha."
"Yeah?"
"We'll miss you round here." A genuine smile.
"Yeah." And for some reason Sam finds herself blinking away tears. "I'll miss you too."
Viv squeezes her arm briefly, and then she's walking away. Sam has to lean on the wall to collect her thoughts for a moment. Then she takes a deep breath, applies a fresh layer of lipgloss, and re-enters the office.
Martin calls her that night, voice crackly and distorted. They talk for a few minutes about banal, everyday things – Martin asks if Jack cut his hair yet, Sam says of course he isn't, what is he, human? And Martin asks if she knows how Reggie is, and Sam says he's doing good, and that Viv told her that his team won the state basketball championships. And then there's an awkward silence before Martin asks how Danny is.
Sam smiles into the receiver. She's used to being in between the two guys; most mornings Danny looks away and asks, painstakingly casually, if she's heard from Martin lately at all, and every time Martin calls he always checks out Danny's situation.
"Single," Sam says, voice laden with insinuation.
A crackly pause. "That wasn't what I meant!"
"Don't lie to me, Martin," Sam replies laughingly. "He's completely single and he misses you."
Another staticky pause. "He does?"
"Almost as much as you miss him."
"I never said that."
"You didn't have to."
"I guess not," Martin admits slowly. Sam hears him sigh. "I miss all of you."
"We miss you too. Viv just said to me today that Rob'll never replace you."
"He better not!" A laugh, which Sam's thankful for. "He's a slimy son of a bitch, isn't he?"
"Almost as slimy as you," she says lightly.
"Thanks a lot!" Martin uses a lot of exclamation marks, she observes.
"I'm just kidding," she says in a pacifying voice. "You know he doesn't match up to you. He's more of a rookie than you ever were. He's not cut out for this job. He's too soft."
"I wasn't cut out for the job," Martin points out, his distorted voice sounding almost mournful.
"You know that wasn't the only reason you went to Seattle," Sam tells him. There had been a lot of talk about Martin having a nervous breakdown unless he got out of the city. She hopes that he's doing okay now, but can't quite find the words to ask.
"I guess not," Martin says ruefully. "The team here isn't half as efficient, y'know, I keep thinking I'm back in New York and barking orders at everyone and they're all just like, chill out, man. It's weird."
"I'm sure you'll cope."
"Yeah. So am I."
"So you're… happy, now."
"I miss you all but yeah, I guess I am. I'm happy." Martin sounds like he's trying out the words for the first time. "Yeah. I'm happy."
"I'm glad."
"Thanks. So, what's going on down your end?"
Sam pauses. "Did I tell you I got a transfer?"
"You're kidding! Of course you didn't tell me. Where to?"
"Florida."
"Really? That was where Danny grew up. Hialeah, I think."
She laughs. "Martin, I think you have an obsession."
"I haven't seen him in months, of course I haven't." He sounds oddly defensive.
"Yeah, and you're talking about where he grew up."
A sigh, setting off the static again. "Alright. I gotta go. Just… tell him I said hi, okay?"
"I will do."
"Okay. Take care, Sam."
"I'll do that as well. Same to you, Martin."
And then Martin hangs up the phone, and Sam sits staring into space at the receiver for a few moments before she shakes herself and places it back into its cradle.
TBC.