Vampiro: Teaser
Fandom: CSI:NY
Author: Kimmychu
Rating: FRM
Pairing: Danny/Flack
Content Warning: Violence, AU in that one of the characters has a background very different from canon and yet, not. You'll see what I mean.
Spoilers: One for season five, but it's one probably everyone in fandom knows by the posting date of this story and after, and another for the season two finale.
Summary: Danny Messer discovers his best friend, homicide detective Don Flack Jr., isn't quite what he seems to be, and gets to know the real Flack on a very personal level. Danny/Flack.
Disclaimer: Flack belongs to CBS. The alternate persona in the story, on the other hand, is mine. Mwahahah!
( Oooo …... oooO )
Author's Notes: The title of this story has 'teaser' in it because technically, this isn't the full story. It's more like 'excerpts' from the full version that's still being developed in my head. However, I tried my best to write these 'excerpts' in such a way that they can be read together and in order as a standalone story. As of writing this, I don't intend to actually write out the full version of the story for a long time yet, so if people are more interested in reading more 'excerpts' (which I admit will mean they get posted up faster, hahah), I don't mind posting more in the near future.
As always, thank you for reading my story and for your reviews. I appreciate them!
( Oooo …... oooO )
The stark terror in her eyes freezes Danny to the marrow.
"Please, please, just drop this," she's saying in a voice barely above a mumble, but all Danny does is clutch her upper arm and glower into glistening eyes as he grinds out, "No, I won't do that, not until ya tell me what the hell's goin' on here!"
A sob escapes her throat, loosens his grip.
"Please, I'm begging you. For your sake."
Danny's lips thin into a line of frustration. Damnit, why does she have to own big blue eyes so much like her older brother's?
"Look, I'm not gonna hurt you, okay?" Danny takes a deep breath and softens his voice, shifting his hold down her arm to her wrist when he realizes she's no longer struggling against him. "Sam, Sam. I just wanna talk to you 'bout Flac- 'bout Don."
She's already shaking her head from side to side, her pale, haggard features crumpling, and it tears at Danny to see the brown-haired, young woman so distressed, so troubled. Because of him.
"I just wanna know why his DNA doesn't match with yours or with any of your other family members, that's all."
"I can't, Detective Messer. I can't."
Danny sighs heavily. "Can't what? Tell me? What, is it 'cause he's adopted and your family doesn't want people to know?Is that it?"
All of a sudden, she laughs. It's a tremulous, high-pitched laughter that echoes within the confines of the narrow alley, and it almost makes Danny jump. It chills him in a way not even the harshest winter gust can.
"If only it was that simple … if only." Sam laughs again, rubbing at her eyes with her left hand, shielding them from him. "You won't find a match with any other Flack, you won't find a match with anyone ali-"
Her words abruptly die.
"What did you mean by that?"
"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God -"
Danny grabs both her upper arms and shakes her. What the, is she drunk? Why did he go up to her at the bar after seeing her slouched on the counter, much less drag her drunken ass outside into the cold in the naïve hope of obtaining answers from her?
He doesn't need this shit. He doesn't need it, but he has to do this if it means getting to the bottom of the madness, finding out why the fuck Flack was attacked by seven guys and came out of it completely unscathed. Why Flack made it out alive after that car ran him over last month. Why Flack didn't die after being thrown off a ten-storey apartment building.
Why Flack can't die, period.
"Oh my God, I've already said too much."
She's as pallid and frail as a ghost. She looks about five seconds away from throwing up her guts onto the snow-sprinkled ground.
"What did you mean by that, Sam?!"
An awful, gurgling noise emits from between her parted lips.
"Oh, shi-"
Danny's swift reflexes save his boots from becoming leather canvases for the foul-smelling spew spilling out from her gaping mouth. He backs off, turning his head away, paying no attention to the splattering sounds, the sickly stench of alcohol and the dry heaves as best he can. He's been there. He knows better than to judge her for such an involuntary display.
An eon passes before silence finally looms over them.
When Danny swivels around to face her, he sees her sitting on the ground a couple of feet away from a dark puddle he'd rather not examine, hugging her legs, chin on knees, rocking back and forth. The sight of Flack's sister this way rips at him much more than what he witnessed earlier.
"I'm sorry," Danny murmurs into her hair after he kneels down and places an arm around her shoulders. He strokes her head and lets her cry silently into the folds of his coat. "I'm sorry I scared you."
Another hushed eon flows by.
Then, Sam raises her head. The alarm is gone from her eyes, though there remains an unsettling blankness, a void in place of the flurry of emotions that had possessed her minutes ago.
"Sam, it's okay. I'm his best friend. You can trust me."
Danny gazes into those blue eyes, and the void within them gazes back into him.
"He's …" A pause. Sam visibly swallows. "He's not one of us."
( Oooo …... oooO )
The bitch is back.
"How long are you going to continue this disgraceful pretense?"
He ignores her. He quietly unbuttons his mauve jacket, removing it and hanging it in his closet as usual. Then he undoes his striped tie and rolls it up and stashes it in the topmost drawer inside the closet, together with his other ties. He doesn't give a damn that she's lounging on his bed, ogling him, staring at him, her silver-colored eyes roaming up and down the length of his body.
They've been through this, over and over throughout the centuries. A vicious, unending cycle of her chasing him everywhere he goes, uprooting his every attempt to have the closest thing he ever will to the ordinary life of a human. Eradicating everyone he becomes close to, everything, till the day he accepts her as his master once more.
He'll be damned to hell for eternity before he lets that happen.
"You haven't been human for a very long time, Donté."
She's back again.
And he still yearns to plunge his hand into her chest and wrench her undead heart out and force her to eat every rotten sliver of it.
Too bad it won't kill her.
"Aren't you going to say anything to me, Donté?"
"Fuck off."
He doesn't bother waiting for any response. He walks out of his bedroom to the kitchen. He takes a cup out from a wooden cabinet next to the fridge for a drink of cold water, straight from the tap.
"That was very rude. I'm disappointed in you."
He isn't surprised in the least she's now standing next to him at the sink. Teleportation is her forte, after all.
"There's nothin' for me to say to you, Caitlin."
He leaves the cup in the sink and brushes past her, never glancing in her direction. He knows how much it pisses her off when he acts oblivious towards her presence. Once a vain, self-centered, five-hundred-year old psycho, always a vain, self-centered, five-hundred-year old psycho.
"Don't turn your back on me."
He goes to sit on the black couch in the living area of his apartment. Plucks a small, plastic remote control from the coffee table in front of the couch then sprawls on the cushions, switching on the television. There's a Rangers game airing tonight. He's about a half hour early. Time to channel surf.
"Donté."
The first show he comes across is a David Letterman rerun, one of his favorites featuring tributes to the late Johnny Carson. Heh, he'd met Johnny Carson once, back in 1944 while they were serving in the Navy aboard the battleship USS Pennsylvania, long before the man became the famous talk show host he was for thirty years. Carson was merely nineteen at the time.
He, on the other hand, had been two hundred and thirty years old and appeared no older than his late twenties.
Of course, no one knew that at the time except him … and the annoying bitch who's about to kick his television set with her knee-high, steel-capped boots.
In the space of a millisecond, he springs off the couch and lunges at her, his right leg already swinging up then downwards onto her raised left shin.
It snaps like a twig under his strike.
Dark red dashes upon the beige wall next to the undamaged television.
Caitlin's scream slices the air with the shrillness a blade.
She collapses onto the floor, rolling and shrieking and seizing the knee above her shattered, bleeding lower leg. Fractured bone protrudes from ripped flesh and torn leather.
It's nothing new to him. He's perpetrated worse things upon her, much worse, and so has she to him.
"Bastard! You fucking bastard!"
Her screaming obscenities at him and cursing him is nothing new either.
"How dare you attack me, you ungrateful bastard! I made you!"
He goes back to relaxing on his sofa and rests his feet on the coffee table. He picks up the remote control a second time and resumes channel surfing. Pointedly disregards Caitlin who's crawled up to the blood-sprayed wall and is slumped against it, making throaty, growling noises as her wounded leg heals itself.
He hates the sounds of flesh and bone mending themselves. They remind him of the abysmal hours he spent clawing his way out of his coffin, splitting and shredding his fingers and nails, howling in absolute terror at the realization that he's dead, he's undead and he's been buried six feet beneath the ground and life as he knew it is gone forever -
His fingers, very much intact and unscarred, dig deep into his palms.
"If I'm such a bastard, just fuckin' leave already," he snarls.
For some time, there is only the voice of Morgan Freeman speaking from the television as Shawshank prisoner Ellis Boyd 'Red' Redding to a parole board:
"'I look back on the way I was then, a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him … I want to try and talk some sense into him. Tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone, and this old man's all that's left. I gotta live with that.'"
Those words never fail to carve a chasm within his chest. He'd watched the film when it first opened at the cinemas over nine years ago, a short time prior to his decision to adopt yet another false identity in his enduring endeavor to be part of humanity.
He knows exactly what Red feels like. He knows what it's like to contemplate on his past, to gaze back in retrospection and be plagued by the enormity of his stupidity then, stupidity that cost him his life. Cost him everything precious to him.
He'll give so much to have never met Caitlin. He'll give so much to have never killed that wealthy trader who asked her hand in marriage, to have never allowed her to manipulate his naïveté and emotions the way she did. He should have seen her for what she really was, and is, and escaped while he could.
But he can't. That stupid man is long dead, and all that's left is what he is today. An unchanging, blood-lusting apparition who will have eternity to wallow in his regrets.
"Oh, my beautiful, beautiful Donté. My mighty Donté."
Caitlin's leg has completely healed. She's tugging at the ragged edges of the hole in her boot, heedless of her own blood staining her hands.
"Why do you waste your time being so pathetic?"
He doesn't respond.
"You could be one of the most powerful of our kind in the world and still, you choose to pretend to be a lowly human."
The abhorrence dripping off the last word is thick enough to be gnawed on.
"A lowly human, enslaved by lowly humans."
She suddenly snickers.
"Of all the occupations and names you could have selected … Don Flack, a homicide detective." Her insidious laugh heightens in volume. "Can you taste the irony, Donté?"
Again, he doesn't react to her or show the slightest sign of acknowledgement.
His current fabricated identity is one he had invented on a whim. He never intended to be a police officer in the NYPD for more than a few years, much less stay on and get promoted to homicide detective status. He never intended to get close to the Flack family, to put down roots, to become a part of the family, literally. To love them like he does now.
He never intended to love anyone.
But he does.
And God knows, it's going to fucking hurt like hell when he has to pack his bags, use his powers to rewrite the memories of those who know him - no, his fictitious persona - and flee. All over again.
"I don't see the point of … mingling with food," Caitlin murmurs. She's on her feet, tracing random squiggles on the wall using her blood spattered there. "I've seen you with your new friends, these humans you work with. What do they call themselves? Crime scene investigators, is it?"
Against his will, the muscles of his jaw clench.
"You like them, don't you? Is it because they're undaunted by death, hmm? Unafraid of grisly corpses and gory scenes? Deadened to the horrors of a fellow human slaughtered like an animal? Dead, like you?"
He senses her eyes on him. The bitch is smiling, he can tell.
"But they're not like you, are they, Donté? They don't know who you really are. What you really are. Not even your farce of a family does."
Her approaching steps are as loud as thunder to his preternatural hearing.
"So what is it then that makes you stay?"
He focuses on the flickering television screen. If she comes within range of his legs, he'll make certain to break both of hers to get his point across.
"You call them friends, but you tell them nothing about yourself. You parade to them an innocuous face, a face that appears to reveal so much but in actuality, reveals so little. You present to them what you'd like them to see of you … a private, independent individual who does his work and does it well and true. A police man, who only wants to catch the villains and make the world a safer place, hm?"
She is being smart for a change. She's sauntering away from the couch, away from him.
"I wonder what they'll think of you if they knew what you really are. Would your human family still accept you? Like your brothers and your little sister, Samantha? Your human father hates you. What a tragedy, considering how easy it is for you to wipe his puny brain clean and make him think whatever you want him to think."
There's a faint rumbling noise, as if a hard, angular object is being dragged along a smooth surface. It's stemming from his right side of the living room, where his floor-to-ceiling bookshelf is. Caitlin's studying the framed photographs placed on some of its ledges.
"What a tragedy, living a lie where there's no one -"
The unexpected halt of her mockery is what prompts him to glance at her for the first time tonight.
She has one picture in hand, one of which he is extremely fond. It had been taken on his first week as a homicide detective, at the celebratory party thrown for him in the Flack residence. In it, there are two men standing side by side, him with his arm around the shoulders of another, both of them grinning at the camera.
It is a photograph of which he's extremely fond of, not because of the event where it was taken … but because of the other shorter, bespectacled man who smiles at him whenever he gazes at it.
Caitlin, the damned monster she is, has no right to even look at that picture.
"Ohh, I'm mistaken," Caitlin says, seemingly to herself. "There is someone."
His hands tighten into fists.
"It's him, isn't it? This one with the blue eyes and glasse-"
His vision is drenched red.
From far away, he hears a deafening, animalistic roar that is both familiar and foreign.
Something smashes to pieces on the floor.
This time, Caitlin can't scream at all. His right hand is squeezing her neck so brutally he has already crushed her throat and larynx, and she's convulsing against the wall, thrashing about like a broken doll as blood spurts out from her mouth. Some of it splashes onto the sleeve of his white dress shirt.
This up close, its smell is overpowering.
Once upon a time, when he was still her foolish slave, it was the scent of life to him.
Now, it simply disgusts him and pisses him off. Big time.
"Touch him, and I'll destroy you."
It costs him a great deal to maintain his vice-like grip on her neck, pinning her to the wall. He hasn't heard himself speak in that other voice in a very, very long time. He abhors it as much as he abhors the merciless, vivid memories of all the people he's killed since he was changed; their cries of horror, the fear on their ashen faces, in their eyes upon seeing him in his inhuman form.
His hold must have weakened, for he hears her whisper, "There they are, my darling Donté."
Her teeth, bared through her twisted smile, are awash with scarlet.
"There they are … your gorgeous fangs."
( Oooo …... oooO )
Flack is stunning in the moonlight.
Danny doesn't say this aloud. He's a lot smarter than to blurt out such frivolous thoughts, particularly on a cloudless evening so exceptional and soothing. It's been ages since he's had the chance to chill out with Flack. Alone.
Alone with Flack is what he cherishes most about these outings, be they meals together during breaks at work, dinner at their favorite pizza parlor, the movies, basketball on the weekends. Anything, as long as it's with his best friend of over a half dozen years.
His best friend, who is more mysterious and extraordinary than he's ever imagined.
How many people in the world can say they personally know an immortal, supernatural being?
"Hope ya don't mind us takin' a walk in the park," Flack says to him with a smile. It's one of the soft ones, the sort that sends a good shiver up Danny's spine. The black leather jacket and fitted jeans Flack's wearing does the same to him too.
"'Course I don't," Danny replies, smiling in return. "I like walkin' in this part of Central Park. It's lookin' nice tonight, and anyways, we got a cool breeze. Perfect for a stroll."
Flack's smile strengthens, as does his.
Bethesda Terrace is quiet and secluded at this time of the night. It's precisely the way Danny wants it to be; lit with just the right number of lamps, peaceful, cooling. And most of all, no other people.
Just him and Flack.
The way it's meant to be.
They're ambling past the fountain and its Angel of Waters sculpture when Danny decides to pick up where their earlier conversation in the car left off.
"Do you intend to tell her the truth?"
Flack takes his time to reply the gentle query.
"I don't know. What do I say to her?" Flack says, shrugging his shoulders. His fingers are tucked into the side pockets of his jeans. "Do I tell her that she really isn't crazy in believin' one of her older brothers isn't human? That she oughta tell the whole world 'bout me and my kind?"
Flack sighs.
"Do ya know what that'll do to her? If she doesn't get thrown into a nuthouse …" Flack purses his lips. "The others will go after her. They won't let somethin' as big as exposure of our existence slide."
"What makes you think she'll tell other people 'bout it?"
"Danny, she's the only one who suspects somethin'. My - her parents, her brothers, they don't know anythin'. And to be honest, I'd like to keep it that way."
Danny slows to a standstill.
"Even if it means Sam drinks herself to the ground?"
Flack's reply is immediate.
"I won't let that happen, specially not now that I know what's goin' on with her!"
The vehemence in Flack's low voice causes Danny to rear back although Flack is just standing there, his gaze fierce and determined. In the past, such a reaction from Flack would not have intimidated him. Not too much. However, knowing what he does now …
"I'm sorry, I - I didn't mean to imply you'd do somethin' like that," he says sincerely.
He doesn't know what his visage is disclosing. Whatever it is, it's brought out an emotion on the other man's handsome features that always pains him to see: remorse.
For a while, a loaded silence encompasses them.
Then Flack, his blue eyes large and entreating, murmurs, "Are you afraid of me?"
At that moment, the moonlight cascading upon them intensifies. It delineates Flack's face from the side, defining his aristocratic nose, high cheekbone, strong brow and jaw line, and those dark pink lips. Danny has dreamed of those lips more than he dares to count.
Flack is indeed stunning in the moonlight.
Flack, his best friend. The man who's never abandoned him, no matter what.
What is there to fear of Flack, the one who has saved his life time and again, the one who has stood by his side from the beginning?
The one whom he loves, and he hopes very much loves him also?
"Well …" Danny gazes mutely at Flack, his mien impassive. "To tell you the truth …"
He waits a couple of seconds.
Just as Flack's brows furrow in concern, he loses his composure and snorts and sniggers, saying, "It's kinda hard to be scared of a guy called Donté."
His sniggers become much more difficult to control after he detects the frown on Flack's face. Unfortunately for the guy, a frown only works in dispelling snickers when there isn't an amused smirk tagging along.
Danny presses a fist to his lips and coughs. Then, feigning seriousness, he nods and says, "It's better than Dracula, definitely."
That gets Flack snorting too.
"Heh. At least it isn't Bob or Bill either."
The very idea of Flack called Bob or Bill or, God forbid, Billy-Bob, cracks Danny up. It doesn't help him in the least that the image of Flack in dungarees, a straw hat and rubber boots pops into his head right there and then.
"Har har, laugh all ya want." Flack wrinkles his nose. "Personally, I think Donté's a fantastic name."
Danny lets fly a playful punch to Flack's closest upper arm. "Of course ya think that! It's your name!"
"You're just jealous, that's all."
Ah, there it is, that sexy, smug expression Flack has whenever they banter and Flack thinks he's finished on top. It makes Danny smile, every time.
Flack is glad again.
All is right with the world once more.
They carry on their strolling around the Bethesda Terrace fountain. In the tranquil shadows, with no one else around, it's so much easier for Danny to walk closer with Flack, to brush his arm against the other man's. To feel the firmness, the solidity, of Flack's presence.
And maybe, just maybe, Flack's doing the same thing with him for the same reason.
"Does it mean anythin'?" he eventually asks.
"My name? It's Italian. It means 'lasting'."
"'Lasting', huh?" A mischievous grin flashes across Danny's visage. "It fits you well."
Something in the left side of his chest skips a beat at the unanticipated heat in Flack's eyes.
"In more ways than one," Flack murmurs, and those good shivers are running up and down Danny's back for the hundredth time that night, tightening his throat, hitching his breath. His hands begin to tremble. Goosebumps pop up all over his arms even though he's wearing his favorite long-sleeved, white shirt, the body-hugging one.
The one he knows Flack is very smitten with, if the constant, palpable stares at him are anything to go by.
"Somethin' tells me you're not just referrin' to your agelessness, huh?"
The sensual curve of Flack's lips is a toe-curling answer in itself.
Is it possible, Danny thinks to himself, is it possible he isn't alone in his feelings?
"So how old are you, really?"
"Don't ya know it's rude to ask someone's age?"
"Hey, you told me I can ask ya anythin'!"
Flack laughs, then says, "Yeah, I did. 'Course you can ask me anythin' ya want, Danny."
Danny can't quite explain the warmth he feels at hearing that.
"I'm two hundred and ninety four years old, give or take a few years."
Once again, Danny halts in his steps, and he gapes at Flack, his mouth open in an 'o' shape.
"Two hundred and … wow," he mumbles. Slowly, a smile of amazement materializes on his mien. "You … you must have experienced so much. Seen so much. No wonder homicide scenes never fazed ya, not even when we were rookies workin' together."
One of the things he loves most about Flack's eyes are their eloquence. The way they convey so much, so profoundly with a single glance. Despite Flack still smiling, the man's eyes are imparting a different story.
"I've seen worse." There is a grave pause, and then, Flack says, "And I've done worse."
The notion that Flack has taken a life, perhaps numerous lives, should be frightening Danny.
It doesn't.
"You've killed people?"
Flack gazes into his eyes. Nothing is concealed within Flack's.
"Yes. A long time ago, when times were much harder. It was kill or be killed. Most times, I didn't have much of a choice."
Danny doesn't think twice and reaches out to sweep his fingers down Flack's left arm from elbow to wrist.
"I'm not judging' you, Don. I can't imagine what I woulda done if it'd been me, ya know? Two hundred - three hundred years … I don't think I woulda lasted a day back then."
Inside his boots, Danny's toes curl even more as Flack grasps his hand and gives it an appreciative squeeze.
"Nah, you would have been fine. You're a big boy, you can take care of yourself."
Neither he or Flack release their clasp on each other's hands, or consider why they aren't.
Something that feels so right won't be afraid of any misgivings anyhow.
In the end, it is Flack who lets go first, albeit very unhurriedly and reluctantly. Danny doesn't mention a thing about it. He's too busy keeping his hands from trembling so much, in particular the right one that had held Flack's.
Does Flack notice it?
Can Flack hear his rapid heartbeat right now, or his quavering breaths?
Flack is nothing like what the novels and films depict of his kind. If Flack hadn't told him the entire truth and then proved it, he would never have believed for a second Flack isn't human. It's rather difficult to deem witnessing Flack lifting a six thousand-pound SUV into the air using his bare hands as anything other than fucking incredible.
"So you're not the usual type, huh?"
Flack's eyebrows shoot up. "The usual type?"
"Yeah. You're nothin' like what books and movies show. You can walk in sunlight, for one, and you can eat and drink regular food. We just had pizza hours ago. And the pig you are, you ate a whole pepperoni pizza on your own!"
Flack chuckles. "Hey, I was hungry, a'right? We had a long day a' work today! Let a guy fulfill his needs now and then."
"Ya see what I mean? You're not very different from a human at all."
"Well, I can do all that, yeah, but I can do without them." Flack waves one forefinger in the air. "Without blood, now that's somethin' else."
"So you can walk in sunlight, eat food and drink -"
"Don't forget I love garlic," Flack interrupts, winking at him.
"Yeah, yeah, eat food and garlic. Gotcha." Danny smirks, then adds, "Okay, holy water and crucifixes don't affect you, ya don't sleep in a coffin - last checked, anyway - ya obviously aren't afraid of silver either since you're wearin' a silver necklace, ya don't turn into a bat - uhm … ya don't, right?"
"Mmm, think I'll keep that one to myself."
"Oh, you gotta be kiddin' me."
Between them, Flack has always been the master of facial expressions, but the one upon Flack's visage this very minute is far too innocent. Deceptively so. Which, in other words, means -
"You so don't."
Flack's guise is broken by the brief tremor of his lips. Oh hoh, Flack almost laughed, he saw it!
"You nutball, you really had me thinkin' you could change into a bat!"
He punches a snickering Flack on the arm again.
"Why the heck would I wanna change into a bat, even if I could!" Flack exclaims, his eyes crinkled in amusement.
"I - isn't that what your kind changes into when ya wanna, I dunno, fly places?"
Flack's laughter, resonant and jubilant, travels across the watery vastness of the fountain, past it onto the Central Park lake that Bethesda Terrace gives onto and beyond.
"You're so funny, Dan."
Flack is grinning from ear to ear. From what Danny can see in the duskiness of night, Flack doesn't seem to have any visible fangs. Hell, should he compare their teeth right now, he's sure he'll have the more apparent, sharper fangs.
"Nah, me changin' into a bat, that's not true. We don't change into bats or any other kinda animals," Flack continues a minute later. "Ya can see for yourself a lotta things people think 'bout those like me aren't true. But some of us, after a long 'nough time, we develop specific powers."
"Powers?"
Without warning, a most unwelcome, ghastly image rushes to the forefront of Danny's mind: It's Flack, sprawled on blood-soaked ground, surrounded by devastation, his eyes closed and his belly blasted for the world to see by a bomb detonation.
Flack's insides are very red and horrifying.
"Danny?"
Danny peels open eyes he never realized he'd shut.
Even now, years after the incident, the mere memory of what occurred to Flack that day still haunts him. When he saw Flack that way, looking as close to death as any severely wounded person would, he thought someone had crushed his heart to a pulp. Stella, who'd been behind him at the time, had to grab his shoulders and give him a violent shake to snap him out of his shock.
It had taken him weeks afterwards to get over his entrenched fright that Flack was going to die.
"Danny, what is it?"
Flack's hand is resting on his shoulder, and it guides him back to the present, where Flack is fine and isn't dying and won't leave him.
Flack is here. Everything's alright.
"Superhuman healin'," he murmurs. "Is that your power?"
"No, that, it's a common thing. Same with superhuman strength and speed." Flack angles his head. "What made you think that?"
Danny gazes into Flack's eyes.
"The bombin'."
Flack blinks, then says, "Ya mean, the Lessing case? The one where I got caught in that bomb explosion?"
Danny nods. "You were hurt really bad, but you healed up so fast. Like nothin' happened."
"Hn. Yeah, that was a bad one. Took me 'bout a week to fully recover."
It's Danny's turn to blink.
"A week? You healed from that in a week? You were in the hospital for nearly a month!" He throws up his arms in astonishment. "How'd you fool the nurses and doctors if you healed up in a week?!"
Flack clears his throat. Then, he starts rocking on the balls of his feet, a small, impish smile arching up his lips.
"Hypnosis."
Danny can't help himself and bursts out laughing.
"Hypnosis? For real?"
Flack's smile broadens. "Uh hmm."
"Holy cr- I mean, seriously … hypnosis!" Danny laughs some more, tickled by Flack's revelation. "Do you, what, swing some pocket watch from a chain and tell them to do stuff? Stare them in the eye and then do some magic hand gestures or somethin'? Or maybe carry around some spinnin' hypno-disk?"
Flack snorts. "Those are fake magic tricks, silly. Me, I'm the real deal. All I gotta do is talk."
"Talk, huh? Like you are now?"
"Yeah." Flack's voice deepens. "If I wish to."
The ground beneath Danny's feet is suddenly that much more difficult to sense. He thinks he's floating, but he hears the grass squelching under his boots as he walks backwards into the wooded area next to Bethesda Terrace, the woods on the shores of the Ramble overlooking the lake.
Flack, lit from behind now, is calmly following him step for step.
Flack isn't creating a single sound.
For some reason, that, more than anything else, sends a forceful frisson of excitement running through Danny's body.
He stretches his hands back and encounters rough bark. There's a tree behind him, a thick, white-and-brown Sycamore tree with its low-hanging, verdant branches and his breath hitches when it hits him that he's cornered and Flack's looming above him, staring at him like the man always does.
There's no way out.
Danny has no wish for one.
He leans back, squaring his shoulders, puffing out his chest, arching his neck and baring it. If he's right and what he feels for Flack is mutual, the response to what he'll say next will determine the outcome of the night.
"You ever done it to me?" Danny returns Flack's stare with an equally steadfast one. "Hypnotized me to do what you want?"
Flack gazes at his face for so long that he begins to wonder whether Flack had heard him.
Then, as if the sun itself had risen inside Flack's big, blue eyes, they glow in the darkness as the man whispers, "No. I want everythin' you do with me to be real. I want to know that it all comes from you. You alone."
Danny is unable to look away. Part of him, a small part of him, is aware that he has the means to disentangle himself from whatever invisible claim Flack may have over him. The greater part of him, remarkably composed and undaunted, doesn't want to break free.
Is this Flack hypnotizing him, in this very moment?
Or is Flack telling the truth? And this is simply of his own choice, him standing here, presenting himself with no guards up, waiting for Flack to do what he's yearned for so long?
"Guess I … guess I don't know you that well after all," he utters faintly.
His heart is racing. The blood is surging through his ears, and it's impossible Flack isn't hearing it strident as a raging storm. Apart from superhuman strength, speed and healing, Flack has extraordinary senses too. Considering how raucous New York city is, it's a miracle Flack hasn't gone nuts from the noise pollution.
Tonight, however, tonight it is serene and all Flack has to hear are his shallow breaths and the quick beat within his chest.
"No," Flack replies.
A heartbeat, two, three -
"You're the only one who truly does."
Flack's eyes are no longer glowing, but the tender smile so evident on his full lips still manages to make Danny's flat belly clench.
Don't bring my hopes up like this, Danny thinks to himself, please don't.
He is grateful for Flack unexpectedly moving away. Perhaps Flack has discerned his inner turmoil. Perhaps Flack has become aware of his feelings, much as he's tried to obscure them.
Perhaps Flack needs the space as much as he does, for the same reasons.
It is a possibility too tempting for Danny to deny.
Nibbling on his lower lip, he bounds from the tree and darts after Flack who has sauntered further into the shady woods, a tall, lanky figure with hunched shoulders and hands in the pockets of his jeans.
"Hey, wait up!"
And are Danny's eyes deceiving him, or is Flack … waddling?
Once he's beside Flack again, he's pleased to see Flack's smile hasn't faded.
"That's what ya get for bein' a slowpoke," Flack says, and Danny nudges the other man in the side with his elbow. Flack chuckles in response.
This forested area is even more isolated from prying eyes than Bethesda Terrace. It's more murky as well, which encourages Danny to press his body against Flack's, to let his hand brush down Flack's side, along Flack's jeans.
Flack's hand is fisted inside the pocket of his jeans.
In fact, Flack is tense all over.
Against the odds, Danny's heart starts to thump even faster.
"Must drive ya crazy goin' into the pathology lab," he says when he finds the hush, though an easy one, unbearable. He craves to hear Flack talk once more, the way the man did minutes ago.
"Nah." Flack makes a face. "Not interested in dried blood on slides or yucky test tube blood."
"Oh, yeah? What if it's mine?"
Flack stops dead in his tracks.
It's the ideal opportunity for Danny to gain the upper hand on Flack, to acquiesce to his desires at last and let his fears and paranoias control him no more.
Now.
Do it now.
He leaps in front of Flack and grabs Flack by the flanks, gazing up at Flack from beneath his eyelids.
"Would you be interested in mine?" he rasps. "Have you ever thought 'bout tastin' my blood?"
Flack's eyes are wide. His lower lip is trembling.
Danny can feel the shudders of Flack's muscular torso in the encirclement of his hands.
Flack, one of the most formidable and indomitable of his kind, is at his complete mercy. His mercy, a regular human. Just like that.
"Yes or no, Don." - under Flack's leather jacket, his hands leisurely roam the firm expanses of the taller man's lower back and abdomen - "It's simple as that."
Flack's broad chest swells in one deep inhalation. It's such a simple, mundane action, but it fascinates Danny now to see Flack doing it. It isn't necessary for those like Flack to breathe at all. To see Flack doing it, to know the man's doing it to get a whiff of the air, to draw in his scent just for the sake of it …
Fuck, Danny hasn't felt this aroused in a long time.
Flack's reply is the fuel to the fire stirring inside him.
"Yes. All the time." Flack licks his lower lip. "All the time."
Oh God, Flack's large hands are upon him and they're sliding under his shirt and caressing his sides and back and they're sliding underneath the hem of his jeans -
"I wanna see them, Don."
Oh God, oh God, there's no turning back now.
There's no way in hell they can ever return to being just ordinary friends, just Danny Messer the crime scene investigator and Don Flack the homicide detective, not anymore. This is no average joe who's standing in front him, closely embracing him and touching their foreheads together.
This is Flac- no, Donté, the two-hundred-and-ninety-four year old immortal being with a thirst for the crimson elixir coursing through his veins.
A thirst for him.
"I wanna see them, please," Danny restates in a husky tone.
"Don't think that's a good idea, Danny."
Danny tips his head back to better look at Flack's face. Whoa, he's never heard Flack's voice drop that low before. It almost sounds like Flack is … growling.
"Why?" One of Danny's eyebrows arches. "Ya think I'll get scared?"
Flack is inhaling again.
"I lose control, and you will."
Oooh fuck, if Flack doesn't let him go this instant, he's about to give the guy one hard surprise. He can get really used to hearing Flack talk in that voice. The glowing eyes are also a plus on his list of Things that Turn Him On Like Crazy.
He knows how deadly Flack is, he knows he's flirting with real danger and yet, he's not terrified.
Not a bit.
Danny lays his hand on Flack's chest, above the man's soundless albeit noble heart.
"Ya said I'm the only one who truly knows you, right?"
Flack, grasping his hand and securing it to where he rested it, dips his head in agreement.
"I know you won't hurt me, Don. You won't."
Flack is staring at the vicinity of his neck, he can feel it.
"That's not what I'm talkin' 'bout."
Flack's voice is wavering.
Danny watches Flack's moist tongue glide along a dark pink lower lip.
"Well, maybe …" Danny glides his hand from Flack's chest up a long neck to Flack's handsome visage. "Maybe I do know what you're talkin' 'bout."
Flack's hair is so copious and dark and lovely. It fills the gaps between his fingers as he tenderly pulls down Flack's head, closing the inches of air between their lips.
"And maybe, I want you to lose control," he whispers, his eyes half-lidded and heavy with lust. "You ever thought of that?"
Danny's mind is blown away the split second their lips touch. He gasps into Flack's mouth and clings onto Flack's shoulders, his eyes snapping open at Flack hauling him up and off the ground. His second gasp is much louder; Flack has pinned him against the trunk of the closest tree, precious inches above gnarled roots and he lets his eyes flutter shut and his legs rub against Flack's and fuck, Flack tastes so damn good -
"Ho bisogno di te …"
Flack is murmuring something upon his lips as they kiss.
"Ho bisogno di te."
It's Italian. Flack's speaking to him in Italian.
"Il mio Daniel …"
Ohfuck, fuck, he can feel Flack's lips on the side of his neck now, leaving delicate kisses from below his lower jaw down to the top of his collar bone. He sucks in an unsteady breath. Lets out a moan.
Do it.
Do it now.
A rumbling snarl pierces the quietness.
Two sharp points are pricking the sensitive skin of Danny's neck.
He lets out another moan, one that tightens Flack's arms around his body …
And then sets him free.
Danny almost tumbles onto the lush ground, upright only due to fast reflexes and his hands clutching at the tree he'd been propped on. To see no one before him, no Flack within reach, jolts him.
Unconsciously, he strokes the tingling area of his neck where Flack's lips had been.
Where Flack's teeth had been.
"Don?"
He peers into the dark. Soon, he distinguishes Flack's sturdy form a dozen feet away. Flack has his back turned towards him, and Danny isn't upset that Flack doesn't swivel around even after he places his hand on Flack's upper back and rubs it in a reassuring manner.
"It's okay, it's okay."
Flack is shivering. His arms are crossed over his chest. His fingers are plainly burrowing into his upper arms, as if they are all that's preventing him from shattering into a million pieces.
Flack in such a torment perturbs Danny to the core.
"I'm sorry, I -" Flack mumbles.
"Sshh."
Flack finally faces him.
Danny is awed in silence at the sight of the pointed fangs where Flack's normal canines were. Flack doesn't budge an inch while he touches them with the tip of his right forefinger. They are neither too long or too short, just enough that anyone up close will surely know they are far from human.
And sharp, very sharp.
Danny learns this the difficult way.
"Ow."
A droplet of blood arises on the pad of his finger. In the moonlight, it is obsidian black, its apex a dot of astounding white. It trickles down his finger in a straight line.
He is startled by Flack seizing his wrist.
They gaze into one another's eyes, and then, in another startling move, Flack softly asks, "May I?"
Danny has only one answer to that.
"Yes."
Flack sighs in something akin to gratification. His glowing eyes flicker close. The absolute pleasure suffusing Flack's mien as the man suckles on his bleeding finger staggers Danny even more than their kiss had. He has to lock his knees just to continue standing.
What does he taste like to Flack?
What does Flack taste like?
He yearns to know.
It is a while until Flack withdraws Danny's finger. Its length bears down upon Flack's lower lip as it slides out of Flack's mouth, leaving behind a pale trail of red.
Danny senses no pain whatsoever.
He glances at his forefinger.
The tiny puncture is gone.
The lingering sensations of Flack's tongue on and around his finger, conversely, have not.
"Mmmm."
Flack is sucking on his lower lip, on the smidgens of blood there.
His blood.
Danny tries to speak, but to no avail. Flack is still grasping his wrist, suspending him in timelessness, raising him up from inside to where his physical body cannot go. No, though Flack were to let him go now, things will never be the same again.
They will never be the same again.
Their second kiss is a tender, affectionate one, and Danny is certain there will be many more to come his way, what with Flack being a true man of his word.
"Now …" Flack murmurs. "You will always be a part of me."