A/N warnings: pretty much mostly things you'd find in the show. Violence (a lot), drug use unhappy ending, See end for further notes.
…
Darling, could you empty that entire pepper grinder into the soup?
Danny was sitting in the kitchen, watching Charlie stand at the stove, lazily drawing slow circles through his soup with a wooden spoon. It's a cold night, and everyone was excited to sit at the table, rugged up and cold, and drink warm soup out of a bowl. Charlie offered to make it, to give Jean the night off. He's good like that.
"Would you mind stirring this for me while I go get another jumper?" Charlie asked him Danny put down his biscuit and nodded, as Charlie left the stove. He took the spoon into his hand and took a deep breath of the smell, and it smelled very nice. Charlie was an excellent cook.
Then, out of the blue, he reached out and picked up the pepper grinder. To his surprise, he cannot control his arm, as though it was another entity to his body entirely. He reached out with his other arm to stop it, but he can't quite. Another hand suddenly grabs him, and stops him just as he reaches the bottom of the grinder. It's like he suddenly came back to himself, and he can lower his arm again.
"What on earth are you doing?" Matthew. He doesn't answer. "Maybe you should go lie down. I'll watch Charlie's soup."
"Thank you." He mumbles and went upstairs, passing Charlie who was leaving his bedroom as he did so. He lay down on his bed and rubbed his arm until he fell asleep. He didn't wake up until the next morning.
Darling, could you walk across the road?
He's out on patrol with Charlie this time. He likes Charlie a lot, and the feeling seems to be mutual, which is better. Danny hasn't had a best mate since he was a kid, and he doesn't think Charlie has had a best mate ever, it was a bonus that they were a 'dynamite team' according to Lucien. They weren't chasing anyone, in particular, just walking the streets to remind the town of their presence and make sure there were no drunken losers out and about causing trouble.
"And so I told him that if he wanted to get out of here so bad then he'd have to go through Bill, and you should have seen his face, Danny!" Charlie says animatedly. The conversation is nice, it flows through them like a stream of cold water. Danny can't help but smile back.
"Yeah? You should have seen his face when I threatened him with Lawson." He countered, feet stepping on the cracks purposefully as they walked. It wasn't because he didn't love his mother or some such nonsense, it was a game he's stared as a child and just never bothered to grow out of.
Charlie says something else that Danny doesn't hear, because his limbs are out of control, and he's preoccupied with that. He'd been praying it was just a one-time thing and it wouldn't become a problem in his life. He's stock still, and so is Charlie.
"Danny? You alright?" He can't say anything in reply to the other man. He turned sharply and started to walk out into traffic. He would have gone straight into a car, had Charlie not grabbed his arm and yanked him back onto the pavement as fast as hard as he could. The spell is broken and Danny feels pain in his arm from the strength Charlie used to get him back.
"What the fuck was that?" Charlie demanded, he sounds mad but Danny is so tired and suddenly, he feels like he needs to throw up. And he does, right into the gutter next to them.
Darling, could you smash that teacup?
Mornings are a time of day he actually enjoys. He knows that is odd, but he likes mornings. Likes to watch the sunrise. Likes to listen to the birds. Likes to go for a morning jog. But he's still rattled from losing control of his arm the night before, and weirdly nauseous. Rose showed up in the early hours of the morning in her jogging clothes. She's gotten back into it with Charlie recently.
"Are you going to come with us?" Charlie asked, sitting at the table to tie up his shoes.
"No, I don't feel well." Charlie looked sympathetic
"When I get back, I can make you some ginger tea if you want? Cures everything from a hangover to morning sickness?"
"Yeah, I'd like that." He said, as Charlie stood up, shoes on.
"Morning boys!" Rose announced, coming in through the back door. "You ready to get your ass whooped by a gal?"
"Dream on," Charlie replied, standing again. "Just me today, though."
"Oh well, next time then." She said, turning her back. Charlie gave him a sheepish smile, and then took off after Rose.
Aunty Jean emerged from her bedroom sometime later, and put the electric kettle on. Danny was still convinced that thing was a fire hazard, but it did the job.
"You look kind of pale," Jean said, putting a hand on his forehead.
"Just a bit under the weather." He assured her
"Well, maybe a nice cup of tea will make you feel better." She said, taking three cups out of the cupboard. Aunty Jean always made a nice cup of tea, he thought, as she tipped steaming water in both cups.
He couldn't stop thinking about the night before. There aren't many things Danny is frightened of, and before last night it was only snakes that scared him, now it was snakes, and losing control of his body like that again.
Aunty Jean put her hands on his shoulders, and he remembered being a little kid, running around her farm chasing chickens. He didn't know what to do after he caught one, and just stood in the middle of the yard blank-faced, looking at his hero, the older and infinitely cooler Christopher for guidance.
Jean set the teacup down in front of him, and sat down at the table. Then, after a moment, his arms started moving of their own accord. He picked up the cup, and held it in his hands. Moving of their own accord, they move between his legs, and he dropped it onto the floor between his feet.
The smashing sounds brought Jeans off of Lucien who has just emerged from the bedroom and onto him, sitting there, covered in spilled tea and damn near close to crying. Lucien and Jean both jump up, Jean moves him away from the shattered cup physically, and only then does he feel the stinging of the dozens of cuts on his feet. Lucien wraps a tight arm around him.
"It was just an accident," Lucien said, looking at Jean with concern smeared on his features. "Why don't you go change, I'll look at your feet, and you can go have a lie-down." He said, in an utterly paternal way that sends his stomach directly into his shoes. He pushes Lucien off of him and stumbles upstairs. To rattled to even clean himself up, he collapsed onto his bed.
Darling, could you give yourself a dose of Morphine?
It's the middle of the night, but the house is not quiet. Lucien and Jean might have gone to bed, but it's a Saturday. Charlie and Matthew are engaged in their weekly tradition of drinking and listening to music in Matthew's bedroom.
He used to join them, but he hasn't been feeling himself lately. Actually, he's felt nauseous all week. It never quite went away regardless of what he did. He'd confided in Charlie a little earlier on in an attempt to get him to make some of that ginger tea he made for Jean last time she was sick. It only made him feel worse.
Suddenly, his limbs seize up and he is sitting in bed. Then, he's walking down the hallway, and down the stairs. He can hear the soft sounds of Matthew talking to Charlie, and he is able to catch a few words more clearly than in his room.
"And I…Tanks coming over….Buried their…So…"
Another war story then. Seemed like Matthew was full of them, and Charlie never seemed to get tired of hearing them. He walks down the hallway into Lucien's office. What am I doing? He thinks, trying his damnedest to stop walking and go back to bed before he gets caught. He can't. He doesn't even know where Lucien keeps his morphine, sure, locked up and hidden from sight.
Apparently, his body does, because he opens a drawer to Lucien's desk and produces a key from the junk. He walks over to the cupboard where these things are kept and with deft fingers, lets himself into the cupboard. He picks up a syringe and examines the tip, before sticking it into the bottle
This is insane, he doesn't know what he's doing. He's not a doctor or a nurse. He put the syringe down, and picked up a piece of rubber pipe, and tied it off around his arm. He stuck the syringe into his arm, and began to push down the plunger.
Then a hand wraps tightly around his and removes the needle. Thank God.
"Danny? Danny talk to me." Lucien, it's Lucien. It's like the spell is broken and he breaks away rip the tube away from his arm. Lucien grabs a handful of gauze from nearby and held it over Danny's elbow. Suddenly he starts to cry.
"Something's wrong doc." He says, "Something is really wrong." Charlie and Matthew are standing at the door with Jean. None of them seem to know what to do. He's frightened.
Darling, could you beat Jean to a bloody pulp?
A week passed without incident. Whatever had been affecting him seems to have passed now. Lucien has started to lighten up a little, and he's allowed back on patrol with Charlie. Which Is good. Charlie's been really good overall, actually.
It was the middle of the day, lunch was just ending. Charlie had already gone with Lucien to examine a crime scene, and Matthew was at the station, leaving just the two of them. He's taken a couple weeks off of work, until this whole mess was sorted. They're drinking tea again, it tastes good, warm and milky.
Jean is telling him about her new church, and he's half listening, which is rude of him, but he has other more important things to think about than that. Like his tea, and how warm the cup is in his hands, and what his future looks like. At the moment, he's not as worried as he was. It was gone, whatever it was. It was finished. He was okay. The feeling goes out of his arms and panic creeps up his neck.
He tries to look at Jean and tell her to run, to get away from him but he can't. He stood, and walked silently over her. She doesn't move, she's his aunt, she loves him, she trusts him. Why would she have any reason at all to think that he's about to do what he's going to do.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." He tells her, before punching her right in her face. The force of the punch pushes her off of the chair and onto the ground.
"Danny!" She exclaimed, shocked. Before she can really fight back, he's on top of her, and he starts to cry.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." He chants, as Jean tried to put her hands up and defend her face from the blow. He's crying as it happens, tears streaming down his face. She's his aunt, he loves her.
"Jean? Have you seen my was- Jesus Christ!" Suddenly, a pair of arms wrap around him, pulling him back as hard as he can. Danny's whole body just collapsed, suddenly he doesn't even have the energy to move.
Darling, could you beat Jean to a bloody pulp?
Danny's arms suddenly flailed wildly.
"Jean!" Charlie called, trying to pin him down, all Danny could do was cry as he watched his hands scratch furiously at Charlie's face and neck. Even though his nails are pretty dull, he watched in horror as they left streaks of red on him.
Powered by little more than her fight response, Jean is able to drag herself up off the ground, and get to the phone. She's coughing up blood. Charlie is still pinning him down. He can't even hear Jean yelling into the phone, and he didn't see who she was calling. Suddenly, his hands changed tactic and he drove his fingers directly into Charlie's left eye.
"Oh, God!" Danny said, "I'm so sorry, I'm sorry I don't want to do this." He sobbed, desperate to convince someone, anyone, he was out of his own control.
Like any other reasonable person who had just been stabbed in the eye, Charlie screamed, and his arms reached up reflexively to protect his eyes. Danny managed to push Charlie off the top of him and stumble to his feet to chase after Jean. He has no idea where she ran too, and he stumbles into the hall. Before he can get much further, the door opens.
"Char-" Lucien stood there, looking at him, confused.
"Doc!" Charlie screamed from the kitchen, "Stop him!" Lucien, for whatever reason, trusts Charlie over him, and launched at him, knocking him to the ground. As soon as Danny's head hit the pavement, he passed out.
Danny had not been expecting anyone to come get him, but when he gets the notification his bail was paid, he feels weird inside. He feels like he's walking in a permanent daze, and time passes too slowly, or all at once. They return his clothes to him, and when he walks out, he sees Charlie waiting for him. His face and neck have large gauze patches taped to them, including the eye Danny poked. When he remembered the texture of it under his fingers, his perpetually nauseous stomach rolls.
"Danny."
"Did you pay the bail?" Charlie scoffs in the most in a gesture so offensively normal that Danny can feel lacerations on his heart.
"As if. I'm struggling to pay the rent every month and you think I can pay your bail?"
"Who?"
"Lucien and Matthew put up the money, Lucien can't stand to leave Jean's side, and Matthew can't stand the sight of you, so."
"So they sent you?"
"You don't need any detective training to know that one."
What strikes him is that Charlie is so normal about this. He's trying to make Danny feel better, for some Godforsaken reason, probably some twisted sense of determination. He needs to tell Charlie to get away now, before he turns on him too. But at the same time, he wants to peel open Charlie's skin and step inside of him, and just be inside the normalcy Charlie must surely feel.
"How is she?"
"She's good. Better then she was. She wants to see you, but Lucien won't let her."
"I don't want to see her. I…I don't want to hurt her." Charlie nodded, and held the car door open for him.
"Well, good. We're not going to the hospital. I'm actually pretty sure that you're not allowed within a hundred feet of her anyway." Danny nodded dumbly and put his shaky hands on his knees. Charlie started driving, and Danny looked out the window, watching as the world flew by, totally oblivious to him.
Eventually, they passed the town limit sign. Danny looked over at him surprised.
"Where are we going?"
"We're not going anywhere." Charlie replied, "You are."
"What? Where the fuck are you taking me, Charlie, turn around!" Charlie ignored him, and put his foot on the accelerator. "Charlie!" Danny exclaimed, reaching out to grab the wheel, suddenly frightened. God, what was he doing? He couldn't leave town, that was illegal.
"Darling, wouldn't you lie down and shut up?" Danny is shocked when his body immediately replies by flopping bonelessly, his head landing on Charlie's thigh.
"Charlie." He whispered.
"I'm sorry. I didn't want to." Charlie said, taking one hand off the wheel to put it on the side of Danny's face. His mind is fuzzy and warm. This isn't happening, this isn't happening, this isn't happening. "If it helps any, I really do like ya. I'm sorry it had to turn out like this."
"No…." He said, voice cracking, and beginning to cry again. The radio in the center console crackled. Charlie grabbed it with the hand not holding the wheel, and speaks in a language that Danny doesn't speak.
"Don't worry, you'll be okay." Okay, where? Why was this happening? Why him? He wants to be a child again, he thinks of Aunty Jean smoothing a band-aid on his scraped knee and sobs harder realizing that he is never going to see her again. Mercifully, Charlie seems to be annoyed by his crying.
"Darling, could you please go to sleep?" and for once he's glad that his body obeys.
…
A/N this was inspired by a fic I first read in my misspent youth absorbing the most fucked up content I could, Would You Kindly by fireofangels. It was one of those fanfics that you read which change your life, ya know? If you've never read a fireofangels story before…Don't. If you do and traumatize yourself, then don't come crying to me, lol.
Still not sure about writing for characters other than Charlie. Hope Danny's voice was Danny enough, lol.