Title: Oranges and Cigarettes
Author: Candle Beck
Rating: PG
Summary: Two packs a day and a heart as strong as iron.

Notes: It's short. It contains no slash (which, like, dwah? Surprised me). Been awhile since I've done the Sports Night thing, which is just not right. No people named Teddy were harmed in the writing of this.

Oranges and Cigarettes
By Candle Beck

Dan Rydell's grandpa on his mom's side was named Joshua, and he smoked Lucky Strike unfiltereds.

He was an old New York City guy, the kind of guy Danny wanted to be when he grew up. When Danny and his family would come down from Connecticut to visit, his grandpa was always doing so-cool stuff like rigging up salt-lights on his fire escape so the kids down the street could play wall-ball in the alley after the days started getting really short, and making a small wooden pinball table with sanded-down nails tied with rubber bands for flippers, and peeling oranges with a pocketknife for Danny and his brothers. Joshua knew how to do everything.

Dan and David and Sam would lie on their stomachs on the carpet, in a line with their elbows propped and chins in hand, watching the game on Joshua's old television set, which was a black-and-white with rabbit ears and a crank-dial, but had such a clear picture you could smell the grass. Joshua would smoke his Luckys and teach them stuff, giving them pieces of oranges until their hands were all sticky and their mouths puckered.

They called him by his first name, although no one's really sure how that got started. Probably Danny's dad and mom just always talked about him as 'Joshua,' rather than 'Grandpa,' so that's the name that stuck. Danny liked that. Being on a first name basis with someone he loved.

Joshua told the truth, all the time, and didn't temper anything. When Sam, maybe seven or eight years old, came to him crying and clutching Danny's hand, having seen a man on the sidewalk with his shirt gashed open and blood all over his chest, Joshua had pulled Sam away from his brother, tucked him down in the chair next to him, and told him seriously, "Somebody wanted to hurt that man. Maybe even kill him. Maybe just take his money away."

Joshua honestly explained crime and basic human wickedness to Danny's little brother, and Danny was squeezing his hand into a fist at his side, feeling the pulse in his fingers and thinking that Sam was too little to understand or help, but Danny had run away too.

And when Dan fucked up, Joshua told him so. Joshua was the one Dan had run away to when he was fifteen years old and had scraped his dad's car all up along the side of the guardrail over the bridge. He'd been scared half to death about what his parents were gonna do to him, and hitched his way into the city, which would probably get him in more trouble than the car.

He showed up at Joshua's Brooklyn apartment with his face scared-white and his hand wrapped so tightly around the strap of his backpack the canvas weave stayed imprinted on his palm for hours. He had subway tokens in his pocket and a twenty dollar bill folded up in his sock, and he'd chewed his lip to bleeding. Joshua took one look at him, a long drag on his cigarette, sighing out a fall of smoke and saying plainly, "You fucked up, Danny, didn't you?"

Danny swallowing and nodding, and Joshua bringing him inside, making him a sandwich and giving him a glass bottle Coke, letting him watch the Mets game before calling his folks to let them know where he was. That Mets game. Like a three hour stay of execution. Maybe just to get his parents worried enough that they'd be more relieved than angry when he did call them. Joshua was clever like that.

It was always the big stuff that Danny went to Joshua about. The life-or-death concerns of a teenaged boy. Joshua never took him lightly, and every word he said had meaning and force, whether it was about girls or college or the new left fielder. Danny trusted him with all his heart.

When Sam got killed, Danny didn't talk to anybody for awhile. After the funeral, there were all these people in their house, big white rambly house that Dan and Sam and David had grown up in, height notches on the kitchen doorframe, boards hammered into the tree out back, a makeshift ladder.

Dan went up to their room, and took off his black tie, took off his jacket. Unbuttoned the first few buttons of his shirt and sat on Sam's bed, rolling a baseball between his palms and looking out at the woods behind their house. He used to think he could see New York City from his bedroom window, because they were so close, really, a stone's throw. But that fog over the trees was just smoke, it turned out. The lights at night were airplanes, nothing more.

He was crying when Joshua came in, the baseball against his face. It fit almost perfectly into the sunken curve of his eye. Joshua sat down on the bed beside him, put his arm around Danny's shoulders, rough wool coat and the smell of hard cinnamon candy. Danny buried his face in Joshua's shoulder and wept without shame like a little boy.

It took him a very long time to understand what Joshua was saying, over and over again, it wasn't your fault, it wasn't your fault, and by that time it didn't matter. Danny was hearing his grandpa's voice say something else, something with more power, something that sounded truer to his ears.

Joshua was the one he called when good stuff happened. When he got the internship at the little cable show the summer after his freshman year. When he met Casey. When he wrote his first copy. When he went on-air for the first time. When he was introduced to Willie Mays, Joshua's idol from before there was baseball in California or lights in stadiums.

After his contact with his parents became limited to a phone call every two weeks, five minutes of "yeah, I'm doing okay. Yeah, the show's going good. No, I'm not seeing anybody. Yeah, tell David I said hi too," after he was far far away from the East Coast, sometimes he thought that Joshua was the only real family he had. Thinking that always made him smile, and then feel guilty.

Joshua died while Dan was in Texas. Nothing spectacular, or unexpected. Didn't even get lung cancer, for all those bull's-eye packs of Luckys in his front shirt pocket. Just went to sleep one evening in Brooklyn, and didn't wake up. The neighborhood kids got worried when the salt-lights stayed on all night long, because Joshua always made sure to turn them off at nine o'clock, calling down, "go home, boys, you played good today." The landlord found him, notified everybody. Just a regular, New York City death.

Danny came back for the funeral. Some guy named Teddy (honestly, Teddy. Jesus) filled in for him at Lone Star, and when Dan couldn't sleep in his old room that night, he kept worrying about whether Teddy would do the best half-hour of sports highlights anybody'd ever seen, and steal Danny's job. Then he felt bad for thinking about his career with his grandpa dead, but he figured Joshua would probably understand.

Casey called him while he was eating a bagel on the back porch the next morning. "Danny, please for the love of God come home. His name is Teddy, for pete's sake." Danny smiled, and gave Casey his flight information with his mouth full.

Dan missed Joshua, but it was a good kind of missing. Someone he loved, and had known his whole life. Someone that he didn't see every day or expect would live forever. Someone he knew had had a good, happy life, and been at peace with himself. Joshua was one of the best people Danny had ever known. Mainly, Dan was just thankful to have had someone like that around to try and grow up to be like.

And then there was this moment, on Draft Day, on camera, when Danny's mouth was twisted up, halfway a sneer and halfway a grimace of pain, and Casey's eyes were huge and furious, his face bent in a dumb fake smile. There was a rush of cruel giddy adrenaline so strong that it was almost worth it, and Danny could hear the echo of his own voice saying, "Good answer, Casey," and behind it the stillness of the control room, the lights and wires beginning to flare all over the building, and he could see the anger in Casey, the baffled hurt. Ten years in a straight line, pretending to be okay, right down the drain and Danny watched it go, saw it all happen perfectly, in slow motion.

Danny smelled oranges and cigarette smoke, and heard his grandfather saying sadly, Danny, you fucked up again, didn't you?

And Danny swallowed, widened his eyes, thought helplessly, Oh, Joshua, yes, I think I did.

THE END