Atop the Broken Universal Clock
Fandom: CSI:NY
Author: Kimmychu
Rating: FRM (but it'll probably go up later)
Pairing: Danny/Flack (slash yet to be determined)
Content Warning: Violence, language, disturbing imagery
Spoilers: Set after 'Run Silent, Run Deep', so spoilers for any episode previous to that
Summary: In the aftermath of his brother's near-fatal beating, Danny must deal with the consequences of his past ... and finds himself losing the battle little by little. Will Flack be strong enough to be Danny's anchor in his darkest days?
Disclaimer: Nope, characters still don't belong to me. But, man, I sure wanna give Danny a big hug after what happened in RSRD.
OoooooooooooooooooooooooooO
Author's Notes: Hey everyone! Here's my second CSI:NY story, and it sure isn't a humor-centric one like the first. No, we're talking major angst aaaaaaall the way. Of course, if you're a DannyFlack fan like me, then this might just be the post-RSRD story for you. This chapter alone already has major spoilers for the episode. I'm not too sure at the moment whether there'll even be any overtly slash scenes at all, but there's definitely gonna be lots more suspense and action! The title of the story is taken from a poem by Sylvia Plath, entitled Doomsday. By the way, this story is completely unrelated to To DD or Not to DD, although there might be certain non-canon details I carry over. You'll know what I mean if you've read that story.
OoooooooooooooooooooooooooO
Chapter 1
The tears continued to flow long after the fleeting sensation of Mac's consoling embrace withered away, after the man was already gone.
The expanse of his chilled, numb skin barely contained the torment poisoning his soul. His weary body was sporadically wracked by muted sobs, and once in a while, he sniffled audibly and moistly to clear his sinuses. The blazing droplets trailed hot rivulets down the icy rigidness that was his face, dripping off his jaw to turn into small, dark stains on his trousers. He didn't make an effort to dry his eyes. There were a thousand more tears flooding out every time he tried to halt them. Eventhough he hadn't eaten a thing since yesterday evening, he was twisted by the overwhelming urge to throw up right there in front of everyone who was lingering at the back of the hospital.
Over and over until the pain inside him was purged.
The wooden bench beneath his curled hands and quivering thighs was about the only thing holding him in place in reality. Before that, it was Flack's arm around his slumped shoulders as he stood at Louie's bedside, grieving for a lost brother who was neither dead or alive. And after his parents' visit and his agonizing confession to Louie, it was Mac's paternal grip that kept him from imploding. Now, he couldn't even contemplate moving an inch of his body from where he sat, in the trepidation he was simply going to collapse where he stood and never get up.
Through the haziness, he could feel curious and sympathetic eyes on him whenever people moved past him. A great part of him wanted to scream at them to stop pitying him and leave him the fuck alone. The rest of him wanted them to just sit with him and hold him and tell him everything was going to be alright.
But of course, all these people could do was look through him and then walk away.
He was a phantom.
He died the second the doctor approached him and informed him the chances of his brother Louie awakening, much less recovering, was next to zero.
The low droning of a car engine broke through his daze. A car door opened, then closed with a slam. Heavy footsteps became louder and louder, until they stopped beside him.
"Danny."
He felt a large, strong hand wrap itself around one side of his neck. It was his new support now. He could let go of the bench.
He wasn't going to fall. Not yet.
Danny rubbed at his swollen eyes, blinking and squinting upwards at the tall man whose presence grounded him. Flack's lips were drawn into a thin, worried line. He appeared as immaculate and cool as he usually was, but his blue eyes told a different story. Danny couldn't recall the last time he'd ever seen Flack's eyes so wet.
"C'mon, buddy." Flack's deep timbre was uncommonly husky. "Let's get ya home, okay?'
Danny stared in baffled silence at his friend.
Home? What was home?
Two hands shifted under his arms and easily lifted him to his feet. He stood there, shivering from a wintriness he couldn't seem to escape, that burned from within him. Flack's warmth seeped into him, slowly but surely bringing him out of his internal ice age. He looked helplessly at the taller man, unable to verbally communicate to his friend he couldn't move a muscle. It took him a while to realize Flack had bodily escorted him to the car, one sinewy arm around his chest while the other was extended out to open the passenger door. Flack placed him in the seat with a tenderness that made fresh tears spring to Danny's sore eyes.
He didn't deserve this. He didn't deserve any of the kindness from his friends or his family or anybody. It was his fault his brother was technically already dead. And everyone knew it. They just didn't have the guts to say it to his face.
There were two clicks as Flack fastened Danny's seat belt, then his own. Danny didn't have to glance at Flack to know the other man was gazing anxiously at him. For some unknown reason, Danny didn't mind the scrutiny. Flack was different from other people. Flack was his friend. His true friend. Someone whom he could trust.
Someone who would never lie to him.
Flack let loose a soft, shuddering sigh. Danny expected him to ask the standard questions. There was none. Flack started the car and headed for the main road back to Danny's apartment. At least, that was where Danny assumed they was going. He honestly didn't give a damn where he went anymore. All he could see in his mind was Louie lying on that hospital bed, bruised beyond recognition and beyond hearing.
Fifteen years. It took him fifteen fucking years to go above his pride and say to his brother's face that he loved him.
Fifteen years too late.
"We're gonna go get ourselves somethin' ta eat, and then we'll go back to yer place, 'kay? Bet ya must be hungry."
Danny's stomach spasmed painfully at the word eat. He furtively pressed his forearm against his abdomen, hoping Flack wouldn't figure out how nauseous he really felt. He sensed Flack's piercing eyes on him again.
"Getcha somethin' light, if that's what ya want. Yer parents still at the hospital?"
Danny shook his head minutely.
His parents only stayed for a half hour. Seconds before their arrival earlier that evening, Flack, who'd been in the room with him, was paged and had to depart for yet another homicide scene. Flack was vehement in returning to Danny's side as soon as possible, promising to drive him back later if he wished so. When his parents entered, the homicide detective greeted them politely, gave his condolences and left them in private. Danny yearned terribly for his best friend to stay, but there were some things that only family could face alone. His father, Alessandro Messer, was stoic and quiet throughout the entire visit, looking like a much older and hardened version of Louie. His mother, Edith, was the complete opposite. Her every emotion flitted across her lined and benevolent features as she cried openly next to her older son's bedside, her blue eyes turned red by her anguish.
The first thing she'd done the second she laid eyes on Louie was to go to Danny and envelop him in an almost excruciatingly tight hug, running her hands repetitively over his head and back and murmuring hoarsely to him in Italian. Danny couldn't speak a word of the language, but his heart understood exactly what she was saying to him. She rarely hugged him, even during his childhood, so it was also exceedingly awkward. He had no idea what to do except stand there with his arms locked at his sides, his head bowed over his mother's shuddering shoulder. If it wasn't for his dad's presence, he might have broken down and cried there and then with her too. His father had to pry her arms from around him by force after ten minutes passed.
That was when she snapped, attacking her husband with a deluge of furious, frenzied words in their family's mother tongue, so close to slapping and clawing at him. Danny caught Tanglewood and Sassone and his brother's name as well as his dad's and they were enough to make his body shiver uncontrollably from the inside out. His father merely endured it like the tough guy he was, in silence and concealed, broiling anger. Danny fervently prayed his dad wasn't going to take it out on his mother afterwards like he always did, when he got into one of his drunken rages again. He was quite certain his father was going to hit the bottle hard tonight.
In the end, his mother's fury drained out of her as swiftly as it struck, leaving her weak and powerless to do anything else but let loose a wail only an inconsolable mother could. Edith Messer spent the rest of that half hour stroking Louie's head and chattering mindlessly to him in Italian, the resignation in her broken voice so sharp they cut Danny like a knife. Alessandro Messer did nothing more than look at his older son on the bed for a couple of seconds before staring at a spot on the wall near Louie's head. His dad probably expected something like this to happen years ago.
When you lived by the gun, be prepared to die by the gun. Both his brother and father lived by that motto. While his dad may have eluded a ghastly ending up to now, Louie wasn't so far off from turning the adage into a prophecy come true. Danny's balled fist itched to smash into his father's face. His misery-riddled mind couldn't comprehend how the guy who sired him could be so … indifferent. His firstborn was dying. And all the guy did was stand there like it didn't matter if his older son kicked the bucket or not.
Danny was intensely relieved once they were gone and he was alone with his older brother. He and Louie never did get along with their parents. Hell, he never got along much with Louie either, as much as they loved one another.
And what was love?
After thirty-two years of walking the earth, having his face shoved into its dirt countless times and even having seen his blood splatter on it more than he liked, Danny Messer was still none the wiser about the foreign sentiment.
"'Kay, we're here."
Flack gently ran his hand across Danny's scalp. To Danny, it was like an iron brand that left a streak of fire from his temples all the way down to the back of his head.
"Danny."
Flack's hand squeezed the back of his neck. Danny made a high, non-committal sound. He kept staring forward into the night's darkness with glazed, puffy eyes. Without his spectacles, all he saw were globs of light from the lamp posts lining the street, blackness and shadowed, bulky shapes on both sides of the road that were most likely other vehicles. The moisture blurring his vision didn't improve his sight much either.
A draft blew into the car as Flack got out. It dried the dampness on his cheeks. Danny absent-mindedly licked at his dry, cracked lips. How odd that his eyes and nose were literally clogged wet, and yet, his mouth, lips and throat were parched like the desert.
Flack opened the door on his side and reached in to unclip his seatbelt. Danny unconsciously inhaled deeply when Flack's neck was mere inches away from his face. Flack hated wearing cologne or anything close to it, so whatever Danny got a whiff of was Flack's natural scent. He could smell it even through his congested sinuses. It reminded Danny of kind smiles and homemade apple pie and clear, blue skies above lush plains. It reminded Danny of a place where he could go to only in his imagination. A place that simply couldn't exist in a life such as his.
Again, Danny felt Flack's hands under his arms. He buried his face in Flack's smooth neck and encircled his arms tightly over Flack's shoulders, willing his tired body to absorb Flack's body heat that felt as searing as the sun. Flack didn't say anything about Danny's sudden, wordless plea for physical solace. The homicide detective wrapped his own arms around Danny's shivering upper body without hesitation, carefully pulling him out and getting him to his feet.
Outside, Danny's shivers worsened. His breath quickened. He began losing feeling in his extremities. His brain was yelling at him that he was gradually going into shock, but somehow, he had forgotten just what he had to do to treat it. Flack propped him up at the waist, bending down quickly to pick up a plastic bag filled with what looked like cartons of takeaway food. At the involuntary imagery of his favorite food in his head, he clamped his mouth shut, swallowing down the sour bile that rose in his throat.
The last thing Flack needed was for him to hork up whatever was in his churning belly onto the homicide detective.
Flack's arm was immediately back around his waist, clutching him close to Flack's stability and strength. Danny kept his eyesight trained on the ground beneath his unsteady feet the whole way from Flack's car to his apartment. He had to virtually stare at his feet to get them moving step by step. Up onto each tread of the short staircase, through the apartment building entrance, into the elevator, out the elevator on the fourth floor and finally, before the plain, dark red door that was his apartment's front door. Danny was trying very hard to remember precisely when Flack had stopped on the journey to buy food. He was getting frightened by the thought he was so out of it, he was losing brief spans of time and memory.
Flack put the plastic bag on the floor and slipped a hand into the right pocket of his trousers, searching for his wallet. Danny always retained his home key on a chain attached to it. Flack knew this very well since the guy'd crashed overnight at Danny's place more times than the CSI could call to mind, typically after a long night painting the town red with hoops and drinks. Typically, Flack would be his energetic, snarky self, pushing all of Danny's buttons in just the right way and making him laugh like no one else could. Tonight, Flack was utterly hushed, visage haggard and aged far ahead of its years. His movements, though agile as ever, were measured and laden with some unseen, grave burden.
Flack guided Danny through the apartment door and locked it behind them. Danny could sense the chilly numbness spread from his hands and feet towards his torso and head. It was like he was gradually turning to dead stone after seeing the Medusa that was the tangle of tubes and wires threading into his brother's damaged body. By the time they got near Danny's battered sofa in the living area, Flack had to carry his full weight, his dragging feet creating a screeching sound on the lacquered floor.
"Just sit here, okay, Danny? I'll be right back with some hot water and food. Just sit here." Flack stroked his head once more. It made him recall how Louie used to do the same, when they were still boys and thought the world was their playground and that they were going to be kings. His fingers twisted stiffly around the cloth of his suede jacket. His blue eyes scrunched up. No, he was not going to cry anymore. He had enough.
The only light switched on in the entire place was in the kitchen. The stark noises of Flack taking out mugs and other utensils echoed loudly in the silent apartment. More sounds of Flack opening the cartons of food. Danny couldn't smell anything obvious, which meant it probably wasn't of the Chinese or Italian fare that he would have enjoyed in any other circumstance. He was grateful for that. The chances were big he'd have vomited all over his living room floor the moment he smelled anything remotely oily or pungent.
In the empty screen of the television in front of the sofa, Danny could see a dim reflection of himself. The television set was close enough that he saw the downturn of his compressed lips, the dark rings around his eyes, the unkempt condition of his clothes. The harsh sorrow in his old, cerulean eyes. Whoever that man was mirrored in the television screen, it was someone he no longer recognized.
An unexpected, alarming crash was heard outside. It was immediately followed by enraged yelling between some men in the distance. It was all Danny's muddled brain needed to leap back in time fifteen years ago to 1991, to that fated day when he lost more than just a brother's affection.
"Hey, go off!"
A rough wallop into his face.
"Hit the road! Geddoutta here, hit the road, D!"
A brutal shove to his chest. A hard tumble to the coarse tarmac.
"You embarrass me in front of my boys! Geddoutta here, you're a DISGRACE!"
"Danny?"
Long fingers apprehensively pat his cheek.
"Danny, talk to me, buddy. Y-you're hyperventilating." Dependable, sturdy hands on his shoulders, shaking him not unkindly. "Snap outta it."
Danny's memory rolodex zoomed forward in time to tonight.
Mac, standing before him, mien cool and yet, compassionate.
"How's your brother?"
Rapid, jerky shake of his head, throat blocked, eyes tearing up appallingly. God, it hurts so bad.
"Lindsay told me you listened to … the tape."
Head up high as could be. A sniffle or two. Mac appearing an indistinct figure.
"We did everything we could forensically, but … in the end, it was Louie who saved you."
"Danny, please, you're scarin' me." Flack's hands were cupping his wet face now, but all he could see was his one and only brother, covered in his own blood and being wheeled into the hospital ER.
Mac's face loomed large in his recollection.
"It was Louie who saved you."
Blood. There was so much blood.
The acidic bile that had been forced down his gullet all this time shot straight up into his mouth, overpowering his sense of smell and taste and causing his nausea to come to the forefront. Danny smacked a trembling hand across his closed mouth, lurching to his feet and rushing precariously for the bathroom nearby. He didn't even feel the pain of his shoulder slamming into the side of the bathroom's doorway, or the agony of his knees cracking severely on the ceramic-tiled floor.
Danny's body convulsed violently as he heaved into the toilet bowl. He thought his unfilled body would come up with nothing but liquid, but an awful, acerbic substance that was sickly brown in color splattered into the water anyway. The sight and stench of it made Danny gag and retch twice as much. More of the stuff came out, and then, the vomiting fit diminished with intermittent bouts of throwing up clear fluid.
Danny hazily felt a warm, damp towel being rubbed all over his face, especially around his mouth and eyes. Somebody was crushing him in a tight embrace, speaking softly into his hair, holding his icy, deadened hands. Somewhere far away, Danny heard a man sobbing and bawling dissonantly, rambling in a fractured voice. Another man was whispering in a familiar but shaky tone, saying everything was going to be alright and that he was going to take care of him and never abandon him.
"The-they beat him up r-really bad, Don … th-there was-was so much blood, an-and I tried ta call his n-name, wake him up … and he-he was covered in s-so much blood …and-and I-I tried ta tell him I-I loved him … they b-beat him up really bad, Don."
"Shhhh, it's okay, it's gonna be okay, ssshh …" The other man's low voice was beginning to break too.
"I l-love my brother, I don't want him to die. I don't want him to die." Danny felt scorching rivulets of moisture running down his cheeks. He wondered if they were coming from the other man who was whispering all those words of comfort.
"They're gonna do everything they can, Danny, the best.Sssshhh."
A nuzzle of someone's face into his hair. Perhaps even a kiss.
"Let it go … lemme take care of you."
Danny sat there on the tiled bathroom of his apartment and permitted himself to be held, leaning his face against the solid chest of the person who embraced him. He felt totally and utterly void within. The crying man's acute sobs were all that resonated in the emptiness, even after he plunged into a deep sleep filled with anarchic dreams of pouring red and angry, brown eyes and shattering hearts.
It would be many, many days of bleakness and nights of remorse before Danny realized that the wailing, broken man had been himself.