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.
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Author's Notes: I do not know why, but this chapter went hella long, heh. Anyways, it should also give you all a good idea of what's to come for our favorite detective boys. Thanks for all the reviews so far, I appreciate them! By the way … in chapter 1? The word 'hork' was meant to be funny, heheheh.
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Chapter 2
The obligation of building Sing Sing prison fell to a man named Captain Elam Lynds in 1825. He was a prison warden from New York who believed a coordinated system of silence was the only way for convicts to return to a normal life of righteousness.
It was a great irony one of the most notorious, repressive penitentiaries in the United States would be built in an area called Mt. Pleasant. The name Sing Sing, which was also the name of a village nearby the prison, derived from the Indian phrase which, interpreted, meant stone upon stone. It was a very fitting name, since prisoners during the nineteenth century had to cut marble stones to make up the walls of Sing Sing. They virtually constructed their own cells throughout months of backbreaking labor, chambers only seven feet long and three feet wide and six feet seven inches high. It was only after hundreds more convicts were locked up that there were more construction jobs undertaken to improve things.
Subsequent to that, Sing Sing was still very much a manmade hell on earth. In acknowledgment to Captain Lynds' ideals, none of the prisoners were allowed to communicate with each other in any way whatsoever. They ate in silence, toiled in silence, slept in silence, hell, even crapped in silence. Existed in silence. Violation of this system resulted in instant and usually severe punishment. One of the most famous torture methods was The Bath. A convict would be strapped to a chair, and a bowl-like apparatus would be fastened around the inmate's head so that water could rise above his mouth and even his nose. At times, the water would fall on the prisoner's head from a great distance, causing pain as well as suffocate him. Then there was also flogging, where some inmates were beaten till they were at death's door.
Nowadays, Sing Sing housed more than two thousand prisoners and had roughly a thousand people in its employment. It had even been used by Hollywood as a backdrop for a number of movies that helped form its current frightening representation of violence and suffering in the public mind. Of course, the penitentiary today was hardly anything like the original prison constructed centuries ago, nor were any of the cruel torture techniques practiced any longer.
A very fortunate thing for a certain gangster who'd recently become another of Sing Sing's numerous inhabitants.
Sonny Sassone had aged a great deal in the one year since he was first investigated by Detective Taylor and his team over the brutal death of a Tanglewood Boy wannabe. The bags under his shallow, aloof eyes were heavier, the balding spot on his head more austere. His gut was no longer as flat as it used to be. There were scars where they weren't any before, but those, he'd earned them fair and square. He was hardly going to complain about any of them. The other guys couldn't even complain about theirs if they wanted to. Dead people didn't talk.
Sonny hardly had the need to complain about his life either. He was living it like a god, with so much cash to burn he could use hundred dollar bills to light his cigarettes every day and still be a millionaire at the end of the day. Not to mention the pretty whores he got to bang and the drugs and alcohol he got at the snap of his fingers.
Then that sonofabitch CSI detective who didn't know when to quit had to make good on his promise and fuck up his entire life.
No. No, it wasn't that Detective Taylor who yanked out that vital, little cog in his wheel of power.
It was that stupid bastard Louie Messer. Hearing that name alone drove him to roar like a livid, rabid lion in his desolate, ill-green cell at night. That traitorous little shit. He had the nerve to wear a wire and frame him. Sonny zealously hoped his former Tanglewood brother wasn't going to die. Oh no, death was too easy. After ordering the guy to be beaten that bad? He wanted Louie to exist for the rest of his days as a crippled vegetable who'd be incapable of anything except lie there waiting for death.
By his hand.
Only a few months into his sentence, Sonny had transformed back to his old self. The insane, stone-hard killer he'd been fifteen years ago and not the flabby, lazy bum he was right before he was captured for his deeds. On his first day of incarceration, he shaved off all the hair on his head. It gave him an air of menace that wouldn't have been as blatant if he'd left his thinning hair the way it was. After a couple of weeks of working out at the penitentiary gym and getting into nasty brawls with other inmates, he had regained his muscular physique plus many more new scars.
The longest one ran from his left flank up to his sternum, still healing and distended but already sealed up. Another convict had bad blood with his family, something about a Sassone murdering somebody the guy loved. Sonny couldn't be bothered jack shit to remember that kinda crap. The guy was a complete stranger. It was probably his old man or one of his cousins who did the killing in this case, but Sonny wasn't about to let himself get offed by some loser who was lamenting over a loved one's demise. Only fools and weaklings allowed their feelings to get the better of them. The scuffle between them lasted mere seconds. Sonny had to admit the guy'd been fast, succeeding in hooking that custom-made shank into his flesh like that.
Sonny was faster. He had gotten so strong, all it took was a single smash of his heel into the asshole's nose to take the guy down for good. One of his favorite moves, driving the shards of the nostril bones straight into the brain. He would have liked to watch the man suffer a lot more, but hey, he had a whole buffet to pick from every morning when he woke up and his cell door opened.
Another scar zigzagged up his lower jaw below his right ear towards the corner of his right eye. That was an older one he received on his third day at Sing Sing. He'd been careless. No matter, he had rectified the problem with a nice, clean slice across the guy's face from forehead to chin with the jagged edge of a food tray. The other prisoners weren't so foolish to underestimate him after that. He wasn't the head of the Tanglewood Boys for nothing.
The scar created an asymmetrical lopsidedness to his toothy, callous grin. He picked up the phone and spoke through the handset, staring at the person on the other side of the Perspex glass with something akin to excitement.
"So?"
"Fourteen."
The young man who sat opposite Sonny couldn't have been more than twenty-five years old, appearance-wise. He bore the handsome, classical features that was commonly seen on the male statues from the Renaissance era; double-lidded, large eyes, aquiline nose, full lips and high cheekbones that most people in the world would kill for. His thick, dark brown hair was tied into a ponytail that suspended down to the middle of his back, revealing a smooth, high forehead well-proportioned to the rest of his face. He was also attired in a black t-shirt and jeans that didn't disclose much about him, apart from the fact he was neat and had a lean, wiry body like an athlete's.
If Sonny didn't know better, he'd have branded the kid one of them pretty, metrosexual fags who were scared shitless of getting their nails chipped or their underwear dirty. However, Sonny was no idiot. He'd taken one look into the man's eyes and saw himself in the deceptively vacant, green orbs. After their first encounter, during a gathering of the big bosses in the business at the Sassone residence over eight years ago, Sonny got to see firsthand exactly what his future protégé was capable of.
As sick a bastard as Sonny Sassone was, even he had nightmares for weeks of the little girl laying on the bloody snow with her head decapitated and her tiny body slashed open from collarbones to groin. Sonny had both the brains and the guts to take the guy under his wing to become the finest youngblood of the Tanglewood Boys.
"Good. Really good. Ya do me proud, Ace." Sonny cackled. Ace wasn't even the guy's real name. Sonny had no idea what it was, neither was he bothered to know. The important thing to Sonny was that Ace was loyal to him. "Where?"
"He was in Washington DC. Found him at the Washington Court Hotel on Capitol Hill." Ace's voice was similar to smooth toffee. Dark, deep and it flowed over a person until it was all one desired to hear. The timbre never changed, neither was there any conspicuous accent. "He screamed a lot. Like you wanted."
Sonny was in a very happy mood. "Ya do me proud, kiddo," he said once more. "Didya send the parts like I told ya?"
"Yes. His wife and daughter should receive the parcel today."
"Good, very good!" Sonny cackled again. "So, how 'bout fifteen?"
"She is in Manhattan, working for a newly established … adult entertainment service."
"Still the fuckin' prostitute bitch that she is, ah?" His smile rapidly vanished. Sonny thrust an angry finger in Ace's direction, scowling like a gargoyle. "Take yer time with her. Make sure she feels everythin' until the moment she goes, ya hear me?"
"As you wish."
Sonny sniffed, then flicked his nose with a thumb.
"And what 'bout him?" His thin lips twisted into a hateful sneer.
Ace's mien remained expressionless, like that of a hypnotic snake. "Coma. No change."
Sonny huffed. "Stupid fucker. Nobody leaves the Tanglewood Boys. Nobody." Sonny tilted forward in his seat, his voice dropping.
"You save Messer for last, ya understand? After fifteen, you can do whatever ya want with the other four. But Messer …"
Sonny's eyes grew fiery with abhorrence.
"Tear him apart."
For the first time, Ace displayed the closest thing to emotion on his appealing facial features. The tips of his full lips curled up into a diminutive smile. He resembled a king cobra snake, waiting patiently to launch its deathblow of venom.
"As you wish."
Sonny slouched back on the chair, pleased with his protégé's reply. "Good, I'm countin' on ya, Ace. Make him suffer. Make 'em all suffer."
Ace nodded.
"And tell the other boys that I'm doin' just fine in here. Tell 'em the boss ain't gonna be here forever. I'll be back."
Their brief conversation ended with the prison guard behind Sonny informing them time was up. Sonny watched Ace leaving the room, a smirk on his hard-bitten face. He played it cool, replacing the phone handset onto the wall and sprawling on his seat like he wasn't worried.
The truth was, like he'd said to Detective Taylor, he really wasn't.
The dumb bastards who locked him up figured they'd finally caught the beast and put him behind bars so everyone was safe now. But they were wrong, so very wrong. The real monster was the one who'd just left to return to the outside world, preparing to devour his next victim. And the next and the next … until somebody mighty enough stopped him.
Sonny guffawed to himself as he was ushered back to his cell. Here he was, with a free room and a cozy, little bed and free food, and he felt better and tougher than he had in years. Out there right now, was the most fucked up sonofabitch he ever knew, doing all the dirty work for him while all he had to do was lounge around with his new lackeys, play poker and watch television for the latest news on the Tanglewood youngblood's horrific acts.
He lay on the green blanket of his bed, surreptitiously pulling out a cigarette from under the mattress and lighting it up with a match. He made a mental note to have a nice talk with that fatass coward of a prison warden for a bottle of wine when Ace finished his job.
Yep. If Sonny Sassone didn't get to enjoy his last days on earth in freedom, he was going to make damn sure none of his enemies did.
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The little boy's greyed-out eyes stared almost accusingly at Mac.
The child's corpse lay on its back, arms and legs straightened out vertically while the head was turned to one side. The position made the body appear like that of a toy action figure, like one of those old school, painted toy soldiers with a rifle affixed to them. There was a rotting leaf in the blonde waves of the boy's curly hair. Mac's eyes hazel kept drifting to it. There were more leaves on the ground around and under the body, some brown and dried up, some still green.
There were flies buzzing around the body, some crawling their way along the edges of the gigantic, serrated wound that stretched from the boy's neck to his lower abdomen. More swarmed on the exposed internal organs that, from Mac's initial inspection, looked as if the murderer had hacked at them, taken out the liver and heart and then chucked them back in again. Mac noted teeth indentations in what was left of the heart. He was going to have to make a cast from that to see if they matched with any dental records on file. Part of the liver was missing too; from the marks left in the organ, it was highly possible the killer had eaten some ofit.
"Brandon Hall. Seven years old, parents reported him missin' two nights ago," Flack said, staring at his black notebook. "A jogger came out for his usual run this mornin' in Central Park, found a long trail of blood leadin' up to the body lyin' here next to the path."
Mac could tell Flack was doing everything he could to not look at the corpse. He didn't blame the young, grey-suited homicide detective at all. This particular murder victim was one of the most gruesome ones Mac had ever come across in his whole life. That included his years in the Marines when he actively served in the Middle East. Only Mac's training stopped him from pinching his nose shut. In the heat of summer, the stench of rotting flesh was horrendous. The coagulating pool of blood around the body didn't help matters either.
Mac waved one arm around to chase away the flies. Stella did the same, frowning deeply as she knelt on the other side of the body. Her red lips were downturned, brows furrowed. Mac was inwardly concerned for her and had thought twice about assigning her onto this case. Ghastly murders involving children always got to Stella in the worst ways.
"The parents claim their son was kidnapped while they were havin' coffee downtown in Little Italy. One minute he was goin' to the counter to order another drink fer himself, the next minute, he was gone," Flack continued. He flipped a page on his notebook. "No ransom note or phone call." Flack closed it. "Money wasn't what the kidnap was all 'bout."
Mac examined the little boy's slack and pallid face. "No, it probably wasn't."
He noted how it seemed like the boy's facial features had been arranged to make him appear as if he was smiling and enjoyed what he had been experiencing. That creeped Mac out so much more than the dreadful state of the corpse. It made shivers go up his spine just thinking of the type of human being capable of committing such atrocity upon an innocent, small child.
"I think whoever kidnapped the child had the intention of killing him from the start. This," - he gestured over the body with his hands - " … is what he wanted."
Stella photographed the corpse and its immediate surroundings. She was extremely quiet. When she lowered the camera, Mac could see the wrath in her large, green eyes.
"We're going to get this sonofabitch, Mac." Stella shook her head, red lips even more downturned. Her eyes were glassy. "No parent in the world deserves to see their child die this way. No one."
Mac couldn't have agreed more.
The two CSIs spent the next half hour processing the body and the scene, collecting precious evidence to be investigated later at the labs. Mac didn't object as Stella gently brushed her gloved hand over the dead child's eyes to close them. Mac was going to remember that lifeless, empty gaze for some time to come.
"Hey, Danny."
Flack's greeting prompted Mac to glance up and see the homicide detective wave at the advancing young CSI. Danny was dressed in his usual white wifebeater, a red collared shirt, and brown jacket on top. Added with the long CSI coat, Danny was covered in four layers of cloth. Mac raised an eyebrow. Whoa, wasn't the man roasting underneath all that?
"Sorry. Traffic jam." Danny stood next to Flack, who was about a dozen feet away from them and was avidly staring at the CSI. Danny shrugged.
"It's okay, Danny. Stella and I have already started processing the body. " Mac motioned with his head at the dark, red path of blood that began at the corpse's head. It interweaved in a curvy line on the leaves and grass of the park land for at least forty feet into the distance. "You can process that."
Danny's gratitude at not being delegated to process the corpse was palpable in his blue eyes. Stella wasn't the only one who was deeply affected by brutal slayings of children. Danny nodded and swiftly walked past Mac and Stella, eyes momentarily flickering onto the body then away.
When Danny was out of earshot, Mac caught Flack's eye and said, "Go with him."
Flack followed Danny without pause.
"Did you notice how many clothes he was wearing?" Stella asked as she carefully swabbed at an unknown, whitish substance sticking to the victim's lower lip. "I've got nothing except a short-sleeved top, and I'm hot."
Mac wasn't quite sure how to answer.
Ever since the entire mess with the Tanglewood Boys and Danny's older brother nearly beaten to death, Mac had been very worried about the young CSI's wellbeing. Almost five months had already passed. Louie Messer was still in a deep coma, although his vitals stabilized a week into his admittance at the hospital. He was hanging on by a thread, but that thread was staying strong.
Mac had been glad to be there for the younger detective when Danny finally broke down and cried rivers that evening outside the hospital. In a way, Mac felt as though a great weight had lifted off both of them while he held the weeping man in his arms and on his shoulder. It was difficult for Mac to acknowledge it, but he had felt somewhat guilty for being so harsh on Danny for the Minhaus subway shooting, as well as pushing his protégé away when what he should have actually done was give Danny a chance to open up and trust him. It was unfortunate it had taken such a devastating incident, especially on Danny's side, for them to truly begin mending their bridges. However, Mac understood things were far from repaired. Some things took a whole lifetime to heal.
A month after the arrest of Sonny Sassone, Mac had thought that Danny was bearing things rather well. Danny had taken compassionate leave of three weeks to spend time at his brother's bedside, just talking to him and holding his hand and letting Louie know his loved ones hadn't forgotten him. By the end of that third week, Danny had insisted on returning to work full-time, visiting his brother during his off-hours. Mac permitted him to jump back onto a full-time schedule in the middle of the fourth week.
Danny seemed like his usual self, except for the darker rings around his lidded, blue eyes and the lessening of that patented cat-like grin of his. It was understandable why the man didn't feel like smiling much. A guy didn't have much to laugh about if his only brother might die at any given moment. Two months since Louie's beating and a month into work, it hit Mac hard that Danny was slowly turning into a shadow of the person he once was.
Once deemed the supreme drama queen as a joke by Stella, Danny was now so quiet and reclusive, people wouldn't notice he was there until he actually said something. Even that was becoming rare. When he used to stand up to Mac if something didn't go right by him, he no longer did so. Instead, he would meekly acquiesce to every order and shuffle off to do his job without interacting with anyone unless absolutely necessary. Part of Mac was pleased at Danny's new working ethics of obeying commands for once. Another part of him screamed at him that these new behaviors were tremendously bad signs something was wrong with his protégé.
It had to be Stella who was the one destined to point out to him the most obvious sign of something being amiss.
Three months after Danny returned to full-time work, Stella, Hawkes and Mac had been in the break room during lunch hour. Hawkes was devotedly watching some young pop singer prancing around on the television set, commenting on her fashion sense and the choreography of the dance along with Stella. The discussion somehow evolved into a debate over who had the best dress sense in the lab, and Stella highlighted the fact Danny had significantly changed his tastes in clothes. At seeing the baffled expressions on both men's faces, Stella pointed out how Danny only wore long-sleeved shirts that were fairly loose and almost always had a thick jacket on no matter how hot it got.
Her observation struck Mac deeply. His gut instinct told him this was something noteworthy he had to look into. For the next two months after that discussion in the breakroom, he took care to study Danny's physical appearance whenever he got the opportunity. The longer he scrutinized the young CSI, the more certain he was of what Danny was putting himself through, and how hazardous it was for it to drag on.
The only problem was, Mac had no idea whatsoever on how to approach Danny about it. Not without causing more distress to the young man than he already had to deal with.
"If he's ill, Mac, he shouldn't be working," Stella said to him in the present day. "I hate to say it, but he looks like crap."
Mac sighed. "He's doing the best he can, Stella. And he's a grown man. He's not a child who can't think for himself."
"People don't lose their problems the moment they hit adulthood, you know. Just because he's an adult doesn't mean he knows how to confront every dilemma and solve them all like some wizard genius."
Stella gazed pointedly at him. "You know as well as I do that something's wrong with Danny."
Mac sighed again, looking in Danny's direction. The CSI was hunched over on the ground, intently picking up evidence from the bloody grass with some forceps and carefully putting it into a clear, plastic bag. Flack stood at a distance from Danny, hands in his jacket pockets, silently watching with a concerned look on his handsome face.
Stella sat back on her heels and huffed. "I'm just saying … I tried talking to him, but he won't say a word to me." Her usually sparkling eyes were sad. "I don't know how to get past these walls he's built around himself. I know something's wrong, and I don't know how to help him."
Mac's mien reflected his empathy. "Maybe I shouldn't have let him come back to work so quickly."
"No, I'm glad you did."
Mac glanced at Stella.
Stella gesticulated in Danny's direction. "Look at him, he's skin and bones!"
Mac lithely got to his feet after he collected the last of the evidence and packed his equipment. He took off his gloves and waited until Stella was done before replying.
"How do you tell a man that he's starving himself to death and everybody knows it but him?"
He and Stella stood to one side as the corpse was loaded into a black body bag and onto the coroner's van. Stella gripped his hand in her bare ones.
"I don't know, Mac." She smiled despondently at him. "If he's like this now … what will happen if his brother does pass away from his injuries?"
Mac could only squeeze Stella's hands and stare at Danny finishing his own gathering of evidence. Stare at the gauntness of Danny's face, at how much more prominent the Italian nose was, at how angular the cheekbones were. Or how lackluster the once luxuriant, brown hair was.
Mac didn't have the heart to tell Stella that, at that point, the comatose Louie could very well outlive his younger brother.
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Flack paid the hot dog vendor for his light meal, then bit into the bread and sausage. The saltiness of the mustard made his mouth water. He was so hungry he consumed the hot dog in three huge mouthfuls. Okay, if he could get a nice, big cup of something cold and sweet, that would be perfect. Half his brain was still going, "Eeeew," at the morning's homicide case, but the other half was going, "More foooood!" in light of the first hot dog of the day disappearing so quick into his stomach.
Boy, that bigass organ in his skull sure was one complex piece of organic mechanism.
"Hey, Danny. You haven't eaten anythin'." He nudged the quiet man lightly on the arm.
"Hnnh." Danny stood there with his arms crossed over his chest, eyes behind his silver spectacles glazed over. He appeared to be lost in thought.
Flack nudged him again, frowning. "Danny. Eat."
Danny blinked and shook off whatever he was brooding about. "Nah. Not hungry."
Flack stared at his friend's drawn face for a minute. "Ya sure?"
Danny suddenly scowled and snapped at him, "Yeah, I don't wanna eat, a'right? Gedoff my case!"
Then, Danny's shoulders slumped, his expression crestfallen. "I-I'm sorry, Don. I didn't mean ta bite like that." Danny attempted to send him a reassuring smile. "I had a big breakfast, 'kay? I'm fine."
Flack knew it was bullcrap the instant Danny said it. One, Danny didn't even look him in the eye when he said it. Two, when everybody else was wearing nothing but thin shirts and trousers due to the summer warmth, his pal here was wearing three layers of clothes.
And still looked like he was cold.
He stared meaningfully at Danny. Danny resolutely kept his gaze somewhere on the pavement near Flack's feet. Flack's hands balled into fists. The fact Danny was avoiding eye contact riled him up bad. Whenever they talked, they always looked each other in the eye, and even when they didn't talk, they still looked at each other like it was the most natural thing in the world. It was like some innate thing of trust between them. A constant, unspoken indication to Flack that Danny felt comfortable with relying on him, with letting Flack be his support when the time came for it.
Now, it was as if Danny was slowly shutting him out, and he didn't know a thing about how to stop it. Even worse, Danny knew something was wrong and he was lying to Flack's face that everything was cool anyway.
He freaking hated that.
"I'm gonna get two more hot dogs. And you're gonna eat one," Flack growled.
Whatever protest Danny had on his lips died at the determination in Flack's big, blue eyes. For a second, the invisible walls around Danny seemed to fall apart. Flack could see the silent cry in Danny's aggrieved eyes, begging him to do something. Before Flack could say a word, Danny's expression became shuttered and the walls were back up more impenetrable than ever. Danny glanced away again.
Flack snarled inwardly. Fine. The guy didn't wanna talk, he could wait till later.
Flack stalked to the hot dog vendor, wholly focused on purchasing at least two more hot dogs and scheming on how to force one down Danny's throat.
"Oorf!"
Flack bounced off the chest of the other guy he knocked into with a loud grunt. The homicide detective could have sworn he'd just run straight into a block of solid granite. Flack would have fallen butt-first onto the rough pavement if the other man hadn't grabbed his wrist and straightened him up with one strong tug.
Geez, where the hell did he come from!
"Hey, watch where you're goin'!"
"My apologies."
Flack stared into the most mesmerizing, green eyes he'd ever seen. On a man, no less. Whoever he was, he had to be as tall as Flack was, since they were both standing upright and gazing level at each other. His long, dark hair was tied into a ponytail, attired in a simple black shirt and trousers. He had the face of a supermodel, or at least, a face that would likely appear on fashion advertisements or perfume promotions. The man's powerful grip on his wrist indicated to Flack that, though the guy was a real pretty boy, this was no floozy he was facing here. This was a guy who was exceedingly fit and packed a good punch or fifty.
"Yeah, well, you're lucky I'm in sucha nice mood."
The stranger smiled minutely. It oddly reminded Flack of a cobra snake, with its tongue flitting out and sensing its imminent victim.
"You have very well-built arms." The man maintained his unbreakable hold on Flack's wrist. It was getting real unnerving.
Flack felt like he was being hypnotized in place. He was paralyzed to the spot, hearing nothing but the man's smooth, low voice. What was happening to him?
"And your eyes … photographs don't do justice to them."
Flack gasped harshly, ripping away his hand from the man's clutches. He stumbled back from the shock of the man's words.
In the three seconds it took to steady himself and open his mouth to yell, the man had disappeared into thin air.
Flack glanced around frantically, searching for the stranger he'd bumped into. Everywhere he looked, there were crowds of pedestrians ambling to and fro, creating the ideal cover for a swift getaway. He consciously willed his breathing to slow down. He rubbed at the area on his arm where the guy'd seized him without thinking about it.
Was that guy even real? God, he was seriously freaked out.
"Don!"
Flack gasped again, then sighed in relief. Danny.
"I'm okay, I'm okay." Flack patted Danny's hands that were coiled into the folds of his jacket.
Danny's eyes were humongous. "I was callin' yer name for over a minute! What happened to ya?"
Flack's body was attacked by a sudden fit of chills. Instinctively, he wrapped an arm around Danny's slender shoulders, still checking out his surroundings with narrowed, sharp eyes.
"I dunno, Danny … some guy bumped into me." He tightened his hold on his shorter friend. Danny didn't object. "S'nothin', don't worry 'bout it. C'mon, stick with me, 'kay?"
It was Danny's turn to stare fervently at Flack. Flack waited for the CSI to say something, but nothing came forth. The concern in those blue eyes said enough to the homicide detective.
"Let's go back to the lab, a'right," Flack said.
Danny nodded.
All the way back to CSI headquarters, Flack kept feeling goosebumps across his whole body.
Somewhere out there, a dark-haired man with green eyes was walking over his grave.