Spoiler Alert: Spoilers for Seasons 2 & 3, up to and including "Silent Night".
A/N: Thanks to all who have responded to this story – I promise that Team Taylor is on the case and things will start to move!
Disclaimer: No infringement of copyright is intended. All characters originated with CSI:NY; all song lyrics are from The Beatles.
It's A Long Journey Home
Chapter 16: You Say Why
I don't know why you say goodbye I say hello.
I say high, you say low.
You say why and I say I don't know.
Danny spent the next two days hiding out in the lab, and ducking every time he saw Stella. It got so bad Mac had to text message him to get his ass down to the morgue so they could go over case evidence with Sid.
"Where the hell have you been, Messer?" Mac snapped when Danny slunk into the morgue.
"Sorry, Mac," Danny muttered.
"Not good enough. When I need you with me, I don't expect to have to go looking."
"Won't happen again."
Mac refrained from giving him another blast when he saw the exhaustion in Danny's eyes. "Why are you hiding?'
Danny shrugged uncomfortably and looked away, "Just avoiding Stella."
Sid glanced up from the corpse on the table. "Why would you be avoiding Stella, Detective? Seeing her always brightens my day."
"Yeah, well, she's kinda on my case, and I'm running out of excuses, here." Danny didn't want to say anything else, or he'd have Mac on his case too. One did not lightly ignore advice from Mac Taylor, and Danny had completely funked doing what Mac had told him to do days before.
He'd tried. He'd dialed Lindsay's cellphone over and over, but never managed to hit SEND. Every time he tried, he could hear her crying, and he'd close up his phone and retch. He hadn't spoken to her or heard from her since she had walked away from him without looking back, again.
"Whaddya got for us, Sid?" he asked, still not looking at Mac.
"Oh, I'll let you get away with that for the moment, buddy, but you're on notice," thought Mac. Dammit, dammit, dammit; when Stella told him she had spoken to Lindsay's mother, he really thought this was going to be solved for him.
Danny escaped as soon as he could, grabbing his field kit to go back to the crime scene to look for any evidence they may have missed, especially something which could explain why the victim had tree bark in the gunshot wound. Obviously the bullet had gone through a tree before lodging in the body, but did that make this a tragic mistake, a weird accident, or a murder?
He got all the way to the main doors before he heard his name being called.
"Hey, Messer, wait up!"
Danny risked a look over his shoulder and saw Flack moving quickly down the hallway towards him.
"I have to get out to a scene before cleanup gets there, Flack. Can this wait?"
"I'll drive," Flack kept moving fast and didn't give him any time to argue.
"What's up?" Danny asked when they had driven about ten minutes without a word spoken.
Flack glanced in the rear view mirror, angled to give him a view of his passenger as well as the back window.
"Stella's worried about you."
"Since when are you Bonasera's messenger boy?"
"Since you started hiding in supply cupboards and the mens' room to avoid her. She's not stupid, Messer, but she is getting seriously pissed off."
Danny turned his head to stare out the window. "It's nobody's business. I can deal with this," he said stubbornly.
"Yeah, and if you were dealing with it, we wouldn't be worried. But you ain't dealing with jack-shit, man. You aren't eating, you sure as hell aren't on top of your game at work, and when's the last time you slept?" Flack's aggravated growl tore through the car.
"On Mac's couch, okay?" Danny wanted to confess it, yell it at the top of his voice, but pride and fear kept him silent. "I slept on Mac's couch like a little kid in his dad's car, in the only safe place he could find. I can't sleep at home because all I hear is her crying, see myself holding her down."
What he said was, "You don't gotta worry about me."
Flack made a rude noise, "You're right, asshole, we don't gotta. But that's not gonna to stop us from doing it anyway."
Danny kept his head turned away, afraid Flack would catch him with tears in his eyes.
"Danny. Danny? Call the girl." Flack's voice was soft now, coaxing.
Danny shook his head stubbornly, "No. She was going to phone me if she needed me. I'm not going to push this again."
Flack shut up, but thought, "Fine – you asked for it. We gave you a chance. Now we'll push it."
At the scene, Danny found a tree that showed damage as if from a bullet, and plotted trajectories and possible ricochets on the computer he had brought with him. Finally satisfied he had the information Mac needed, he signaled to Flack that he was ready to go back.
"We're stopping for a slice before we hit Geekville again," Flack's tone did not leave room for negotiation, and Danny sighed as he nodded. He knew the pizza would come back the way it went down – he hadn't kept down much more than coffee for nearly four days now – but if he was quick, he could keep it from Flack. He'd got pretty good at hiding his inability to eat anything, although Hawkes was starting to give him looks. He'd have to come up with a way to avoid Hawkes now too. Pretty soon he was going to have to phone in his job just to keep all his friends off his back.
"What about Lindsay? You going to phone her in too? Oh no, that's right, I forgot. You can't phone her at all. I wonder what she's doing for friends out in Cowtown, Montana? Any big strapping farm boys panting to protect her, you suppose?" That voice never shut up, Danny thought wearily, jabbering on and on at all hours of the day and night. The only time it subsided was when he was so involved with his work that he could tune out everything else for a while, but Mac was refusing to give him double shifts, instead sending him home to sleep.
"Macbeth has murdered sleep," he muttered under his breath.
"What was that?" Flack asked.
"I could murder a slice," Danny answered quickly. It wasn't a complete lie; it's just that all his food seemed to be possessed by the ghost of Banquo, refusing to stay decently murdered.
They ate at a little restaurant they used to go to with Aiden sometimes. Now there was a girl could cook, and eat too, Danny thought. Aiden had been so full of life until that double-damned prick Pratt had ambushed her, beating her to death, then burning the body. Danny could feel his gorge rise at the thought. Nope, this slice wasn't even going to pretend to be respectably buried first before it staged a "guest at the banquet" scene.
Don Flack watched Danny go pale and drop his food on the plate in front of him. Okay, now he agreed with Stella. A day without food wouldn't kill anyone, but Danny Messer turning up his nose at pizza? If Flack were a more superstitious man, he'd have crossed himself as protection against whatever curse was plaguing his friend.
Flack drove back, let Danny go hide in the lab, and went to find Stella. Luckily, he found Mac and Hawkes with her, and there was no prize for guessing what they were all talking about.
"Okay, I concede, Stel. He's definitely worse than I thought. He ate one bite of pizza and lost it before we left the restaurant."
"Has he called Lindsay? Left her a message? Anything?" Stella asked in frustration.
"He won't call Lindsay because she was supposed to phone him if she needed him, and she hasn't called. Ergo, he can't call, or he would be 'pushing it'." Flack's face mirrored the worry the others could hear.
Hawkes raised one eyebrow, "Ergo?"
Flack said defensively, "Hey, just because I didn't go to some fancy university doesn't mean I don't read. I know what ergo means. I also know that Danny quoted Macbeth, and I know that's bad luck!" He looked around at the three CSIs who were all giving him odd looks now. "What? He said 'Macbeth has murdered sleep.' I havta assume he's Macbeth?"
Stella smiled up at the tall detective, who was leaning casually against the counter in the break room. "You are a constant amazement to me, Don."
Hawkes could swear he saw a faint flush on Flack's cheekbones as he grinned at Stella's comment, a fact he filed away for thinking about later.
"Okay," Mac said, "I really didn't want to do this, but if he's not going to get himself together, we're going to have to pull out the big guns. Stella, make the call."
She nodded grimly. It would have been better if Danny and Lindsay had worked this out, but if she was going to have to interfere, she was going to make sure it counted for something. She pulled out her cellphone, scrolled through the phonebook until she found what she was looking for, and hit SEND.
"Diane? Stella Bonasera here. Fine, thank you, and you? I'm phoning to see how Lindsay is doing." She listened to what was evidently a minor avalanche of information, interposing an occasional "Yes?" or "Hmm." The three men watched on with varying expressions: Mac slightly impatient, Hawkes inquisitive, Flack patient and amused.
"Well, Diane, it sounds like we are in the same boat. So it's time to up the stakes. Let's put Plan B into action." She listened for several more minutes, smiling and nodding, even though Diane couldn't see her. "Okay, phone me when you are set up. This happens today. Talk soon," Stella shut her phone down and looked up at the three men.
"So," Hawkes finally asked, "What's Plan B?"
Stella looked at him coolly. "Shel, did you know Plan A?"
Hawkes looked confused, "No."
"Well, if we didn't tell you Plan A, what makes you think we're going to tell you Plan B?" Stella sashayed out of the break room and down to her office, leaving the three men staring at her in disbelief.
"So much for team work," Hawkes muttered.
"I think we bat for a different team, Sheldon," Mac said, with a hint of a grin.
"I think we come from a different planet," Flack said with a bemused scowl.