Spoiler Alert: Spoilers for Seasons 2 & 3, up to and including "Silent Night".

A/N: Thanks to all reviewers – believe me, I listen to your comments and try to keep things on track. Thanks to the people who are reading the story as well; I hope things stay interesting for you, too!

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 22: Fighting the Blues

I don't wanna sound complainin',

But you know there's always rain in my heart (in my heart).

I do all the pleasin' with you, it's so hard to reason

With you, whoah yeah, why do you make me blue.

He put his head in his hands. The satisfaction of hanging up on Lindsay for a change had lasted only a moment, mostly because he wasn't entirely sure she would notice. He already missed her voice, and it didn't help at all to remind himself that she would have kept talking to him if he hadn't shut the conversation down with a completely bogus excuse.

He rubbed his face briskly and grinned a little sardonically. "Hello, my name is Danny and I'm addicted to Lindsay Monroe," he said under his breath. He wondered how many other men would be in that support group, and tried not to think about McKim. "I bet he's tall," he muttered.

So, if he was a Monroe-aholic, he'd better start working the programme to get over her, or at least to find a way to function. Having admitted the problem, the next step he needed to take was "making amends"; he had a whole range of people he needed to talk to. Starting with the man whose office he had taken over.

Danny glanced around the room; he was rarely in here, as Mac did most of his management BWA (by walking around). The team sometimes used the office for meetings, but more often met in the lab, and Mac rarely hauled anyone in for a dressing down, preferring to do that in public too as a warning to others. There was nearly nothing personal in the office: no pictures on the walls or on the desk. Danny could vaguely remember, when he first came to the lab, a picture of Claire and Mac on their wedding day, which Mac had kept on the desk, but that had disappeared sometime in the aftermath of 9/11.

The office was stark and sterile, a working, not living, space, with one exception. A red blanket was folded and thrown casually over a well-worn, comfortable couch, the one Danny had slept on for more than eight blissful, dreamless hours a week ago. He almost gave in to the temptation to lie down and see if the magic would work again. He hadn't slept a full night since that one.

Food had been good though. The meal he had eaten the night before had been the first food that had stayed down since before Lindsay had left the first time. He had eaten this morning, too: a bagel with cream cheese from a deli down the street from his apartment. The owner had greeted him, and made his bagel the way he liked it. Everyone he had seen that morning had been familiar, many of them greeting him casually as he passed. This was home; he was known, and knew others in turn. If he disappeared, people would eventually notice.

How had Lindsay coped with the anonymity when she moved to New York, he wondered. And was she more at ease now, back home where she belonged, where people knew her, shared her history? What was he going to do when she solved the case, settled her demons, and decided to stay in Montana?

Luckily for Danny, a disturbance in the lab caught his attention, breaking him out of his depressing thoughts, and he went down the hall to find out what was up.

Mac and Hawkes had not taken long to process the scene; the dead body reported in Central Park had turned out to be a mannequin, cleverly positioned. They were assuming a frat prank, and Mac was royally pissed at the waste of his time.

Not the best time to talk to him, Danny thought, but then sighed. "Suck it up, princess," he heard Lindsay's teasing voice in his head, and went to knock on Mac's door, detouring quickly to the break room first.

"What?" Mac looked up, irritation narrowing his eyes and hardening his jaw. When he saw Danny lurking at the door, he took a deep breath and motioned him in. "Give me a sec. I need coffee."

Danny carefully brought one hand from behind his back and placed a cup on the desk in front of Mac. Without being asked, he turned and closed the door, then sat down in the chair in front of the desk. He took a deep breath and started, "I have to apologize to you, Mac. I've been screwing up."

His voice was firm, although he did not look up, instead focusing on his hands, which were tightly held together to stop them from shaking.

Mac took a careful sip of coffee. As he had expected, it was made the way he liked it, strong, with just a touch of milk, not cream. He considered the young man in front of him, wondering how many times they were going to face off over his desk this way. He took a deeper drink, and set the cup sharply down on the desk. Danny jumped, and looked up into Mac's impassive face.

"Danny, I don't know what you are talking about. I haven't seen any screw-ups serious enough to warrant any action. By the way, your accident was investigated, and you were found not to be at fault. They picked up the other driver; he was DUI with a .3 blood alcohol level. He was stopped on the side of the road after running another car off the freeway. A family of four was sent to the hospital." Mac stopped when Danny spoke.

"Are they going to be okay? Am I needed to testify?"

Mac's face relaxed a little more. Trust Danny to focus first on the injured, then on his job.

"He pled guilty: jail time and rehab. Your report will be read into the record, but unless something changes, you won't be needed. And the family is okay: two kids were released with minor injuries, an older one in the front seat suffered burns from the airbag, and the mother had a concussion and broken collarbone from putting her hand out to protect the passenger. All doing well, last I heard."

Danny nodded cautiously. "What about the rest of the stuff?"

Mac cocked an eyebrow at him and took another sip of coffee. "What stuff?"

Danny sighed. Much as he appreciated Mac's seeming obtuseness, he needed things out in the open. "I had no business dumping on you, especially not here, not at work. Mac, I need to know …" Danny's voice trailed off uselessly.

He needed to know that Mac really hadn't believed his confession of rape; that one more moment of Messer weakness hadn't put their always tenuous relationship in a bind again; that Mac still trusted him.

Mac stood up and walked to the windows of his office. It was a cruel irony that his million-dollar view used to include the Twin Towers. The absence in the skyline was as startling as the sight used to be. He turned his back on the sight; he tried to avoid looking out the window.

"You talked to Lindsay?" He knew Danny had.

"Yes."

"She okay?"

"Yes."

"Did she agree with your interpretation of what happened before she left?" Mac's voice remained cool.

Danny's face softened; one corner of his mouth hitched a little as he heard her voice, breathless and innocently sexy, "I didn't even know it was possible…"

"No."

Mac took a step forward, into Danny's line of vision, and laid a hand on his shoulder, forcing him to look up. "If she's okay, and she doesn't think you did anything wrong, I'm hardly going to argue. Danny, you were not in very good shape when you were in here last. Nothing you said then will ever be held against you."

Danny closed his eyes. "Thanks, Mac."

Mac sighed. He was going to pay for his own past errors in dealing with Danny for a long time, he could see. He wanted to tell Danny he trusted him, that he knew Danny was a good person as well as a good CSI. But words, especially ones about feelings, didn't come easily to Mac Taylor. All he could do was stand by Danny every time things went wrong until Danny stopped second-guessing him.

"We good?"

Danny nodded.

"Good. Then go process that mannequin Hawkes and I brought in. I'm going to nail those little buggers for wasting my time if it's the last thing I do."

He sat back in his chair and swung around with the coffee in his hand, forcing himself to stare at the amputated skyline. When he had asked Danny about Lindsay, there had been a moment: one Mac had never expected to see. Danny's face had lit up, incandescent with – what was the word? Awe? Wonder? Either would do.

He rubbed a hand over his face; he remembered that feeling: the day he had asked Claire to marry him; the day he took her hand from her father and made a promise that he never broke. "'Til death do us part."

He reached into the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out the picture of his wedding day. He was happy with Peyton; they were good together. He was, as he had told her, committed to making their relationship work.

But that look of awe, of wonder he saw on his younger face laughing out of the picture, Claire wrapped in his arms: that would never be his again.