"I can't disclose anything personal about a patient, but..." the woman stilled, her eyes not leaving his once and for some reason unknown to him a stray thought flittered through the detective's mind that if this were a different situation he might have found her attractive. Her brown eyes were wide but set in such a way that no one could mistake her for a push over with that steely determination burning into their skulls with one look. Though pressed tightly together in the nerves of the moment her lips were full and plump and long chocolate strands hung disheveled around her lightly freckled face in such a charming air of carelessness that if it weren't for her stare and firmly held shoulders she might have seemed younger than the late twenties she appeared to be.
But it wasn't a different situation and Flack hated her for the way her lips showed how nervous she was even if her eyes denied it, how disorganized she appeared compared to the previous doctor and how she could not answer his question in a straight forward fashion no matter how much he needed the answer.
"You should ask me about my line of work, I can tell you what I specialize in, what I do around here if you're prepared to hear it."
He narrowed his eyes, forcing himself to play ball. If this was the path he had to take to get the answers he needed then he would march it with unyielding doggedness. "What is it that you specialize in Doctor Reynolds?" Each word was slowly and deliberately carved into the air between them with none of the flippant roughness of times when he let his new york accent have free reign and cut up syllables while they rolled off his tongue.
"I am often brought in on cases" she held his gaze firmly, a slight flicker of doubt behind the irises being the only outward sign that she thought that maybe she shouldn't be telling him this. She was clearly a woman who once they had made a decision would go through with it no matter the consequences and that observation filled him with a certain dread as with such a headstrong personality, who knew what she had set her mind to say. "...that involve patients suspected of suffering from certain more personal assaults. Before becoming a doctor I was a SART nurse and no one around here seems able to forget that fact."
The doctor stopped talking, arms in her white coat a size too big for her crossed over her chest in a defensive pose as she eyed him, brown stare probing him to make his own conclusions.
He did, and immediately wished he hadn't. The words burned inside his skull so bright that he wished he had never learnt what it meant 'Sexual Assault Response Team'. His mind balked at the stop following her train of thought had led him to and he shook his head both mentally and literally as he examined the station. There was some kind of mistake because that kind of thing would never happen to Danny. The kind of thing she was hinting at, the kind of thing SART nurses did as a part of their job, that happened to victims, to young bawling children and terrified women, it didn't happen to people like Danny Messer.
"You've got it wrong" Flack tried to explain to her, shaking his head from side to side whilst his lips quirked up nervously as if wondering whether to chuckle at the misunderstanding. His mind searched for explanations to prove to her why her reasoning was so flawed, so desperately searching for something to scratch out the odd dry feeling that had settled in his throat that the first argument he pulled out might not have been the most articulate. "Danny's a guy, I mean, that kind of stuff doesn't happen to him. Sure he gets the crap beaten out of him all the damn time, sometimes he looks like hell for it and that's probably what your doctor friend saw, but Danny wouldn't - that wouldn't happen to him."
If Doctor Reynold's stare had been intimidating before, now it was enough to make the detective feel chided in a way he hadn't felt since he and his sister Sam had accidentally thrown a baseball through old Mrs Mcclutsy's window when he was ten. Man, that old woman could swing a cane with the best of them and he'd had the bruises to prove it. Although the longer the doctor stared at him, head tilted slightly back to look him firmly in the eyes, the more he wished he could be running down that street instead, screaming high pitched apologies as the rasping breaths behind him and sharp sting of wood against his backside showed how remarkably fast his elderly neighbor had been even for the ripe old age of eighty four.
"You know better" she said simply, arms still crossed over her chest as she fixed him in place with an achingly poignant mixture of disappointment and regret upon her freckled face.
Flack ducked his head forward, partly in acquiescence to the accepted fact and partly so he wouldn't have to look her in the eye. It was easier to keep her suspicions as outlandish and wrong when he wasn't looking her in the eye. As a detective, and a patrol officer before that he was well versed in the facts and the phrases you were supposed to know. In his best friend Danny's own words 'anyone can do anything to anybody' and for the most part it was true but although he had faith in the statistics, being on his side of the crime it was hard to keep in mind that 'anything' still happened even when 'anybody' never came forward to report that it had.
His head snapped up, anger swirling beneath blue eyes as he shook his head firmly to remove any doubts that had crawled their way in, any flicker of thought that stopped to consider even for a moment that anything that required mention of a SART nurse could have happened to someone he knew. It didn't work, after all it had already happened before. Flack remembered that time well, remembered sitting in a hospital chair just as uncomfortable as the one he'd just been camped out on in the hallway, telling Stella she needed to have a rape kit done as she listened, huddled under a thin blanket on the hospital bed, bruises and cuts making her cheek bones stand out even more prominently against her skull. Thankfully it had come back negative and he had let out a breath it seemed he had been holding for hours since they had found her beaten up and unconscious in her own apartment and leaned back against the nearest solid object in a deep bone aching relief.
Only that had been Stella, one of the most competent and at times the scariest woman he had met aside from Mrs Mcclutsy of course, but she was still a woman none the less. So though it had been difficult to swallow seeing her shaking and recovering from trauma so bad that she could not even remember whether or not she had been sexually assaulted, she looked enough like the other victims he had interviewed that he could push himself back into detective mode and tell himself that it happened, that with all the competent women he had met as victims he couldn't be selfish and try to fool himself into believing that it wasn't possible just because he knew her. Not like he was doing now.
Words seemed to scramble away as he grabbed for them. Tried to explain that while he knew things like that could happen to grown men it couldn't happen to Danny because the blond was his best friend and he had been brought up hanging out with mobsters for company, liked to chase down muggers for fun, jumped off walls and tackled men he had to practically strain his neck to just look in the eye, and because Flack had left him still happy and bouncing outside the bar last night and he would have never have left him if he knew something bad were going to happen.
"Yesterday, yesterday we chased down this guy almost seven feet tall and Danny was the one who took him down, he can handle himself. If someone came up to him wanting trouble, he'd sort them out or run, I've seen him do both" his mouth seemed to ramble ahead of his brain as he tried to argue, more against himself now as to why what she was suggesting had happened couldn't possibly have done so.
By the time she cut him off he felt like he had named all of Danny's best triumphs ever since the blond had hit the neighborhood bully over the head with a baseball bat aged four for attempting to set a cat on fire. Danny had grinned as he'd told him that, gripping a bat confidently in his hands, before swinging the smooth wood forward to meet the ball and send it rattling to the back of the batting cage in a single solid movement. Then he'd turned back to him while waiting for the machine to reload and added in a tone tickled with laughter that that had probably been the moment that his love of baseball had began while knocking the boy three times his own size out cold to save a damn cat.
There was no way something that personal and humiliating could happen to a man with that much energy and spunk.
"I'm sorry, I made a mistake"
And he held his breath, waited for her to continue and affirm his own stubborn beliefs, that there was no possibility that anyone had done something to Danny that he didn't know how to approach, let alone fix.
"I thought you were a good guy" the doctor fixed him with such a look of disappointment and regret that he felt it travel through him in cold waves that threatened to freeze his insides into ice with each passing. Flack wanted to retaliate to say that he was good and did love his friend but something stalled his tongue, a part of his brain that told himself that the conversation they were having was important, that if it were true the fact that even just dancing around the topic like she was could get her into trouble, so there had to be something deeper going on here. His unwillingness to consider her motives when it came to the welfare of a friend was not something he saw a good guy doing, so maybe she did have a point.
"Doing the job I did and the one I do now, I saw a lot of injustice and a lot of pain left buried and I thought..." her brown eyes shone sharp as her shoulders seemed to deflate somewhat, the tense stance of challenge turned to hesitant defeat. A stubborn kind of defeat that made her voice sting with acid disappointment, more at herself than him for making such a misjudgment. "I thought you were a good guy, that you would understand but I should have realized that being a police officer anything outside of your perfect definition of a victim you'd rather ignore or make into your next joke over the morning coffee than help."
The words fell out of Flack's mouth before he could stop to check them, blood beating hot in his veins "Danny is not a victim!"
It was the moment, the last straw and he knew that he had broken whatever will had pushed Doctor Reynolds into going out of her way to engage him in this conversation. She stared at him once more, eyes glinting hard as ice before tucking a wayward hair back in the direction of her loose ponytail and turning briskly to leave the room.
Energy seemed to seep from Flack's form into the floor at her retreat, and his whole body sagged, shoulders dropping, head feeling suddenly much too heavy for the neck it was perched on and his legs swayed unsteadily under an impossible weight as if it were only the doctor's retaliation that had infused his body with energy up to this point. Beneath his skin the blood flushed impulsively from searing hot to ice cold in seconds, and back again. Each thought froze and burned along with the rest of his body as he considered the situation for the first time, allowing the detective part of him to take over and forcing the friend part, screaming and kicking to the back of his head.
"Wait" Flack heard himself say, quickly and calmly as she curled her fingers around the small curved door handle. Although his voice sounded remarkably even and in control to his ears, the detective noticed for the first time that his heart hadn't slowed in its pace for the past five minutes, attempting to beat its way through his rib cage and into the small silent room where they both stood. "How sure are you?"
The doctor with a freckled face and stubborn eyes turned and smiled, the same grim smile she had shown him when they had first met minutes before, the one that was full of nerves and no happiness.
"I'm sure" she said simply and Flack felt a part of him, no matter how small believe her.
Entering that room twenty minutes later, the rest of him began to follow. The figure on the bed, sat with his back facing the door was at first difficult to identify without trailing his eyes upwards to the mop of dirty blond hair that had began to stick up again, recovered from the rain and roughly reaching for the sky. It took a moment to spot the source of the strangeness, it wasn't the thin speckled hospital gown that had replaced the soaked t-shirt from before, nor the alien bulge of gauze and tape that stuck out at odd intervals along the shoulder blades, appearing starkly out from between the edges of the tied back clothing before disappearing again from sight. It was the stillness and the painful tenseness of all the muscles he could see from this angle.
Reminding himself what he had promised the doctor Flack forced the hesitance from his step before walking further into the room, around the foot of the single bed to the opposite side where there stood two chairs waiting, one of them already occupied. The woman, a nurse from the pale pink of her scrubs looked up at him only once when he entered the room, then turned her attention back to her patient. Red hair frizzled around her chubby face as she smiled at the figure perched stiffly on the edge of the bed. Her fingers gently wrapped around the man's tense forearm, confining it to the tray stood between them whilst her other hand set to work cleaning the freshly stitched wounds that spread across both palms and traveled up Danny's right arm on and off to the man's elbow making him resemble some kind of desperately salvaged stuffed toy after spending a day with a knife happy psycho toddler.
Danny didn't look up at him, not even once the dark haired detective had taken the seat next to the hefty woman and sat, elbows on his knees to wait for the two to finish. The smaller man just sat, every muscle taut with tension and kept blue eyes fixed to the stitches on his arm, watching with a white face the woman's fingers as they touched his skin. Time or better lighting made the bruises appear more prominent against his body, most such as some across his arms and along his jaw were an angry swelling red, but a darker hue of purple had begun to tint the majority of the rest. Knowledge weighed heavy in his stomach as Flack remembered a case they had worked a while back, and how they had used the color of bruises to tell when the injuries had been made. From what he could remember it took several hours for a bruise to begin to turn purple which meant that while the detective had been sleeping his best friend had been beaten up, and he hoped that was all that had happened.
For his part, Don didn't make a move to open the floodgates of conversation either. He merely sat, patiently watching his friend with questions running through his mind that honestly he had never even considered at any stage in their friendship he might have to ask the man one day. Mac Taylor's stern voice joined in on the mental torture, Flack's stomach still churning from the grating edge of deep worry that had tarnished his friend's words in their short phone call. The detective had said very little to the head CSI, only that he and Danny were fine, the blonde was feeling under the weather but was being taken care of and a situation had come up. Flack didn't specify what that situation was, or that in fact it was related to Messer, and after an initial dodged question the older man didn't push. He had just told him to call back if he needed any help. That was what was so nice about having Detective Mac Taylor as a friend, he understood that sometimes you needed space but the minute you asked for any assistance he would be right there ready to offer a hand. And really in this situation, Flack would need it.
Don watched silently as the nurse deftly wrapped a length of gauze around the young man's palm, looping it loosely with expert fingers so as to allow for the highest degree of flexibility possible to be left in the joints. She taped it in place while leaning forward slightly to whisper what sounded like a order in the tense blonde's ear, though there was an undercurrent of soothing in the tone. Almost like the red headed nurse thought that Danny might break or lash out if exposed to any harsher syllables. In response Messer opened and closed the bandaged hand in front of her in such a practiced fashion that the dark haired man was not surprised to see that the blonde's left hand had already been covered in gauze in much the same way.
The nurse moved to clear away the equipment, piling unused gauze, tape, solution and scissors onto the tray before wheeling the now emptied stand to a corner of the small room. Never once did her soothing voice stop and for such a large woman her movements seemed to flow slowly with an air of calming grace. Clearly this was a woman who could work wonders on small children and frightened animals, and didn't seem to be doing such a bad job with Danny himself. Though the blond man still remained tense, his fingers only managing to grip the blankets lightly due to pain and padding but his toes, both sets now naked beneath waterlogged jeans shone white and glowed red with the effort to keep them as clenched as possible. Flack frowned at that, thinking it strange that they would remove all the man's other wet clothing but ignore the jeans then he swallowed, remembering what the doctor had said, or rather, not said.
The doctor hadn't been specific on the wording, had only frowned at him in that analytical way she had when he asked why she decided to tell him and said quietly that 'sometimes people need a push to do the right thing'. She'd stared at him with that annoying 'join the dots look' and though at that point he felt rather tired with the whole detective work the answer popped into his head quick enough that he knew that a part of him must have suspected it for a while. If there were any word to describe Danny it was stubborn, if it were true, and he wasn't saying that it was then right now Danny would be doing anything to get his way even if it went against his best interests. Flack knew just from the repulsion he felt himself about the idea that Danny would not allow himself to be a victim and only victims got rape kits. Which was why he had promised the doctor that the blonde would not get his way, even if he still didn't believe anything like that had happened the logical part of his brain reminded himself that the only way to know for sure would be a evidence kit, and he wouldn't be a good detective or a good friend if he didn't make sure.
With a promise to come back in a few minutes the red headed nurse gathered equipment from the tray and left the room, but not without first shooting Flack a look that without question read 'you dare upset him and I'll show you the reason why nurses aren't trusted with a scalpel'. There seemed to be a surprising amount of scary women in this hospital, or perhaps it was just new york in general.
"It hit double digits"
Don glanced away from the closed door to look with surprise at his friend. Though slightly better than before, hoarse still did not begin to describe the scratchiness of his tone but that was not the reason for his surprise. The detective wasn't sure whether it was the still fresh memory of Danny curled up in that alley refusing to make a sound or even look at him, or how convinced the doctor with a stubbornness to rival the blonde himself was in her version of what had happened last night but hearing him speak seemed suddenly out of character and odd.
"What?" he managed finally, his voice in that moment sounding a touch uneven itself. Ironic considering how much he had schooled himself before entering this room how now he could barely remember how he had planned to approach this, but Danny had always derived a peculiar pleasure from throwing him for a loop.
"Comon" the slightly increased height of the hospital bed put the shorter man at roughly eye level, perhaps even taller if he managed to sit up straight. Danny quirked a smile, but it looked twisted like he was fighting against a grimace instead, which could well be the case with the amount of painful bruising coloring his jaw bone. "Quit playing dumb Flack, who do you think won the pool?"
Flack blinked, remembering the office pool they had going, competing against each other to decide when was the next time that their friend would be attacked by a criminal for some cash. He swallowed. "So you were mugged?"
"Course" Danny answered looking at him strangely, the swelling beneath his left eye enough to make the gaze slightly uneven. "What else did you think would've happened?"
A part of him wanted to admit right there and then what the doctor had said, but the problem with that idea was that Flack knew his friend well. Danny would stare, ask if he were joking, then give a half amused chuckle at the idea and then deny the whole thing in such a convincing way that the detective would jump at the chance and believe him. And this would happen whether or not the doctor was right in her suspicions.
There was no doubt that Don knew his friend well which was why he found his eyes drawn to the smaller man's feet. Danny was always good with words, quick thinking with a silver tongue that had been known to weave a tale or two in his time but if you knew what to look for the man's active body language never failed to show what he was really thinking. The feet twitched and moved irritably over the small portion of tiled floor that they could reach, attempting to dance and pace even when their owner was sitting. His hands clutched and unclutched the covers, his head moved erratically even when he tried to stay facing Flack, and the grey blue eyes danced all over the room in such a nervous way that the dark haired man had seen only rarely during their years of friendship. Although he wasn't sure why, it was clear that Danny wasn't telling him everything.
"Danny, I looked through your belongings. Nothing was taken, you weren't mugged."
The feet stilled along with the rest of him and the blonde looked away before re-fixing his eyes on Flack's own bright blue pair with a harder glint to them this time, more suspicious. "I never said it was a successful mugging"
Flack steeled himself, changing his position in the thin chair to one more upright and firm. In return Danny hunched himself lower, looking through drying blond strands at him, the wrapped hands gripping harder, his feet began dancing again. They both knew each other too well.
"Here's whats going to happen" the darker haired man began ignoring the dancing feet and hard questioning stare. "First you're going upstairs to get your head scanned and check nothing too unusual is out of place, then you're coming back down here and the nurse is gonna collect a SOEC kit, and you are going it consent to it."
The response was immediate and loud, so much so that Flack cringed to think how much the overuse was shredding up the smaller man's already raw throat.
"You gotta be kidding me Flack! You seriously think...why would you think?" At length Danny managed some level of composure, enough at least to stop shouting. He attempted to square his shoulders, but they seemed unable to stay in any position other than a protective hunch for more than a few seconds. It was a far cry from the confident way the man usually held himself and somehow that terrified Flack.
"I wasn't sexually assaulted Flack" Danny said, the words confident enough to revive a few of the hopeful butterflies fluttering around in the detective's chest. Then he noticed that throughout this the blonde's feet hadn't once paused in their nervous dance, he was still hiding something from him. "You honestly think that's what happened?"
Or maybe Flack was reading into this too closely and seeing things that weren't there, it was possible that Danny was just wound up and nervous after a particularly bad attempted mugging. God he hoped so. Not that getting beaten up was a happy go lucky day in the park, but there was a reason he became a homicide detective instead of working in sex crimes. He'd known a couple of guys that he used to work with go that route and god even just working near that stuff seemed to grab hold of your soul and shred it into dripping pieces. It was the helplessness that did it, the knowledge that you could solve the case, offer all the comfort in the world but you still couldn't fix them and you couldn't change what had happened. Sometimes it was easier with corpses, more clear cut, you only had to solve the case, there was no live sobbing victim to factor in as well.
"I don't know what happened Danny" the detective stated evenly, staring straight into his friend's steel gaze, a look reminiscent of a cornered wild animal. "That's why your going to consent to the exam."
Danny shook his head, grinning with lips curled back into a silent snarl. "You don't fucking believe me" he stated simply still shaking his head in jerking movements, feet shuddering along to the same beat. "I don't know what crap those doctors have been filling your head with, but your supposed to believe me not them. As my friend your supposed to fucking believe me."
"As your friend I need to make sure" Flack retaliated looking over the hunched man with a critical eye. This conversation wasn't going anywhere, they were just butting heads like they usually did just with a much more difficult subject matter this time which would make budging Danny on the matter that much more complicated. The detective forced himself to rethink, to approach this from a different angle. So far although he had eventually reluctantly accepted it as a distant possibility that had to be ruled out he hadn't yet considered how he should address this if it had actually happened, if someone had actually sexually assaulted his best friend. He swallowed, mouth suddenly feeling as dry and uncomfortable as Danny's sounded.
"Look, Danno if this does turn into a case" Flack's voice sounded hollow and dull to his own ears. He leaned forward in the chair to reduce the amount of space between them and tried to summon up the actions 'comforting and reassuring' just like when dealing with witnesses and victims on the job, his hands almost shaking when he realized that he couldn't remember quite how he managed all those other times. "and there is anything that you don't want people in the lab or in the station to know about it and about you, then I can talk to Mac. We can make sure that only him and me know the evidence and case are connected to you, that no one else knows. That's your choice but either way you play this I'm not letting you leave this hospital until a SOEC kit has been collected."
Silence reigned for a few minutes, though it felt much longer to the two occupants of the small room, both men sizing each other up to determine who would win the argument. Usually in the company of the blonde silence would be a welcome vacation from the constant stream of chatter and laughter that filled Flack's ears whenever in his best friend's company, but after Danny's almost catatonic nature in that alley and afterward silence was the last thing he wanted to hear right now.
"No" Danny said suddenly shaking his head from side to side in such a abrupt fashion that it gave the taller man a headache just watching him. "You can't tell Mac about this Flack. Nothing fucking happened but you can't tell Mac, he'll think..."
Apparently the CSI didn't know what his boss would think because his sentence trailed off there. Something of the alleyway seemed to be creeping steadily back into the smaller man, turning his body language from animated, engaging and tense to just tense. Eye contact had all but vanished within minutes and a far away distant gaze descended slowly over his blue pupils giving them a glazed look that only seemed to grow more prominent as the conversation progressed.
"Danny" Flack took a breath, "Mac has to know, he's the head of CSI, he has to sign off on all the cases-"
"No Flack! You're not gonna tell him." the blonde kept his eyes fixed on the small patch of floor still visible between them, though his voice still had force behind the tone as it closed around the words despite a painfully audible rasp. "There's not gonna be a case cause nothin' fuckin' happened!"
Flack tilted his head, looking down at the hunched man on the hospital bed. "Ok, Danny" he said slowly, mind working fast as he took in all the bandaged injuries, forming bruises and wondered not for the first time whether there were any more injuries under the soaked through pair of jeans. A man had done this, had cut up his friend's hands, hit at him enough to mar his face and body with red swelling bruises and no matter what he had to do, Detective Flack was going to document each and everyone of his friend's injures and make sure that whoever had done this was held accountable.
He reached a hand into his pocket and pulled out the shining iphone, not missing the bitterness he now felt toward his once beloved machine for whatever small part it had played in the past ten hours. "If you can't help me with what I gotta do to make this a case then I guess I'm gonna have to call Mac for some advice".
It was a cheap move but Danny's eyes instantly widened at the suggestion, establishing eye contact again in the shock of the situation. "Flack, nothin' happened" the blonde repeated with a note of desperation, sounding almost as if what the taller man held was a bomb instead of a mobile phone.
"Consent to the exam and then I'll try and pull some strings and see how long I can keep the details from Mac" Flack said quietly, though in truth he wasn't sure how he was supposed to keep anything from that man, particularly something being investigated under his own roof, but if it meant knowing for sure whether he or the doctor was right about what had happened last night he would try.
Danny shook his head, his body coiled so tight with tension that it almost seemed a surprise that no bones were heard to break under the pressure.
Flack dialed the number, holding it to his ear when it was answered on the third ring. "Listen Mac" he said clearly, making sure to lean so far forward toward the smaller man currently giving him a death glare, that their faces almost touched. Don stared right back, letting him know that he was serious. "A situation has come up and I need to ask you something."
"Ok" the word was quiet, so quiet that even from his close proximity Flack barely heard it, but he saw the nodding, or rather a defeated slumping and raising of that blonde head that soon joined the repetitive beat of his feet almost like he was sobbing. If Flack didn't know his friend any better he would swear that there were tears pricking in the corners of those slightly glazed blue eyes. "Ok".
"Mac, I need to ask you a favor".
By the time the door to the small private room was opened again Flack's heart felt it might burst from the tension of it all. His feet were sore from pacing, and his steadily scuffing usually smart black shoes would need an extra application of polish after a good clean to get rid of god only knows what kind of slime and dirt had been picked up from those alleyways. But with the questions tumbling around inside his head staying still felt like being inside a roller coaster and it was the blonde rather than him who really liked those things, though he disliked to admit it Flack tended to get nauseous. Or maybe like Danny had suggested he only used that as a cover story to hide a more embarrassing truth with a less embarrassing one and really those kind of rides scared him shitless because he was a wimp.
"He's stopped co operating" the head of Doctor Reynolds informed him from around the simple white door frame.
It wasn't a surprise, given the quiet way he'd signed the consent form after having his head scanned, Flack had been waiting expectantly for stubbornness to rise its ugly head and the blonde to try another way to get out of this. Yet he found himself irritated, perhaps even a little angry. All he wanted right now was for the exam to be over with so he could rush the evidence to the lab, they could then tell him it was negative and then he would have to do some apologizing, or not depending on how stubborn he was feeling himself. It would take a couple of weeks for Danny to stop sulking about what Flack had put him through but eventually the blonde would understand that he had only been working in his best interests, although the chances that he would acknowledge that fact verbally were slim to none. Then in time everything would be back to normal and once the feelings had faded it would become nothing more than another event they both ribbed each other about over a pint of beer.
Danny was sat on the edge of the bed like before, and like before the tenseness of his body was enough to imagine disturbingly clearly bones breaking under the strain of the clenched muscles. His eyes were glued downward toward his clenched feet hanging off the edge of the mattress like a child who knew that they were about to get into trouble.
"Everything's done apart from the mouth and...other swabs."
She didn't have to explain what the 'other' swabs were, Don knew well enough and he couldn't blame Danny too much for baulking about them, it would creep the detective out a bit too.
The doctor removed a sterile swab from the pack and Flack fought against a shiver when he realized that most of the evidence containers in the kit were already full, there was even a small silver camera that looked like it had been used already. He had to remind himself pointedly that you could fill the whole forensic lab with evidence and that still didn't mean that any of it would come back positive.
"Comon Danny" Flack said helpfully shaking the man's shoulder when the blonde failed to respond to the doctor's prompts. "Open that yap of yours so doc here can take a swab and we can finish this test and go on our merry way."
The blonde remained tense, head down and jaw clenched shut stubbornly. It confused Flack to no end, not that Danny tended to make much sense but why would he chose now in the test to dig his heels in. It was only a mouth swab, the CSI had taken and given dozens of them, sometimes for practice and sometimes for fun. "Start cooperating Danny, or Mac is my next phone call."
"I wanna go home" the words were ragged and strained, but there was a level of distortion to it that couldn't have been caused by the damage alone. Instinctively Flack dropped to a crouch in time to catch sight of shining blue eyes before the blonde turned away to scrub at his face with rough white bandages to hide how near tears he was. Danny pointedly avoided the taller man's stare. "Can't I just go home, please Flack."
Flack openly stared, one hand still lightly gripping his friend's shoulder. He could count the number of times Danny had said 'please' to him and actually meant it on one hand, and none of those times had ever contained that amount of pleading and desperation. The dark haired man straightened up a little to try and capture his friend's gaze, hand edging to the back of Danny's neck in a soothing motion. Danny tensed as if already knowing the answer.
"It'll be quick, I promise."
"Thirty seconds" Doctor Reynold's helpfully supplied, moving some instruments closer on a wheeled tray as if to make sure she would be equipped enough to not go over that time period. There were disposable gloves, a small torch, tweezers, spare sterile swabs and evidence containers.
"Thirty seconds" the detective repeated with a reassuring smile, he dropped a hand to wrap self consciously around Danny's figiting gauze wrapped fingers. They usually didn't do this kind of thing, they hugged, patted each other on the back, draped arms over shoulders but holding hands was still for most times too feminine for grown men to be seen doing and he didn't want Messer getting anymore uncomfortable than he already was. The blonde though barely seemed to notice apart from finding it easier to raise his head without the presence on the back of his neck.
"Com'n Mess, be over before you know it"
Danny didn't look at either of them, didn't look at anything really, not that there was much in this little room particularly eye catching. Just a bed, a window with drapes closed, plain creamy walls, cheap curling blue carpet and small white doors leading to an adjoining bathroom and the hallway. The doctor had chosen it for its privacy and relative isolation more than anything else, something Flack was both grateful for and despised because he knew the only reason she thought it needed was her stubborn clinging to her version of what had happened to his friend. The only reason why the detective had acceded to the necessity of a SOEC kit was because as Danny, a good scientist knew in order to say something had happened or not happened you first had to test it. While the doctor was treating this only as a confirmation of something that she already 'knew'. It was irritating to say the least.
When the blonde finally opened his bruised jaw he would have immediately snapped it shut were it not for Don starting to count soothingly down from thirty, marking clear in the air between them how much time he had left. At twenty-five Danny's blue eyes shut, as if the small white swab were particularly painful and all his muscles went rigid including his hand over Flack's own. On reaching twenty and the swabs done, Doctor Reynold's tipped his chin up slightly and requested with compassion to his uneasy state that he open his mouth wider so she could examine it properly with her torch. Flack had to help and threaten to stop counting until he complied, it was about then that the detective noticed the smaller man was shaking despite clear effort to stay as still as possible and if he looked close enough it looked as if there were traces of tears clinging to the man's closed lashes.
Flack couldn't understand it. With a firm grip around his friend's hand the detective tried to think of an explanation for the sudden change. Why on earth would something as mundane as a mouth swabbing be the thing to set him off? A stray thought struck him, a thought that linked together seamlessly Doctor Reyold's suspicions, the reaction to being forced to open his mouth and the bruising around his jaw but Flack pushed it away immediately, mind too appalled to even consider that. There were other possibilities much more likely, although the scan had shown no bruising or damage to his brain or skull there was more than enough superficial damage to cause a nasty headache for a while. No one liked to be forced to do anything while they were in pain.
They finished ten seconds before their deadline after the brunette doctor had thoroughly examined the man's throat and used the tweezers to pull something small from between the blond's teeth. Don had leaned forward slightly at that moment and forced a laugh, joking with his friend that he was being given the five star treatment having his teeth flossed as well. It may not have been the right thing to say at that moment but more than anything else Flack just wanted to hear Danny laugh again, and chase away the doubts that had begun to edge their way firmly into his brain once more. Danny didn't laugh, didn't speak and when told by the doctor he could close his mouth the blond shut it so firmly both witnesses felt sympathy pains shoot through their own jaws. There was no sign that the CSI planned on opening his eyes again.
"Mr Messer...Danny. I'm going to need you to lie down on your side on the bed." The doctor placed a palm on the perched man's shoulder to help but was met with resistance, Danny having frozen into place. Fingers gripped about the white sheets and the taller man's hand, though Flack wasn't convinced Danny was aware of that fact. His eyes still closed faced downwards and each limb seemed stuck between staying still and his body straining to curl in on itself.
Like any good friend Flack stepped in, though at this point he wished he didn't have to. "Com'n Dan" he murmured, using a large hand on each shoulder to tip the man up onto his left side. To his surprise, the resistance vanished under his touch and it was with a heavy heart that Don realized that Danny trusted him enough to allow himself to be guided down to the mattress. What came next would be worse and suddenly with whatever had come over the smaller man to make him so withdrawn Don hated the idea of being the only one who the blonde trusted enough to push him into going through with this.
In between the start of the examination and Flack entering the room the waterlogged jeans had been removed. All the clothing Danny was now left with was the hospital gown, thankfully one of a sensible enough length to reach the man's knees but still nowhere near comforting enough in this position. It took both of them to convince Danny to bring a knee up to his chest, the doctor's verbal prompts and the detective's physical ones. Wherever Danny was right now, words didn't seem able to reach him but more than anything all the occupants of the room just wanted this over so he would stop acting like this. The smaller man, now in a kind of fetal position on the bed, still hadn't opened his eyes.
Don watched dazed as the doctor draped a thick blue blanket over his friend's stomach, waist and legs before turning to gather her tools on opposite side of the bed. He was supposed to be a detective and often prided himself on excellent analytical skills but in this situation he was as confused as a rookie fresh out of the academy. As much as he held onto the other ideas, a headache or sulking none of them stood up to scrutiny. There was only one explanation that seemed to fit perfectly with the man's sudden intense change in mood and it was something that he didn't want to believe could be true.
"Danno" Flack stated softly, pulling up a cushioned visitor chair to sit hesitantly by the man's head. "You want me to leave, just tell me to fuck off and I'll go straight out that door again to wait. Ok?"
Danny didn't open his eyes and he didn't react when Flack cautiously wrapped his fingers around the bandaged palm again. It wasn't even like the alleyway – that had been more of an apathy on the blonde's part, this was more like a deliberate avoidance. The detective couldn't decide which was worse.
Doctor Reynolds looked at him over the motionless body on the bed. "I need to know he's aware of what I'm about to do."
Flack fought back a groan, he'd been afraid of this. He didn't want to be the one to explain to his scared friend that yes, they really did need to poke around south of his border to check if something even worse had or had not happened, and no amount of begging or pleading would get him out of it. What if he really had been – no, Flack shook his head, he couldn't think like that. He wouldn't make it through this if he thought like that.
"Danny, its time buddy. Last thing then it's over." Flack used his spare hand to stroke a short rough patch through the now dry hair, something he reserved only for when the smaller man was sick or upset. No response, eyes remaining as tightly shut as before. "Com'n Dan I need you to open your eyes and tell me you understand whats gonna happen."
When the blue slits showed themselves it seemed to cost the man a great deal in energy. Danny did nothing more but stare with a odd defeated expression at Flack's hand in his own, or perhaps through that to the seated detective's shirt or even through that to something from a different time or place. It was a while before he spoke and Flack wondered if all he were going to do was lie there on his side on the bed doing nothing more than taking slightly too fast breathes and staring into space.
"We have to do this?" It was either a question or a statement, Flack doubted the blonde himself even knew which one.
"Yeah buddy, we have to do this."
"I can't just go home?" Danny was known for his skill at pulling heart strings, but the pure desolation in the question hit a new height for tear jerking even for him.
"No Danno, we need the evidence" Had Flack been paying closer attention he might have noticed the change in attitude the doubts were causing him. There was a part of him, small but growing that not only acknowledged that something might have happened last night but suspected that it had.
"After you get the evidence I can go home, and you won't tell Mac?"
"That's the plan, soon as you get the go ahead from the doc I'll take you home" The blond still seemed unsure, moving his head again in short jerking movements to get a better look around the room as if looking for another way out of this. Fast breathing turned to shuddering breaths and Flack knew that if he didn't calm the man down now the only way they'd manage to finish the kit would be to hold him down.
"Hey, Danno Danno" Flack soothed, trying to get his friend's attention back. "I promise I'll take ya home but we just gotta do this one thing first, ok?"
He leaned down to force eye contact with the curled up man, trying to convey in his own eyes the message that he was telling the truth and would not back down. It took a while, but finally Flack received a nod, though a small hesitant one. The detective looked back up at the doctor on the opposite side of his friend's bed to pass on the nod. Seconds later, while making sure to verbally explain what she was doing, she moved the covers slightly, pulled her tools closer to her on their moving tray and set to work. Seconds after that Danny's blue eyes closed again, this time with enough tears in them to spill onto the white bed sheet.
Flack sat awkwardly on the stiff hospital chair, watching as his friend attempted desperately to school his breathing and occasional sniffs and breaks in breath that showed how close to becoming a sobbing wreak he was. Hands gripped at anything they could, though in Danny's condition his bandaged palms shouldn't be gripping at anything at all. Mostly the tugged bed sheets suffered the most damage but as the woman continued her job, with a much too worried look on her face, the detective's hand began feeling the strain.
"Hey Danno" Flack said companionably as a stroke of genius hit him. "What did you think of the game last night? I swear when McGrady scored that last point I really thought the Knicks were actually going to win a game for once."
It seemed to work, with Danny opening his eyes again to peer curiously up at him before settling down to stare again in the direction of his hand, as Flack prattled on about the basketball game they had all watched the night before. And though Danny didn't let go completely, Flack's hand at least didn't feel like it had been placed in a vice.
"Ok, Danny the next part is going to hurt a little more. I need to put in some stitches. I think I can put them all in without having to resort to surgery but its going to be uncomfortable. The kit itself is done, so after this you're all finished but I'm going to need you to stay still a few more minutes, ok?"
Danny gave a stiff nod, face scraping against the sheet but Flack found he had lost all ability to communicate. Stitches meant something had to be fixed, and something that had to be fixed had been broken somehow and there was only one how that popped into his mind at this moment. Oh god. It felt as if his heart had suddenly stopped beating or had jumped into his throat, which could help explain why he was finding it so difficult to speak at the moment.
All his arguments and denial that this possibly could not have happened felt so stupid. Obviously Doctor Reynolds would have to be really sure to put her job on the line enough to even hint to him about what had happened. She had probably seen the damage herself, or another doctor had seen it when they first brought him in and took off his clothes to check for injuries. They had already known that this had happened because they had already seen the damage, it hadn't been guesswork, it had been certainty and Flack had been too much of a pig headed idiot to notice.
"Detective Flack"
Flack looked dumbly over to the doctor, who raised her eyebrows at the small figure between them. Danny had started breathing fast again, practically hyperventilating, damaged hands curled into fists as if just looking for something to direct all his fear and tension towards. A thin layer of sweat had started to form over the man's face and for what seemed the first time that night Flack recognized the emotion on Danny's pale face as not one of stubborn avoidance but complete and utter mind numbing fear. He'd never seen him like this before and just to see it was terrifying.
It wasn't a best friend's job to be terrified so Flack opened up his mouth and somehow words tumbled out. Nonsense about basketball games they'd seen, then baseball, then when he'd run out of those, hockey games though he knew the smaller man wasn't as keen on the sport as he and Adam were. The detective forced a smile, brushing hair over the man's temple as he recounted practical jokes he and Lindsay had played on various members of the public such as when getting annoyed at the speed of traffic, the woman had placed a hair dryer with her kit. They had taken it in turns to randomly point it at traffic out of the car window to scare drivers into mistaking it for a hand held traffic speedometer and slow down.
Even when it helped and Danny seemed to calm down slightly, Flack had to keep his own breathing in check, had to make sure he kept talking and kept calming him down because he didn't know what he would do without something to concentrate on. Oh god, Danny had been raped.