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perpetual_motionTitle: No Place in 2000 Miles to Buy Beer
Author: Perpetual Motion
Fandom: Without a Trace
Pairing: Danny/Martin
Rating: PG
Summary: Danny's demons are at the forefront.
Dis: Totally not mine. Bullshit, all of it. Except for the parts that are in canon.
Author's Notes: Hey, look, I finished something! Whee! Also, title taken from the Ani DiFranco song "Fuel", which is awesome. The needed lyrics are below the story. I seem to use this song for a lot of inspiration.
No Place in 2000 Miles to Buy Beer
By Perpetual Motion
"Wanna beer?"
Martin watched Danny's hand clench and wished he could reach over and pry it open to slide his fingers in. He answered for both of them. "No thanks. On the clock."
"Yeah. Sure." The guy, his name was Clifford, pulled a beer from his fridge and popped the top. A muscle in Danny's jaw twitched. "What's this about?"
"Sylvia Carlson. We've asked around, and you were the last one to see her before she disappeared." Martin popped the cap off his pen while keeping track of Danny's reactions out of the corner of his eye. "We need to know what happened the last time you saw her."
Clifford dropped into an armchair and took a long swig of his beer. "We were at a bar up on Ninth. We had a bunch of drinks. We split a cab back here. She lives in the next building."
Danny cleared his throat, and gave Martin a quick, sidelong look that read, 'let me take the rest of this'. Martin tapped his pen on his notebook, his sign that Danny could have it. Danny unclenched his hand and opened his own pen. "Define 'a bunch'."
"I had thirteen or fourteen beers, and she was matching me in shots."
"You let a girl who weighs a hundred pounds have thirteen or fourteen shots?"
Clifford waved his beer in a 'not my issue' manner. "Couldn't have stopped her if I wanted to. Girl's a party animal. I've tried to cut her off before, and she's knocked the shit out of me. She's got issues."
Danny smirked. "And she was buying?"
"Yeah. You don't cut off the gravy train, you know?"
"Yeah."
Martin noticed Danny's face getting tighter and stepped back in. "When'd you grab the cab?"
"Around three, I guess." Clifford shrugged. "I couldn't really see my watch by then, but the bars on Ninth close at 2:30, and it usually takes a little while to get a cab."
"And then?"
"And then we rode back here. The cabbie dropped her off first, and poured me out on my own stoop. Haven't heard from her since."
Sylvia Carlson had disappeared sometime between eight and twelve the next day. Martin shared a glance with Danny, and they silently decided that Clifford had nothing more to add. They stood up and Martin handled the goodbyes and handing over of business cards. He didn't speak again until they were back in the car.
"You okay?"
"Fine." Danny's voice was clipped.
"Sure. If 'fine' is another word for 'fucking wired'." Martin reached across the console and placed his hand over Danny's hand, which was clenched again. "What's going on?"
"That whole place reeked of stale beer and cheap booze. Just a lot of flashbacks." Danny turned and stared out the window, his signal that he wasn't going to discuss it further for now.
Martin put his hand back on the wheel and pushed it out of his mind until they could get somewhere where they could really talk.
*
"You're sure this guy has nothing to do with it?"
"We found the cabbie who dropped them off. He says the guy was so wasted he could barely stand."
"And he let loose on the guy's shoes, so he was even worse off then." Danny shrugged. "Clifford probably wasn't up until at least three or four the next day."
One of Sam's eyebrows rose in Danny's direction. "Sounds like the voice of experience." Martin's stomach twisted as he watched Danny's hands clench up under the table.
"Certain frat boy memories never leave you." Danny grinned. Martin was pretty sure he was the only one who could tell Danny's smile was faked.
Sam gave a half-smile that was probably sexy to some people. Martin hated it right at that moment. "I'll bet. Any pictures wandering around?"
"Not anymore." Danny tapped out a four beat on his thigh and looked at Jack. "We done?"
Jack looked around the table and gave a nod. "Everyone go home. We'll pick this up tomorrow."
Danny cleared up his things and dropped them on his desk before Martin was even finished putting papers back into files. He was on the elevator before Martin was at his desk.
"Where's the fire?" Sam jerked her head in the direction of Danny's vapor trail.
Martin shoved his folders into his briefcase and weighed the pros and cons of telling Sam to back off. "Don't ask him about his frat boy days."
Sam's eyebrow went up again. "Excuse me?"
Martin walked over to her desk and lowered his voice so no one could overhear. "Don't ask him about his frat days. Don't ask him about anything like his frat days. They're not good memories."
"I…" Sam trailed off and looked abashed. "I didn't know."
"I know. There's a reason." Martin picked up his briefcase, gave her a small smile to let her know he wasn't really mad, just stressed, and he headed for the elevator. He rode it down alone, but he wasn't surprised to find Danny waiting for him by his car. "You're not okay today."
Danny didn't say anything until Martin had the car unlocked and they were both inside. "Just having a bad day for some reason."
"Any particular reason?"
"Nope."
Martin started the car. "Okay."
Danny looked at him. "Okay? That's all you've got?"
Martin shrugged. "Obviously, if you don't have a reason, you don't have a reason. If you want to talk, I'm here, but I'm not going to sit here and push your buttons until you get pissed and talk because you feel like I forced you. You'll tell me when you tell me."
Danny snorted. "It's killing you that I'm not giving you the details."
"I won't deny that, but I'm also mature enough to know better than to goad someone who doesn't want to talk. I do enough of that shit on the job. I don't want to do it with you."
"You know, you're almost sweet sometimes."
Martin rolled his eyes. "Shut up."
"Aw, are you blushing, Martin?"
"Danny, shut up, or I'll shut you up."
"Promise?"
Martin didn't say anything until they'd cleared the parking garage. "I promise on one condition."
"You can't set up conditional sex."
"It's either conditional or not at all."
Danny's eyes widened. "You wouldn't."
For the first time in hours, Martin grinned. "I would."
"You want me to open up to you about my tawdry past."
"No." Martin spared a glance at Danny as they sat at a red light. "I want you to realize that telling me about it isn't going to make me think I've made some horrible choice and send me running for the hills. I'm a big boy. I can handle anything you've got."
At any other time, Danny would have leered, but he recognized this as a situation that would end badly if he pulled anything cute. "You're sure?"
"Of course I'm sure."
Danny didn't say anything for a few moments. His past, at least the hazy, alcohol-doused parts, wasn't something he liked to dredge up, but considering how he and Martin seemed to get more serious by the day, he saw himself at a dead-end for the whole discussion and made a quick decision that sooner rather than later would probably be best. "I was a foster kid. And sometimes foster kids go the way of tv movies."
"Uncaring foster parents leads to lack of supervision leads to underage drinking and drugs?"
"And sex." Danny stared out the window at the huge SUV in the next lane. "I got slammed for the first time when I was twelve. I lost my virginity to a girl that night. I couldn't tell you her name or draw her face if it was the last chance to find her. She was a blonde, I think." He took a breath. "I started getting drunk every weekend. The foster family I was with didn't really care. I was supplemental income to them. If I left on Friday night and didn't crawl into the house until Sunday, they barely noticed. The checks came, they were happy."
Martin stared at the bumper in front of him and tried not to give away just how angry the whole story was making him. He wasn't angry at Danny; he was angry at the so-called foster parents who had carelessly let him fall into such a bad situation. "What happened?"
"Alcohol poisoning at fourteen." Danny's tone turned a shade more bitter. "I don't recommend it. I got moved to a new home. Psycho-Christians who thought all I needed was a good, strict household to snap me into place."
Reading between the lines was easy. Martin did it for a living. "They hit you."
"A lot. I got the DTs from withdrawl. They claimed it was God trying to pull the devil from me."
"Jesus Christ."
"No, they thought it was actually God." Danny looked away from the window to give a brittle smile to Martin. "I was sober the whole time I was there. I didn't have much of a choice. If I so much as smelled of cough syrup they'd punish me. 'Spare the rod, spoil the child'. I was there for a year."
Martin's building came into sight, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He knew better than to start a heavy conversation in the middle of traffic, but he hadn't realized just how heavy it would be. He managed to park, but he didn't move to get out of the car. "Where'd you go after that?"
Danny didn't try to get out of the car, either. He knew they were going to finish the whole conversation in one go. Martin knew him to well to give him a way out. If he got a way out, he wouldn't bring it up again. "Another foster home. Decent parents in this one, but they were to trusting. They told me they didn't feel that a sixteen-year-old needed a curfew. They reasoned that I was nearly a grown man, and that I could make my own decisions as to what times to be home. I never pulled a two-day bender, but I didn't really need to. I found the beer bong crowd, and that covered me in a single night. I stayed with that family until I was eighteen. The state graciously paid for my college education, and I discovered fraternities."
Martin had only been half-certain when he'd told Sam that Danny's frat days hadn't been pleasant ones. His stomach still twisted hard when the tone of Danny's voice confirmed his suspicions. "How much do you remember?"
"Very, very little." Danny clenched his fingers on the door handle. He wanted to be out of the car so badly. Out of the car meant out of the conversation. "I was never drunk in class, but once Friday hit, I was incoherent until Monday morning. I ended up in the hospital twice."
"Why'd you get sober?"
"I joined the FBI. I knew that they'd catch on sooner or later, and I decided to try and curb my drinking to something reasonable. I knew I had a problem, but until I really had to deal with it in a serious manner, I brushed it off. I drank, sure, but I didn't do anything else, you know?"
Martin nearly winced at the pain in Danny's voice. He got it. When you only had one vice, why would you give it up? It was so easy to argue that one vice was better than numerous vices. "You've been in the FBI longer than seven years."
Danny chuckled darkly. "You're a true investigator."
"One of us should be." Martin couldn't have stopped the remark if he'd wanted to. It was so much easier to let the atmosphere lighten than to keep it as heavy as it had been. "What made you stop for good?"
"I swore to myself that I would never show up to work drunk or hungover. I showed up drunk to court one day and had to be sent home. I got a reaming like nothing else, and I realized just how bad off I was. My boss could have fired me, but he pointed me towards rehab and told me that I was welcome to come back as long as I had a certificate of completion. I went. I came back. I haven't drunk since."
"You wanted to today."
"I want to everyday, Martin. That's the essence of being an alcoholic. You always want it." Danny finally allowed himself to open the car door. "It's just a matter of remembering that there are more important things, more influential things than alcohol." Danny stepped out of the car. He watched Martin do the same. "Would you have slept with some sleazy drunk?"
Martin gave Danny a hard look. "I don't just sleep with you, you know." He watched Danny's features soften. He waited for Danny to start opening his mouth to respond before grinning with a glint in his eye and getting the mood back to something more normal for them. "And you being a sleaze has nothing to do with you being an alcoholic."
Danny knew his mouth was hanging open, but he couldn't quite get his brain functioning well enough to close it. Martin had just called him a sleaze and called him an alcoholic without sounding disgusted or pissed or confused. "I love you." He didn't realize he'd said it until Martin looked like he'd been hit in the back of the head with something heavy. Danny had said it before, sure, but never just straight out in the middle of a conversation, and it had obviously thrown Martin for a loop. "Martin?"
"I-" Martin stopped, obviously still confused. It took him a few seconds to get himself back together. "Damn. If I had known I just had to insult you to get you to admit it freely, I would have called you a sleaze months ago."
And just like that they were completely comfortable around each other again. Danny walked around the car, slung his arm around Martin's shoulder, and steered him towards the building. "Let's go inside and pretend like we don't have a shitty day ahead of us tomorrow."
Martin leaned on Danny as they waited for the elevator. "Okay." He watched Danny's warped reflection in the elevator doors. "Thanks for telling me."
Danny didn't answer, just squeezed Martin's shoulder and shoved him onto the elevator.
*
LYRICS:
And they say that alcoholics are always alcoholics,
Even when they're dry as my lips, for years,
Even when they're stranded on a small desert island,
With no place in 2000 miles to buy beer.
And I wonder,
Is he different?
Is he different?
Has he changed what he's about?
Or is he just a liar with nothing to lie about?
Author: Perpetual Motion
Fandom: Without a Trace
Pairing: Danny/Martin
Rating: PG
Summary: Danny's demons are at the forefront.
Dis: Totally not mine. Bullshit, all of it. Except for the parts that are in canon.
Author's Notes: Hey, look, I finished something! Whee! Also, title taken from the Ani DiFranco song "Fuel", which is awesome. The needed lyrics are below the story. I seem to use this song for a lot of inspiration.
No Place in 2000 Miles to Buy Beer
By Perpetual Motion
"Wanna beer?"
Martin watched Danny's hand clench and wished he could reach over and pry it open to slide his fingers in. He answered for both of them. "No thanks. On the clock."
"Yeah. Sure." The guy, his name was Clifford, pulled a beer from his fridge and popped the top. A muscle in Danny's jaw twitched. "What's this about?"
"Sylvia Carlson. We've asked around, and you were the last one to see her before she disappeared." Martin popped the cap off his pen while keeping track of Danny's reactions out of the corner of his eye. "We need to know what happened the last time you saw her."
Clifford dropped into an armchair and took a long swig of his beer. "We were at a bar up on Ninth. We had a bunch of drinks. We split a cab back here. She lives in the next building."
Danny cleared his throat, and gave Martin a quick, sidelong look that read, 'let me take the rest of this'. Martin tapped his pen on his notebook, his sign that Danny could have it. Danny unclenched his hand and opened his own pen. "Define 'a bunch'."
"I had thirteen or fourteen beers, and she was matching me in shots."
"You let a girl who weighs a hundred pounds have thirteen or fourteen shots?"
Clifford waved his beer in a 'not my issue' manner. "Couldn't have stopped her if I wanted to. Girl's a party animal. I've tried to cut her off before, and she's knocked the shit out of me. She's got issues."
Danny smirked. "And she was buying?"
"Yeah. You don't cut off the gravy train, you know?"
"Yeah."
Martin noticed Danny's face getting tighter and stepped back in. "When'd you grab the cab?"
"Around three, I guess." Clifford shrugged. "I couldn't really see my watch by then, but the bars on Ninth close at 2:30, and it usually takes a little while to get a cab."
"And then?"
"And then we rode back here. The cabbie dropped her off first, and poured me out on my own stoop. Haven't heard from her since."
Sylvia Carlson had disappeared sometime between eight and twelve the next day. Martin shared a glance with Danny, and they silently decided that Clifford had nothing more to add. They stood up and Martin handled the goodbyes and handing over of business cards. He didn't speak again until they were back in the car.
"You okay?"
"Fine." Danny's voice was clipped.
"Sure. If 'fine' is another word for 'fucking wired'." Martin reached across the console and placed his hand over Danny's hand, which was clenched again. "What's going on?"
"That whole place reeked of stale beer and cheap booze. Just a lot of flashbacks." Danny turned and stared out the window, his signal that he wasn't going to discuss it further for now.
Martin put his hand back on the wheel and pushed it out of his mind until they could get somewhere where they could really talk.
*
"You're sure this guy has nothing to do with it?"
"We found the cabbie who dropped them off. He says the guy was so wasted he could barely stand."
"And he let loose on the guy's shoes, so he was even worse off then." Danny shrugged. "Clifford probably wasn't up until at least three or four the next day."
One of Sam's eyebrows rose in Danny's direction. "Sounds like the voice of experience." Martin's stomach twisted as he watched Danny's hands clench up under the table.
"Certain frat boy memories never leave you." Danny grinned. Martin was pretty sure he was the only one who could tell Danny's smile was faked.
Sam gave a half-smile that was probably sexy to some people. Martin hated it right at that moment. "I'll bet. Any pictures wandering around?"
"Not anymore." Danny tapped out a four beat on his thigh and looked at Jack. "We done?"
Jack looked around the table and gave a nod. "Everyone go home. We'll pick this up tomorrow."
Danny cleared up his things and dropped them on his desk before Martin was even finished putting papers back into files. He was on the elevator before Martin was at his desk.
"Where's the fire?" Sam jerked her head in the direction of Danny's vapor trail.
Martin shoved his folders into his briefcase and weighed the pros and cons of telling Sam to back off. "Don't ask him about his frat boy days."
Sam's eyebrow went up again. "Excuse me?"
Martin walked over to her desk and lowered his voice so no one could overhear. "Don't ask him about his frat days. Don't ask him about anything like his frat days. They're not good memories."
"I…" Sam trailed off and looked abashed. "I didn't know."
"I know. There's a reason." Martin picked up his briefcase, gave her a small smile to let her know he wasn't really mad, just stressed, and he headed for the elevator. He rode it down alone, but he wasn't surprised to find Danny waiting for him by his car. "You're not okay today."
Danny didn't say anything until Martin had the car unlocked and they were both inside. "Just having a bad day for some reason."
"Any particular reason?"
"Nope."
Martin started the car. "Okay."
Danny looked at him. "Okay? That's all you've got?"
Martin shrugged. "Obviously, if you don't have a reason, you don't have a reason. If you want to talk, I'm here, but I'm not going to sit here and push your buttons until you get pissed and talk because you feel like I forced you. You'll tell me when you tell me."
Danny snorted. "It's killing you that I'm not giving you the details."
"I won't deny that, but I'm also mature enough to know better than to goad someone who doesn't want to talk. I do enough of that shit on the job. I don't want to do it with you."
"You know, you're almost sweet sometimes."
Martin rolled his eyes. "Shut up."
"Aw, are you blushing, Martin?"
"Danny, shut up, or I'll shut you up."
"Promise?"
Martin didn't say anything until they'd cleared the parking garage. "I promise on one condition."
"You can't set up conditional sex."
"It's either conditional or not at all."
Danny's eyes widened. "You wouldn't."
For the first time in hours, Martin grinned. "I would."
"You want me to open up to you about my tawdry past."
"No." Martin spared a glance at Danny as they sat at a red light. "I want you to realize that telling me about it isn't going to make me think I've made some horrible choice and send me running for the hills. I'm a big boy. I can handle anything you've got."
At any other time, Danny would have leered, but he recognized this as a situation that would end badly if he pulled anything cute. "You're sure?"
"Of course I'm sure."
Danny didn't say anything for a few moments. His past, at least the hazy, alcohol-doused parts, wasn't something he liked to dredge up, but considering how he and Martin seemed to get more serious by the day, he saw himself at a dead-end for the whole discussion and made a quick decision that sooner rather than later would probably be best. "I was a foster kid. And sometimes foster kids go the way of tv movies."
"Uncaring foster parents leads to lack of supervision leads to underage drinking and drugs?"
"And sex." Danny stared out the window at the huge SUV in the next lane. "I got slammed for the first time when I was twelve. I lost my virginity to a girl that night. I couldn't tell you her name or draw her face if it was the last chance to find her. She was a blonde, I think." He took a breath. "I started getting drunk every weekend. The foster family I was with didn't really care. I was supplemental income to them. If I left on Friday night and didn't crawl into the house until Sunday, they barely noticed. The checks came, they were happy."
Martin stared at the bumper in front of him and tried not to give away just how angry the whole story was making him. He wasn't angry at Danny; he was angry at the so-called foster parents who had carelessly let him fall into such a bad situation. "What happened?"
"Alcohol poisoning at fourteen." Danny's tone turned a shade more bitter. "I don't recommend it. I got moved to a new home. Psycho-Christians who thought all I needed was a good, strict household to snap me into place."
Reading between the lines was easy. Martin did it for a living. "They hit you."
"A lot. I got the DTs from withdrawl. They claimed it was God trying to pull the devil from me."
"Jesus Christ."
"No, they thought it was actually God." Danny looked away from the window to give a brittle smile to Martin. "I was sober the whole time I was there. I didn't have much of a choice. If I so much as smelled of cough syrup they'd punish me. 'Spare the rod, spoil the child'. I was there for a year."
Martin's building came into sight, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He knew better than to start a heavy conversation in the middle of traffic, but he hadn't realized just how heavy it would be. He managed to park, but he didn't move to get out of the car. "Where'd you go after that?"
Danny didn't try to get out of the car, either. He knew they were going to finish the whole conversation in one go. Martin knew him to well to give him a way out. If he got a way out, he wouldn't bring it up again. "Another foster home. Decent parents in this one, but they were to trusting. They told me they didn't feel that a sixteen-year-old needed a curfew. They reasoned that I was nearly a grown man, and that I could make my own decisions as to what times to be home. I never pulled a two-day bender, but I didn't really need to. I found the beer bong crowd, and that covered me in a single night. I stayed with that family until I was eighteen. The state graciously paid for my college education, and I discovered fraternities."
Martin had only been half-certain when he'd told Sam that Danny's frat days hadn't been pleasant ones. His stomach still twisted hard when the tone of Danny's voice confirmed his suspicions. "How much do you remember?"
"Very, very little." Danny clenched his fingers on the door handle. He wanted to be out of the car so badly. Out of the car meant out of the conversation. "I was never drunk in class, but once Friday hit, I was incoherent until Monday morning. I ended up in the hospital twice."
"Why'd you get sober?"
"I joined the FBI. I knew that they'd catch on sooner or later, and I decided to try and curb my drinking to something reasonable. I knew I had a problem, but until I really had to deal with it in a serious manner, I brushed it off. I drank, sure, but I didn't do anything else, you know?"
Martin nearly winced at the pain in Danny's voice. He got it. When you only had one vice, why would you give it up? It was so easy to argue that one vice was better than numerous vices. "You've been in the FBI longer than seven years."
Danny chuckled darkly. "You're a true investigator."
"One of us should be." Martin couldn't have stopped the remark if he'd wanted to. It was so much easier to let the atmosphere lighten than to keep it as heavy as it had been. "What made you stop for good?"
"I swore to myself that I would never show up to work drunk or hungover. I showed up drunk to court one day and had to be sent home. I got a reaming like nothing else, and I realized just how bad off I was. My boss could have fired me, but he pointed me towards rehab and told me that I was welcome to come back as long as I had a certificate of completion. I went. I came back. I haven't drunk since."
"You wanted to today."
"I want to everyday, Martin. That's the essence of being an alcoholic. You always want it." Danny finally allowed himself to open the car door. "It's just a matter of remembering that there are more important things, more influential things than alcohol." Danny stepped out of the car. He watched Martin do the same. "Would you have slept with some sleazy drunk?"
Martin gave Danny a hard look. "I don't just sleep with you, you know." He watched Danny's features soften. He waited for Danny to start opening his mouth to respond before grinning with a glint in his eye and getting the mood back to something more normal for them. "And you being a sleaze has nothing to do with you being an alcoholic."
Danny knew his mouth was hanging open, but he couldn't quite get his brain functioning well enough to close it. Martin had just called him a sleaze and called him an alcoholic without sounding disgusted or pissed or confused. "I love you." He didn't realize he'd said it until Martin looked like he'd been hit in the back of the head with something heavy. Danny had said it before, sure, but never just straight out in the middle of a conversation, and it had obviously thrown Martin for a loop. "Martin?"
"I-" Martin stopped, obviously still confused. It took him a few seconds to get himself back together. "Damn. If I had known I just had to insult you to get you to admit it freely, I would have called you a sleaze months ago."
And just like that they were completely comfortable around each other again. Danny walked around the car, slung his arm around Martin's shoulder, and steered him towards the building. "Let's go inside and pretend like we don't have a shitty day ahead of us tomorrow."
Martin leaned on Danny as they waited for the elevator. "Okay." He watched Danny's warped reflection in the elevator doors. "Thanks for telling me."
Danny didn't answer, just squeezed Martin's shoulder and shoved him onto the elevator.
*
LYRICS:
And they say that alcoholics are always alcoholics,
Even when they're dry as my lips, for years,
Even when they're stranded on a small desert island,
With no place in 2000 miles to buy beer.
And I wonder,
Is he different?
Is he different?
Has he changed what he's about?
Or is he just a liar with nothing to lie about?
