Title: Spiritus Lenis
By: sophiesly
Pairings: Danny/Flack (who else?)
Rating: PG13-ish
Warnings: Obviously slash, violence/blood, swearing etc.
Disclaimer: Not mine. If it was, I'd give Aiden angst. It's her turn.
Summary: "Danny's been here before, and somehow it never gets any easier."
Author's Note: Another shooting!story. Sorry! Although in my defense, I wrote it lastnight. Flack is so protective of Danny, I can see him walking first into these dangerous situations, and I wanted to see what would happen. I think I've taken some liberties with canon by mistake, and I think I've also overdone Danny's accent. Once again, sorry!
Dedications: twincy , generally for being herself, and geekslasher for encouragement <3 hart!

***

There were a lot of moments Danny would never forget. He had seen things nobody else would believe, or survive, and they were all etched into his mind like particularly malevolent photographs, fading with time so that only the outlines and the stark memory of horror and nausea were present.

Some of them were stronger than others. Like the memory of the first and only time he had been around to watch Sonny Sassone beating some guy's head in with a baseball bat, just standing and watching the blood oil slick over the grimy sidewalk, not intervening partly by fear and partly by the notion that the victim deserved the punishment. Or when one of the rival gangs had broken his wrist, and he had woken up in hospital to whitewashed walls and whitewashed lies, of course you'll play baseball again, pretty soon you'll be good as new. Or, when the cab driver had beaten his dad up and left him there, and Danny stood shaking like a leaf as he watched his dad bleeding onto the unforgiving New York streets, wondering why nobody was coming to help him, why nobody was there. More recently it was when Mac had placed Danny's gun on the desk with fateful certainty, and how the implied knowledge that Mac was considering regretting hiring Danny in the first place that cut deeper than the fact that Danny was off the promotion grid. Those few days of uncertainty and open hatred were things he'd never forget, a hallmark of just how little the department trusted him, of how little Mac trusted him.

Now, sitting in the white hospital room like an ashen-faced ghost, shaking and trying to bite back the despair that bubbled on the edge of his throat, Danny knew he had a new memory that would be burned into his brain. The memory of terror, of tears and screaming and frenetic panic from the ambulance drivers - who should have been calm and indifferent like their uniforms dictated - were rising like nausea in his stomach, and the rapidly encroaching despair was pressing against his skin as if the walls were closing in around him, trapping him here.

On the hospital bed, Flack stirred ever so slightly and the hand Danny was holding clenched around his fingers, almost as if Flack was letting Danny know he was still alive. He didn't wake up, but Danny hadn't really expected he would and it didn't matter anyway. As long as the machine in the corner kept bleeping into the silence, and the line kept spiking, then the world felt like it was still spinning around him like normal.

The doctors had said Flack was very lucky. That by all rights he should have died on the operating table, and how they almost lost him, but - they'd smile at this, as if it was particularly funny - he must've had something to live for.

Blood. There was so much blood, and even though Danny saw it every day of his life it sent a wave of sickness shooting right to his stomach. Because it was Flack's blood. Flack's blood running crimson over the skin of his hands, Flack's chest spasming like a bird's wings beneath his, Flack's hand grasping at the sleeve of Danny's shirt like an anchor. The startling wrongness of the fact that it was Flack lying there on the floor and not Danny, that it was Flack's body slowly dying - that was perhaps the scariest part of all.

"Thank you sir" a voice said on the other end of the phone, calm against all odds "an ambulance will be out to you shortly…"

He dropped the phone with a loud clatter on the grimy concrete floor, his hand coming back to press against the awful wound in Flack's chest. Flack was becoming paler by the minute, blood beginning to form at the corner of his mouth, his spasmodic twitching becoming weaker and weaker.

"Hear that, an ambulance is coming" Danny grunted, pressing harder on Flack's chest in an effort to keep the blood where it all belonged, feeling like he was fighting a losing battle as more and more of it seeped out. "You'll be fine"

Flack smiled slightly, almost serenely, and if Danny didn't believe in angels he could've sworn Flack looked like one. One thin-fingered hand came up to rest on Danny's wrist, smearing the blood against his skin, but he didn't make any move to shake it off.

"You're going to be okay" he repeated, over and over, like a mantra.

Afterwards, when the paramedics and Mac - they must've called him or something, because Danny doesn't remember doing that -  turn up and forcibly drag Danny away from Flack, he realised just how cold Flack's hand had become resting on his.

"Come on, you bastard" Danny hissed through clenched teeth "wake up. Everyone's come by to see you. Mac looked like he was gonna kill someone. Aiden was cryin' her eyes out, and Stella didn't look much better. Even Hawkes turned up, and he don't even know you. So you sure as hell better wake up to thank them, because no way in hell am I doing it for you this time"

Nothing. Danny laughed at his own stupidity for believing that might've worked.

"Fine. Don't wake up. See if I care"

Once again, nothing, except a nurse passing by threw Danny a particularly venomous glare as he leaned back petulantly in the uncomfortable hospital chair.

"You thick-headed asshole"

The hand around his gripped tighter, the pale knuckles ivory-white, and Danny looked up in time to see Flack's cobalt blue eyes looking at him, slitted and lazy like a cat's eyes. Flack was smiling slightly, and Danny suddenly wanted to stand and shout and break something, because it didn't seem right for Flack to look so calm when Danny was practically inside-out with panic and restless energy.

"Danny" Mac growled, in the kind of voice that indicated he expected attention "maybe you should go home and sleep. You're only getting in the way here"

Danny stopped gnawing his thumbnail - and why had he picked up that habit anyway? - and fixed Mac with a glare like a teenager being told what to do. Mac had been there for almost an hour and in that time he'd already made Danny go home and shower Flack's blood from his hands and arms, the blood that Danny hadn't noticed before because he was too busy waiting for news.

Another nurse came out of the operating theatre and Danny tensed, only to slump loosely back into the chair when she clacked away down the corridor in her heels.

"Nah" he mumbled around his thumbnail "I wouldn't be able to"

Mac shifted restlessly in the chair "well then maybe you should go and get something to eat, if you're so intent on eating your own hand"

"I'm fine, Mac. Really" Danny snapped suddenly, then relaxed again "just nervous s'all"

From the operating theatre there came a very ominous sound like a dial tone, only higher, toneless whistling that instantly had Danny on his feet within seconds. Nurses and doctors began to run into the room, hastily, their faces set into a grim line, and from somewhere in the shadowy depths of the operating theatre Danny heard someone shout 'we're losing him!'. He didn't realise until that moment how much impact three words could have.

He had the sudden urge to move, to run forwards, run in there and make Flack come back to life again. As if sensing his thoughts, Mac leapt upright sharply and grabbed both Danny's arms, restraining his ineffectual struggles easily with a strength he didn't look like he possessed as Danny tried to get to his friend.

"Danny!" Mac was bawling, over Danny's shouts and the cries of the doctors and nurses "calm down! There's nothing you can do. You'd only be getting in the way"

A nurse looked out of the doors, her forehead sticky with sweat, hair everywhere, and gave another worried-looking nurse a wide, triumphant smile "he's stable. Get a bed ready, he'll be out of theatre as soon as possible"

Danny went limp so suddenly that Mac wasn't prepared for the loss of opposing force, and they both stumbled back slightly. If his boss was angry, he didn't say anything.

Danny slumped back into the chair bonelessly, all the fight gone like smoke on the wind, his hand pressed against the inside of his wrist as if to verify that the frenzied thudding in the veins was his own.

For a long time Flack and Danny looked at each other, and Danny got the distinct impression that Flack was waiting for him to talk first. Which was stupid, because Flack didn't wait for anyone. He charged in without a second thought, full of the grit and steel of the streets, like a tornado and simply took down anything in his way.

Danny tried to formulate feelings into words, wondering how you fit so much sorrow, so much fear, so much anger into sentences. He wasn't good with that sort of stuff. He was a scientist, not a poet, and he didn't have much talent with self-expression.

How were words supposed to convey the sense of numb horror as he watched the bullet hit Flack in the chest - right where Danny knew the lungs and vital organs were? How was he supposed to sum up the terror, the horror of shouting down the cell phone clutched in one bloodstained hand for an ambulance, whilst his other hand pressed against the tiny innocuous-seeming scarlet hole in Flack's chest? How was he supposed to say how it felt having Flack's blood sliding between his fingers and wishing he could simply push it back where it belonged in Flack's body? How could he tell Flack how utterly terrified he was, watching the cobalt blue eyes slide closed and knowing with gut-piercing certainty he might never see them again?

How was he supposed to sum up hours, hours of sitting there trying to adjust to the idea of never seeing Flack again, the notion that he might never see the wide sparkling smile or experience the reassuring mutual trust of their friendship again? I thought you were dying, and I'd never see you again, and it should have been me who died anyway…

Would Flack remember pushing Danny behind him when they first heard the sound on the metal balcony in the factory? Would he remember the way he didn't let Danny go first, and did he know how guilty Danny felt at the fact that it had been Flack instead of him that had got hit, when it could have just as easily been the other way round?

Flack smiled at Danny and gave his hand a little shake, like you do to kids when they're frightened, "I know Danny" he murmured, his voice a little too weak to be anything like Flack's usual smooth, heavy New York drawl "I know"

"I should'a been me" mumbled Danny "it should'a been me… but you…"

"I know" repeated Flack, and maybe he really did know, and then his face cracked into a slight smile "you'll have to start making it up to me, Messer"

Danny tried to stop the grin fluttering onto his face, and tilted his head downwards in some semblance of shame when it eventually broke free, because he shouldn't be smiling. He looked at Flack's hand, still wrapped in his, so pale and yet he could feel the heartbeat pulsing under his hand and the warmth and strength of the muscles and flesh.

"I'm okay, Danny. I'm okay"

"But you nearly weren't, ya'know?" I thought you'd died, and I was so frightened that I felt as if I'd died along with you. "It should'a been me. I was gonna go in first"

Flack laughed slightly, and Danny looked up in shock in time to catch the timely wince as the action pulled Flack's already battered body that little bit more. Flack must've caught the stunned look, because he explained the laugh "I'd rather it wasn't you"

Danny was good at collecting evidence. That was what he did. And suddenly, with the clarity he hadn't been able to reach in the last few turbulent hours, every move, every moment between Flack and him played out. Every time Flack pushed Danny behind him to protect him from unseen threats, or walked first into a situation. The time Flack had turned up at Danny's door with beer after the Tanglewood case, and there was no way he could have known how but Danny got the feeling he did anyway. That time Flack had met him in the diner when the entire department seemed to be against him, and he was certain that Flack knew he'd get crap from Mac if he was found out. The time Flack defended Danny against the other cops, angrier than Danny had ever seen him.

Like all evidence, it happened after the fact - but it helped make sense of things.

"The doctors… they lost you on at one point…" he paused, wondering if Flack was about to flip, but the detective merely looked drugged-peaceful and Danny got the impression his words weren't registering properly. "The doctor said you must've had something to live for…"

Flack nodded and shifted, and the wince had Danny's heart fluttering like a caged bird, panicky at Flack's sudden show of pain.

"Don?"

"M'okay" hissed Don between clenched teeth, not even bothering to be convincing.

He didn't fight back when Danny shifted to help move Flack back into a comfortable position and as soon as Danny sat down again Flack's hand went up to press against his ribs as if trying to take the pain away.

"Jeez…" he looked up, and there was half-mirth shining in his eyes "remind me never to take a hit for you again"

Danny smiled despite himself, because the banter and the wry humor was familiar "I'll have to make it up to you somehow when you get out"

Flack nodded, his eyes sliding closed as the drugs took their hold on him again, his smile sly and so Flack that Danny suddenly knew that they would be okay.

"Yeah. You can start with dinner, Danny-boy, and go from there"

FIN

***