Title: A Novena to St. Jude
Author: stellaluna_
Rating: R
Pairing: Mac/Danny
Series: 1) A Man in Crisis
Summary: Danny knows there are no answers, but he can't stop himself from asking the question. Danny/Mac. Set approximately two years in the future, with spoilers for "Run Silent, Run Deep".
Disclaimer: None of these are mine. Characters are the property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer Television, CBS, and Alliance Atlantis.

***

Danny steps through the last of the doors and lets it slam shut behind him, the way he always does. He needs to hear that bang, needs to hear that finality while he looks out at the parking lot and the sky so that he knows for sure he's on this side of the door and not the other side. On that side there's nothing but walls and doors between him and the outside world, and he still believes, somewhere, in the superstitious, unreasoning underside of his heart, that someday they're liable to decide they've made a mistake after all, and they'll keep him in there, on the wrong side of the door.

And they'll tell everyone else in there that he's a cop.

He takes a deep breath, squinting up at the sky, and swaps out his glasses for a pair of sunglasses before he starts looking around for the car. The sun has dipped low behind a bank of clouds off to the west, but for right now he needs the barrier that they afford him, needs the illusion of privacy, of invisibility.

Not that Mac won't offer him that all on his own; he didn't try to make conversation on the drive up, and he didn't try to come inside with Danny. He just pulled up at the front gates and told Danny to take all the time he needed, that he'd be waiting. He's good at that, at handling things like that, and for all the times Danny thinks Mac is insensitive and tone-deaf to other people's emotions, there are also times when he thinks that Mac can see right through him, can read him like a book, all those raw secrets he'd rather keep to himself -- like Louie is any kind of secret when it comes right down to it. Danny is pretty sure the whole department knows, and everyone on the team knows for sure.

Mac certainly knows. Mac knows better than anyone, maybe, is the only one aware of these weekly visits that Danny keeps putting himself through. So it's not like the illusion works.

But still. But still.

This is the first time Mac has ever gone upstate with him. Danny feels a quick, unfocused surge of anger: at Mac, for offering to drive; at himself, for agreeing; at Metro-North, which has been having signal problems all week, delay stacked on top of delay, because if it hadn't been for that, Danny thinks, Mac would never have made the offer in the first place.

He spots the car then, at the far end of the lot. Mac doesn't see him, hasn't spotted him yet, because he's sitting there reading a newspaper. Danny wonders at this, and the surge of anger this time is directed solely at Mac, at how he can sit there and read the paper like there's nothing wrong, like he doesn't have a care in the world.

And maybe he doesn't; after all, it's not his brother locked up in there. People in the department don't whisper about his jailbird relatives when he walks by, and no one got in his face during his birthday party and cracked wise about how he should remember to save the piece of cake with the file in it for Louie. Mac hasn't spent the afternoon trying to make conversation while staring into Louie's eyes and seeing nothing there but blank, bored contempt. Danny wonders for the thousandth time why he bothers, why he makes these visits, and can't come up with a satisfactory answer.

Mac still hasn't moved, is still absorbed in Travel or Technology or whatever the hell he's got his nose buried in. Danny draws in another long breath, filling his lungs with pine-and-diesel-smelling air, then walks over to the car. Mac must hear him walking or see movement out of the corner of his eye, because he looks up as Danny approaches and sets the paper aside, nodding to him. Danny hears the click of the lock as it opens, and he focuses on that, plays the sound back in his head as he pulls the door open.

"Hey," Mac says.

"Hey." Danny slides into the passenger seat. "Thanks for waiting around."

"How did it go in there?"

For one wild moment Danny feels a case of logorrhea coming on and he wants to blurt out everything, every last bit of tangled anger and frustration. He wants to tell Mac about the non-starter of a conversation he'd had with Louie, how Louie had sat there picking at his nails the whole time, answering in monosyllables. How Louie had smirked at the end and said Run on back to the city, little bro, run like the police dogs are snapping at your ass. That had been the only time all afternoon he'd looked Danny in the eye. He wants to tell Mac how he'd left then, and how he hadn't looked back, how he never looks back to see the guards escort Louie to his cell.

Danny feels all of this rise in his throat, feels the words shiver on his tongue. Then it all collapses; he wouldn't know where to begin, and it would sound stupid if he even tried. He waits it out, not saying a word, and the moment passes. All he feels then is frustrated with himself for even considering it, and somewhere beneath the frustration is another emotion, something he won't let himself call despair.

He shrugs. "Same as it always does."

Mac nods. "Do you want to -- "

"No, I don't want to talk about it." Danny pulls on his seatbelt with a quick, jerky motion. "Just drive. I want to get out of here."

There's a pause, and then Mac says, "No problem." He doesn't look at Danny as he fastens his own seatbelt and starts the car.

Danny flips stations on the radio and stares out the window while Mac drives, watching the landscape slide by.

"Think you missed the turnoff," he says, when Mac drives right past the entrance ramp for the interstate.

"I like the scenic route," Mac says. "It shouldn't take much longer than the highway."

Danny holds up a hand. He can't be bothered to argue about it. "Whatever."

Mac doesn't try to say anything else after that, but Danny knows he's watching him. He doesn't let on, just keeps looking out at the road, tapping his fingers against the door or the top of his thigh. He tries hard not to think.

It's maybe a half-hour later and creeping on toward full night, and Danny has ditched the dark glasses, when Mac finally speaks up again. "I don't know about you," he says, "but I could use some dinner. You want to stop?"

"Sure." Danny says. He doesn't turn his head. "That's fine."

"Good," Mac says, and a mile or two later he turns off the road and parks in front of a diner. It's the kind of diner Danny would have thought didn't exist any more; it looks like a long, silver train car, and it's lit up in red, fizzling neon.

Behind it, off in the distance, he can see mountains. Pinecones crunch under his feet as they walk across the parking lot, and he's struck forcibly by how much he doesn't belong here, how much this isn't his place, even though they're not more than a few hours outside of the city. He glances over at Mac, who doesn't fit in here any better than Danny does, and he wonders what he'll say if someone asks what they're doing in this part of the state, if they're passing through or visiting or what. He doesn't know the name of the town they're in, but he imagines it's the kind of place where strangers are rare enough to be worthy of comment. Mac, at least, has the indefinable stamp of law enforcement in his bearing and his features, and Danny imagines that both of them stand out as city people.

But no one says a word except to ask how many for dinner, and as they follow the waitress to a booth, he feels both relieved and ashamed, all over again. It's probably not that small a town, not in reality, and they're close enough to the interstate that there must be a regular flow of traffic through here. Hell, they're still close enough to the prison that visitors must stop all the time. He glances around the room, wondering who else might have spent the day visiting a relative behind iron bars.

Stop overanalyzing, he thinks. Who gives a shit about demographics? But he keeps looking around anyway, and he doesn't realize, until the waitress comes over again, that he hasn't so much as glanced at his menu. Mac orders the pot roast special, and Danny says, "That sounds fine. Make it two. And a Coke."

He turns to the window again after the waitress leaves, looking out at the road and the dark sky. He's aware, the way he was in the car, that Mac is watching him, but he can't think of anything to say. Letting Mac come with him today was one hell of a mistake; he's still more than halfway convinced of that, and he doesn't know either why Mac suggested it or why he said yes. Oh, he knows the surface reasons, the ones about the delays on Metro-North and how he's on call tomorrow, so it's better not to risk being late getting back from upstate.

All of that is logical and reasonable and unremarkable, and maybe that really was Mac's only motive. In all the months he's been going to see Louie, Mac has never so much as hinted that they should make it a field trip. He's been there on nights when Danny has gotten back to the city and decided he needed some company and distraction, and he's been good about not asking a lot of questions or trying to make Danny talk about it.

They've been good with each other for almost ten months now, which is seven months longer than Louie has been in prison (though even then, at the beginning, that eventuality was looming on the horizon), and although that, and the attendant screwing around, is on a strictly casual basis, it's better, Danny figures, not to go tempting fate. Maybe Mac is aware of this and, like Danny, he's afraid to disturb the always-fragile détente between them, isn't willing to push things to the point where they break instead of bend.

Or maybe Mac simply doesn't give enough of a shit to ask.

The closest they've gotten to trouble was a few visits ago, when he'd gone over to Mac's place late at night, and had ended up snapping at him for not knowing what it was like to have a brother in jail. The storm passed quickly, but it had been a close thing, and Danny still isn't sure how he feels about some of the things he'd ended up saying to Mac that night.

He turns away from the window and glances across the table at Mac. Mac's gaze is calm and collected, and Danny can't see any turmoil in his eyes no matter how close he looks. He swallows hard.

"Hope I didn't keep you waiting too long back there," he says. "Didn't want you to get bored or nothing."

"No, I had the Times," Mac says. "If I'd been worried about getting bored, I'd have brought paperwork with me."

Danny smiles. "Yeah, well, this is no one's idea of a fun Saturday afternoon."

"It was fine, Danny."

"For certain values of fine, maybe."

Mac looks at him. "That's your call to make."

Danny twists a packet of sugar between his fingers. "Yeah, what's fine these days? Hell if I know."

He pauses, hoping that Mac will fill in the gap with another one of his crappy jokes or even with some boring conversation about filing their reports on time, but he's silent, and after a few moments, Danny goes on talking, not quite meeting Mac's eyes while he does. "I mean, sure, it sucks," he says, "but it's not like this is a shock, you know? If Louie had gone 38 years being a model citizen before all this, then yeah, I would've had to make a few mental adjustments."

He points at his temple. "Like, who the hell is this guy? But like I told you before, Louie's Louie. None of this has taken me by surprise. Even if it had..." He shrugs. "Even if it had, it's been long enough now for me to have adjusted to it."

"So do you think that means you should feel differently about it than you do?" Mac asks.

"Hell, I don't know," Danny says. "I mean, Mac, if you said to me, how do you feel about your brother in jail, break it down for me, I wouldn't know where to start. Not just how do I feel about him being in jail, 'cause like I said, not exactly a big fucking surprise that happened, but how I feel about going to see him."

"How do you feel?" Mac says.

"Cute." Danny points at him with a fork. "Very cute. Slick."

"I'm serious," Mac says. "You brought it up. How do you feel?" He's staring at Danny now the way he looks at suspects sometimes, the intent look he gets on his face when he's determined to pry a confession out of someone, or when he's getting close to the truth. The weight of that gaze always makes Danny uncomfortable, and he has to force himself not to look away again.

"I don't know," he says. "Angry. Fed up."

The waitress shows up then with their orders, and this gives him an extra minute or two to try to put some of it into words. He thinks, and when she's gone, he says, "Mostly I just wonder why I bother. It's not like one of these days he's suddenly going to welcome me with open arms. Not like I even think I'd want him to. I mean, if Louie did that, if he acted happy to see me? I'd start wondering what I was supposed to bail him out of this time. What trouble he'd gotten into, or what scheme he was cooking up that he was gonna try to finagle me into." He shakes his head. "I'd start looking around for the knife that was gonna get planted in my back."

He pauses, feeling the anger well up again, the tangle of emotions he can never put a name to. If any of this were simple, he'd either be able to go see Louie with a clear conscience and the patience of a saint, or say the hell with it and stay away for good with no second thoughts, with no guilt clawing at his soul. He'd be able to understand why things with Louie are the way they are, and maybe even be able to get some better sense of the rest of his life.

"Ah, forget it," he says. "If I keep going, I'm just gonna talk myself in circles again."

Mac nods, still calm. "We can change the subject."

"Great. Thanks," Danny says. He looks down at his plate. "This is pretty good pot roast."

"It's not bad."

Danny realizes he doesn't have the heart to change the subject, isn't capable of even feigning interest in another topic of conversation. They sit and eat in silence for awhile, and Danny keeps turning the same few things over in his mind. When he can't stand it any longer, he looks across the table at Mac again. "Let me ask you something," he says.

"What's that?" Mac asks.

"Do you think people can ever really change, like deep down?" Danny says. He keeps going, forcing himself to say the words before he has time to change his mind. "Not just who they are themselves, but how they are with other people."

Mac looks surprised. "That's not an easy -- " he starts to say.

"See, because I've thought about it," Danny goes on, "and I don't think they really do."

Mac sets his fork down. "That's a pretty harsh assessment, don't you think?"

"It's not inaccurate, though," Danny says. "Can you deny it?"

"I think -- " Mac stops, and frowns, and when he starts talking again, his tone is much more halting than usual. He doesn't sound like he's making one of his speeches, but like he's puzzling this out as he goes along. "I think it's not easy to change. Maybe a person can, a little. But when it happens, even if you go through something that forces you to change, it doesn't happen all at once. It can take years to realize you're not the same person you used to be."

"Yeah." Danny nods. "Yeah, that makes sense. And even if a person does change, that doesn't mean anyone else is gonna accept it or believe it. Doesn't mean they got any obligation to do that."

He looks down at his plate again. He thought he had this all figured out before he posed the question to Mac, but suddenly he's unsure of what he's saying, and doesn't know if he can keep his voice steady. "You know what, I don't even know what I'm talking about. None of this is about change."

"It's not?" Mac says.

"No," Danny says. "Louie being in jail is par for the course. It's not even like he's been running around claiming he has changed. He's still the same as he always was."

"Maybe that's why it's bothering you."

Danny thinks back to when Louie had been in a coma, when it seemed like he might have been able to view the course of their relationship in a new light, and maybe even find a way for the two of them to start fresh. But then Louie had woken up, and everything had been just the same as it always was. Whatever Louie's intentions had been that night, there are still fifteen years of lies between them -- lies that had maybe become the truth at some point, and even if they didn't, it hardly seems to matter. This deep in, Danny doesn't think the distinction between truth and lie means very much.

"Maybe so." Danny pushes his plate aside.

"You feel like some dessert?" Mac asks.

"What the hell?" Danny says.

Pinecones crunch under his feet again on the way back to the car, and Danny stops to pick one up for no real reason. He turns it in his hands after he sits down, and a faint scent of sap and pine hits his nose when he digs his thumbnail into it.

"So say we know someone isn't gonna change," he says to Mac. "Or that a situation isn't gonna change."

"Right," Mac says.

"Then how do we stop ourselves from hoping?" Danny asks. The country road is pitch-black, and there's not much light in the car. Maybe that's why he can ask.

"I don't know." Mac doesn't take his eyes off the road. "Offer it up to St. Jude."

"Which one is he?"

"Patron saint of lost causes."

Danny has to laugh, and he leans back in the seat. "Yeah, that might do it," he says. He watches the road rush by in the blackness. There are distant lights somewhere, miles away, and once another car rushes toward them, headlights sweeping across the front seat and bathing both of them in light for a second. He thinks about tiny moments like that, moments in time when their lives intersect with those of others, these briefly-spotted and barely-imagined pieces of other lifetimes. It's history and future, all of them with their own secrets, their own anger.

Relationships come and go -- friends and lovers both, and he thinks of Lindsay here, but of Flack and Stella and Hawkes, too, and other people whose names have faded from his memory. These things form patterns. Patterns in and of themselves, but patterns for the future, too, roadmaps or guidelines. At certain points, certain things become inevitable.

He looks over at Mac. "Hey. Thanks for coming with me today."

"You're welcome," Mac says. "I was happy to. If you want me to again..."

"Yeah," Danny says. "Maybe not all the time, but sometimes, yeah, that would be good."

Mac nods. "Okay, then." He turns away from the road, and Danny meets his gaze, blinking a little.

He touches Mac's hand.

A little while later, in the quiet dark by the side of the road with all the lights killed, Danny sprawls across the backseat, holding Mac close as they move against each other, as their mouths tangle and as he digs his fingers into the hollow of Mac's hip. He wouldn't have expected this to happen, wouldn't have guessed that either of them would have been willing to risk it, but he welcomes it. It's so much better than waiting until they get back to the city, until they get back home.

The leather seat is warm underneath him, clinging a little to his bare skin, and he can hear quiet sounds beyond the window, beyond the locked car, the rustle of trees and night birds calling to each other. Somewhere, farther away, cars still go by every now and then, but Danny has lost all track of this, just as he's lost all track of time.

He shivers, hard, a shiver that's echoed in Mac's body, and he teases his tongue across any bit of skin he can reach. Mac's skin smells like pine now, everywhere Danny has touched him.

He wonders who the patron saint of this might be: not the sex, but everything else that's tangled up with it, tangled up with Mac and him and the two of them together. He tries to lose himself in it, in the sweat clinging to Mac's body and in the way his mouth quivers as they both get pushed closer to the edge.

Danny's not sure which one of them is trembling now, but they're both being rocked by tremors, rocking back and forth, and he pushes up harder, letting his head fall back against the window. Mac's breath is hot on his face, and he's making little sounds, little moans that Danny is helpless not to echo, and maybe it's only St. Jude again after all.

***