Danny was at it again. He standing over me, fidgeting and shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Again.
"Umm. Umm. Case..."
"Yeah, Dan?" I didn't even bother looking at him this time. "Is there something you want to say to me?" Nor did I even try, or want try, to keep the irritation out of my voice.
"Umm....oh, forget it."
I grabbed his arm. "No."
"No?" He pulled away from me. He'd been jumpy at my touch since the night before.
"No."
"What no?"
"No, I won't forget it. I don't even know what 'it' is, but you've been trying to say something all day, and I want you to just *say* it so we can both get back to work. Which neither of us are doing."
He dropped down on the couch. "It's...I have something I want to say. Something that...it happened last night. With Abby."
"I thought you were looking a little less than chipper when you came back."
"Chipper? Who looks 'chipper'?" He stared at me in amazement.
"I do. I can look like the platonic ideal of 'chipper'. Danny, what happened? Rough session?"
"Rough?" He snorted. "You could call it that. You could call it being put through a wringer."
"Sounds like you had a breakthrough."
"Yeah. You could call it that, I guess, except it was something I already knew."
"You had a breakthrough about something you already knew?"
"You put it that way, it sounds really stupid." He closed his eyes for a moment.
"Breakthroughs are about something you've got hidden, right? From yourself?" I fought to understand. Something was really wrong here, and I was getting scared.
"And yet I had one. They can be about admitting things that you didn't want public, apparently." He ran his fingers through his hair. "Look, this isn't easy. I don't want to do this, because if I do this, it will change everything, and everything is good the way it is. I like things this way."
"This way?"
"With us. As friends. Best friends. Partners. I like us this way."
"Nothing will change that." So why was I shivering? "Nothing. I won't let it."
"It will change, Case. It has to. And I have to do it, because Abby says it's eating me up inside, and if I do this, I can deal with it. But I don't want to deal with it."
I moved to the couch myself, next to him. I put my hand on his shoulder. He flinched, but didn't move away. "I promise you. I won't let whatever it is change us. You're too important to me."
He looked at me, a mixture of hope and despair naked on his face. "Don't promise. You don't know, so don't promise." He took a deep breath. "This is going to be damned hard. Please, don't interrupt me until I get it all out. If I do."
"Okay."
"That is not not interrupting."
"Sorry." I locked my lips and gestured for him to continue.
He took yet another breath. "Okay. I said it before. I think of you as my best friend. My partner. But...you're more than that. You're...closer to me than my brother was. You're...this is impossible." He rubbed at his eyes. "I'm just going to say it." For the first time in what seemed forever, he looked straight into my eyes. His were red and puffy. He hadn't been sleeping again. His hair was uncombed, too, and not just from being rubbed. "Casey McCall, you are...I'm in love with you. I love you more than even I can ever say, and I have for years, and I've known it for years. I'm in love with you. Finished." He sat back on the couch and folded his arms, shivering.
I took my hand off his shoulder. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry or join him shaking in fear. I didn't know what to say. "Dan...Danny...I love you, too." That wasn't it. That was true, but not what I wanted to say at all.
And the moment those words left my mouth, Dan's face changed. I had never seen such complete and utter joy before on anyone's face - not even Lisa's the day she had Charlie, and I'd thought she'd lit up a corner of the universe. I just had time to register that and blink before I found him pressing his lips against mine.
Damn him. Damn me.
His lips were warm and soft and I tried to respond, tried to feel something. Prayed to feel something besides how rough his stubble was, and how hard and masculine and not female his body was and how he smelled of aftershave and coffee and maleness. God help me, I even tried to picture a woman so I could maybe give him *something* back, but it didn't work, because he was still a man.
I tried. He broke it off first, and the despair on his face was equal to the joy that had been there before. "I'm sorry, Danny. I'm so sorry."
"You said..."
"I did. I do. Just...I'm sorry. You are my best friend, my partner, my brother. You are all of those."
"I wanted, I hoped...I'm an idiot. You must be dying to sterilize your mouth or something."
I shook my head. "I...I'm just..."
He got up from the couch, still shaking. "I have...I have to go. Someplace. I'll be back. But I have to go right now."
I watched him leave. I don't know where he went. When he came back, he went to his computer and we wrote a damned good script and then did a damned good show without looking once at each other or saying more than we had to, while everyone stared at us in shock.
After the show, I went to a bar and traded my being on television for sex with a woman who did not have a single book in her apartment and whose name I'd forgotten as soon as she told me. She was soft and smooth and definitely not male and I had no problems responding to her, and less of leaving her to spend the remainder of the night in my own bed, dreaming of Danny and how I'd failed him.
The End
Copyright 2001 Debra Fran Baker and NightRoads Associates