Title: Amor Aeternus
Author: Kimmychu
Fandom: CSI: NY
Rating: FRAO
Pairing: Danny/Flack
Content Warning: Angst, LOTS of angst, disturbing imagery.
Spoilers: Major spoilers up to episode 3x14, The Lying Game.
Summary: 'I'll find you again, somehow, his heart utters with the conviction of the cosmos, even if I must live over and over again in this world until I do.' A Danny/Flack story.
Disclaimer: -sniff- They belong to each other, no matter where or when.
Author's notes: This story is something really different from my previous ones. I think the angst in this one can literally rival that in my story, Atop the Broken Universal Clock. Yikes! There's another content warning that might sadden some people, but I can't actually specify it without ruining the ending. I hope you'll understand. Anyways, I was experimenting with another style of writing. Oh, and translations are available at the end of the story. You'll see what I mean.

***

The blade bites deep into his flesh, and it leaves a razor sharp streak of agony in its wake.

He feels wet warmth pouring from his belly, a waterfall of red life that steals away with it the heat in his soul and the strength in his bones. His blood-drenched sword slips from his loosening grasp. His knees buckle against his will.

The ground is hard and grainy under his bruised cheek.

He sucks in a shuddering, painful breath. He sees the vacant, cloudy eyes of the great lion he killed lying beside him, staring back at him, laughing at him and the irony that is death.

Someone is screaming his name, in that beloved voice he knows without fail.

It's cold. So very cold.

It has become very quiet. He finds the silence strange and engulfing. The clashes of swords and spears, and the roars of the lions and tigers and the pitiless spectators surrounding everything are gone. The death screams of the gladiators he once deemed brothers no longer deafen him. Perhaps they, too, are dying as he is.

He stares up at the bright blue sky, hoping to see a glimpse of heaven before he plunges into the fiery darkness of hell. Paradise is lost to a man such as he, he who lives by the sword, whose hands are eternally crimson, who feels no remorse for every man he slays.

His eyelids flutter. He is finding it more and more difficult to draw breath.

He can't feel his body, but his heart remembers.

Though his eyes are shut, he sees large, blue eyes gazing down at him, smiling at him even when their owner's lips did not. He feels his lover's dark tresses of hair between his fingers. The curls are silky, just like the pale skin that rubs against his sweaty torso. He remembers the fire within him as he is being filled, the clenching of his hands on his lover's strong shoulders, the ache between his thighs transforming into unchartered pleasure. Two souls becoming one. Union.

Someone is touching his face.

And he opens his eyes, and there, those beautiful blue eyes are gazing at him once more.

There is blood all over the noble visage of his friend, his brother-in-arms, his lover. The dark pink lips are cut in many places. A huge gash runs across the right temple, and down to the left eyebrow.

It will leave a terrible scar, he thinks, from afar.

He watches his lover's lips move with no sound. Blinks as clear droplets of moisture plummet onto his cheeks and forehead. They are falling from those blue eyes.

He touches the other man's battered face with a trembling hand. For some reason, seeing his courageous warrior shedding tears for him hurt more than his grievous wounds do, and he wipes them away, trying to smile, trying to breathe just a while more. To have just a little more time with the man who is half of him.

Then, his hand slips down to his lover's chest. There is but a gaping hole of mutilated flesh and blood, where unbroken skin once was. He looks back into those glossy eyes. Inhales as deep as he can, even though it's torture.

Caesar has lost, he thinks, and we have won. He will never have me, for I am always yours.

The words cannot escape. He hears only his stuttering breaths, senses the inevitable seizure of demise clamping down on his lungs and his heart, choking his final remnants of life.

His shaking hands grab at the other gladiator's damp face and neck. A frenetic burst of energy flows through him, and he knows, it is the last time he will ever speak.

"Te valde … amo ac … semper amabo."

His lover's face crumples, but his own pallid face shifts into a contented shadow of a smile. His declaration has been heard, it has been heard. He touches the moving lips, not needing to hear the uttered two words to feel them reverberating inside him.

I know, I know you do, his heart says in return.

Suddenly, dark red gushes from the other man's mouth and onto him. It soaks through the cracks of his dented armour and into his ragged garments. He pulls his friend down onto him, heedless of the weight bearing on him, holding their heads together, closing his eyes while spasms wrack the man's expiring body.

He is also overwhelmed by a convulsion that forces his back to arch and his throat and mouth to clog up with blood.

They are both dying.

I'll find you again, somehow, his heart utters with the conviction of the cosmos, even if I must live over and over again in this world until I do.

As more blood flows from his parted lips, he stares up at the sky for one final time. There are giant birds flying high above in circles, hungry and cold-blooded scavengers biding their time.

"Amor … aeternus."

He isn't sure at all if he said it aloud.

He can't move or breathe anymore.

His other half is very still.

The sun shines brilliantly in his vision. Its sacred light beckons him, inviting him to depart from this place of suffering and heartache and mortality.

He exhales.

And fades away.

He has never seen such extraordinary, large eyes as the ones he is staring into right now. They are hypnotic, casting a spell on him, making him forget how to move or talk.

"Danny, this is Detective Flack, from Homicide," Mac, his new boss, says. "He'll be working with you on the Irwing case."

The tall man standing before him offers his hand, an amiable smile etched on his handsome face. It takes him some time to realize he hasn't held out his own hand so they can shake hands, and he quickly does so, his face flushed when Flack's smile changes into an amused grin.

"Hey, I'm Danny Messer. How ya doin'?"

He hopes his voice isn't as high as he thinks it is.

"I'm good, I'm good." Flack's face is crinkled in his mirth. "How you doin'?"

Danny smiles, baring baby fangs. He doesn't have a clue why, but he already likes this guy a lot.

"Well, I'm all set if you are."

Flack nods, and Mac leaves them to their work, a satisfied glint in his hazel eyes. The two detectives stride down the hallway of the labs towards the elevator, side by side. Danny is grateful that he's carrying his metallic CSI kit with him. The handles give him something to curl his fingers around, to keep his mind off how gorgeous the taller man walking next to him is.

A leather jacket, incredibly handsome looks and a striking smile is a combination he didn't expect to find on a homicide detective. Especially, the very handsome face. He is astounded that Flack, with a mien like his, would want to work as a police officer instead of some classy job like a model or an actor. Then, he recalls the gossip Stella, his CSI co-worker, had imparted on him a few days ago about the homicide detective. Flack's father is a legend in the NYPD, something about having rescued many child hostages and confronted two armed men on his own in a major school takeover decades ago. It makes sense that his son would follow in his father's footsteps.

"So this is yer first day on the job?" Flack asks while the elevator goes down to the ground floor.

Danny glances at the other man, fingers tightening around his silver case's handles. Not only does Flack possess a fine-looking face, he also has a spine-tingling, deep voice that causes Danny's insides to quiver.

It's been a long time since Danny has ever felt this way, if ever.

He clears his throat.

"Nope, already worked on another case with Mac and Stella a couple a' days ago. The pizza parlor one in Brooklyn."

"They're both true professionals at what they do. You're in a really good hands, Messer, trust me," Flack replies. The respect is evident in his facial countenance. "Mac might seem like a hard person to talk to, but when ya get to know him, he's a good man. A really good man … And Stella, oh, you'll love her. She's got a heart big enough for the whole city."

Then, Flack chuckles. "Betcha haven't eaten pizza since that case, huh? I heard from Vicaro the vic didn't look too pretty. Then again, I dunno anybody who can look pretty after gettin' cooked in the oven."

Danny swallows visibly. There is something about the way Flack smiles at him that makes his breath catch. Somehow, he's certain the man doesn't ever smile that way at anyone else. He doesn't know how he knows, he just does.

"Actually, I'm dyin' to eat some right now." The CSI smirks. "A big pepperoni pizza with extra cheese on top."

This time, Flack outright laughs. His pearly teeth gleam beneath the lights.

"Now that's a damn coincidence. Pepperoni pizza's my favorite."

For some reason, this tiny fact pleases Danny beyond words.

He feels as if he's floating, all the way from the elevator and out the building to Flack's car parked by the sidewalk a block away. He doesn't check out the people around him like he habitually does, to ascertain whether there are old ghosts from his past haunting him still. It's insane, it's illogical for him to think that this homicide detective he only met minutes ago is safe or trustworthy.

Hell, he can't even trust members of his own family.

So … what is it that makes this blue-eyed man different?

Danny ponders over this throughout the drive to their first location on Flack's interview list, a shop selling musical instruments in downtown Manhattan. There, he quietly observes Flack questioning the suspect, the owner of the store, a blonde woman who has no qualms about flaunting her cleavage at the man. He notices how resolute Flack is, the way he maintains his concentration on the job and doesn't even blink an eye at the woman asking him out for a date.

He smiles to himself, feeling immensely delighted that Flack turns down the offer pronto. He always appreciates professionalism in the people with whom he works.

He ignores his brain mocking him that it's hardly the true reason he's happy.

Something sharp and cold prickles him within as the interview ends, and the suspect attempts another time to ask Flack out. She's an attractive woman, someone he won't mind going out with on a date, and he waits for Flack's reaction to the repeated request.

The iciness inside him grows more and more at the hesitation before the homicide detective declines with a polite tone. His trembling hands turn the simple task of removing the q-tip from its plastic casing into a frustrating one.

He's aware he is being rough with the suspect, poking at the side of the inside of her mouth with the q-tip and disregarding her nasty looks and muffled squeaks. He feels Flack's scrutinizing gaze upon him, and he tries his hardest to not make eye contact as he packs up and stomps out the store, back to Flack's car. Standing by the vehicle, he unconsciously presses his right palm over the left side of his chest, closing his eyes.

He doesn't understand why he's behaving this way, like a madman who's lost control of his very being, and it scares him.

And it takes a lot to frighten Danny Messer.

By the time Flack exits the music store and approaches his car, Danny is more calm and collected, straight faced. Danny shoots a swift glance at Flack, and sees that Flack is expressionless, those handsome features revealing nothing to interpretation.

Those eyes, however, hold more fire and heat than the deepest volcanoes of the earth.

In the passenger seat of the car, Danny sneaks more glances at the other man, worried that he's already ruined a friendship before it ever had a chance to bloom. On the fourth glance, Flack locks gazes with him. Try as he might, Danny is unable to tear his eyes away. He is helpless. Paralyzed by the fierceness of those baby blues.

"You okay, Danny?"

Hearing Flack say his name, his name, snaps him out of his trance. He bites his lower lip.

"Y-yeah. Just …" He looks away, at a sudden loss for words.

There is an edgy silence.

Then, the engine rumbles with a twist of the key in the ignition.

It seems as though Flack has nothing more to say. Danny slumps in his seat, tugging absent-mindedly at his brown jacket and the collar of his white dress shirt. He stares past the windscreen, waiting for the car to move onto the road.

A tense minute passes.

He risks another sideways glance at Flack, and his breath hitches.

Flack is still staring at him.

"What?" Danny rasps, his blue eyes wide in bafflement and the tiniest hint of apprehension. He has the strangest hunch that Flack never stares at anyone else like he is staring at him at that moment either.

He doesn't know how he knows that. He just does.

"You -" Flack attempts to speak, and falters into silence.

Danny swallows again. His hand is on his left thigh, so close to Flack's right hand on the gear shift. His fingers twitch. He watches Flack's tongue flit out. His own tongue automatically darts out too, running across his lower lip, moistening it.

He senses more than sees or hears Flack's hand slide off the gear shift towards his thigh, towards his tremulous hand.

His breaths quicken.

On its own accord, his left hand lifts off his thigh and moves to the side.

Their fingertips brush.

Danny's eyes widen to the point the whites are visible around the irises. Something rushes into him from the other man, something indescribable, a powerful surge that jolts his taut body right to the very core.

He gasps.

He is no longer in the car, and instead, is sitting on a vast, green field of white and yellow flowers. Beside him, Flack is on his knees, except the man isn't dressed in his leather jacket, tie, dress shirt and trousers. Flack's dark curls are longer, wavier, drifting in the cool breeze, and all that adorns his sinewy, long-limbed body is a loose, black tunic that flows down to the ankles.

The taller man is gazing down at him, lips curved up in a fond smile, but those large eyes are forlorn.

Danny feels a tender touch to his cheek.

"Damnant quod non intellegunt," Flack in the black tunic says to him.

Danny frowns. Blinks.

And the field of flowers is gone.

"Danny?"

He blinks a second time.

The homicide detective's brows are low in concern. The man's dark hair is short once more, and the red tie around his neck is vivid in the morning sunlight. The saturated color reminds Danny of blood.

Their fingers are still touching.

Danny yanks his hand back, unconsciously drawing away from Flack, closer to the passenger door. He begins to shiver. He pulls his suit jacket tighter around his torso. He keeps his expression blank, his lips pursed, his hands fisted in order to stop himself from wrenching open the car door and running away.

He has to.

He hasn't been so afraid in his life.

Flack reaches out for him again, the concern in those eyes transforming into apparent worry.

"Dan-"

A loud, clanging noise outside the car makes Flack jump in his seat. Flack twists away to search for the source of the unexpected sound, and Danny breathes a heavy sigh of relief. It is his respite from the other man's mesmerizing stare.

A teenage girl wearing a beanie cap pops up out of nowhere on the other side of the driver's door. She appears dazed, but fine. Flack glances past the girl, then pivots his head towards Danny and says with a smirk, "Ah, she just ran into a trash bin, that's all. Kids these days, they don't ever look where they're goin'."

The girl gives them a shy smile, and quickly glides away down the pavement on a pair of stylish rollerblades.

Danny goes limp in his seat. Part of him is glad that the weirdness he was experiencing has vanished. Another part of him is mysteriously disconsolate that he isn't touching Flack anymore, and he doesn't dare to consider why.

Whatever happened moments before, it is gone now.

"I … I think we oughta get movin'."

He wisely stares ahead. Even so, he knows the homicide detective is examining his visage again.

"Sure. Okay."

The car maneuvers onto the road, and Danny shuts his eyes.

The fingertips of his left hand are burning.

Danny glowers at the shattered remains of his television remote control on the floor of his living area.

He's sat there on his couch for the last half hour, wearing nothing apart from his dark blue boxers, hunching forward with elbows on knees. The furious shrieks of his girlfriend - no, ex-girlfriend - continue to ring in his ears long after her call has disconnected.

He feels deadened. No loss. No regrets.

She's the same. Like all the others before her.

And like them, she never really cared for him. He is certain of that. After all, he never really cared for her either. Or the others.

He kicks at the broken pieces of plastic on the floor.

He's tired of never meeting the right one. He's tired of meeting all the wrong ones.

Danny flings himself backwards onto his couch, sliding down to lie on his side, arms held to his chest and legs half-hanging off the edge.

He's tired of meeting people who don't understand him or care to do so.

He's tired of them, all of them.

They're not Flack.

He sighs, his lips downturned, eyes glistening.

He doesn't even recall what his former girlfriend looks like anymore as his hand skims down his flat belly, under the waistband of his boxers. All he thinks about are beautiful blue eyes, staring at him with unveiled affection and trust. His hand starts to move up and down his hardening erection, and he releases a soft moan. His eyes flutter close.

He's been fantasizing about Flack since the day he met the homicide detective over two years ago. Jerking himself off in the dimness of his hollow apartment when his thoughts about Flack overpowers him. He's been doing it almost every night since that morning in Flack's car, with their fingers touching, and something, something so much greater coming to precious life within him.

The imagery of Flack, attired in a long, black tunic, kneeling in a field of flowers flashes in his mind, like it has whenever his heart is frozen and he has nowhere else to go.

Danny's hand pumps faster. His fast exhalations and moans echo in the space of his living room.

Flack is stretching out a hand towards him. The man's luxuriant hair undulates in the strong, spring gust.

The CSI's head tosses on the cushions beneath him. His body tightens in readiness for physical release.

Flack is stroking his face now, a comforting figure above him. A small, white flower is caught in the man's dark curls. Danny feels a finger pressing gently on his lips, and he sees Flack's lips part.

"Te amo, amator."

Flack's striking mien splits into a radiant smile, a smile that is his and his alone.

With a harsh cry, Danny's back arches, and he comes.

The shiny, waxed floor of the basketball court is chilly. Goosebumps erupt all over his body, although he is sweating profusely, his white tank top clammy and sticking to his back and chest.

Danny stares up at Flack, into the other man's blue eyes mere inches away. Flack is lying on him. Heavy. Reassuring. Dominant.

"Whoa," Flack murmurs, blinking in slight bewilderment.

Danny is too mortified to say anything in reply. It has only been in his dreams that the homicide detective, his best friend, has ever been in such close proximity to him, never mind that they have their clothes on.

The floor must have been waxed too much, and Flack tripped or something. That is the sole explanation Danny's brain deduces to help him comprehend how Flack ended up flat on top of him, in the middle of the public basketball court they've played at every weekend for the past three years since they met each other.

Flack isn't moving off.

Their groins are pushed together, and he can feel his friend's form through their track pants. Against his will, he begins to harden. He stays absolutely motionless, terrified that Flack will soon realize what is happening. Danny bites his lower lip. He can hardly take in a full breath, what with Flack's weight upon him.

Flack is still lying on top of him.

Staring at him.

Danny attempts to slither out from under Flack, but the instant their lower bodies rub hard against each other, he freezes once more. His eyes widen in shock.

He isn't the only man who's aroused.

"Don -"

His words cut off at the sudden pressure around his wrists. Flack is clutching them with his big hands. Restraining him.

Immediately, Danny struggles with all his might. Him being shorter doesn't mean he is weaker as well. He tries his hardest to throw Flack off, using his legs to kick at the floor, his knees to push at Flack's thighs. His eyes scrunch shut as he hollers in outrage.

And then, he opens his eyes and collapses onto the floor, panting in both weariness and shock.

The stark lights on the basketball court's ceiling have disappeared. All he sees beyond the homicide detective's head is a stone ceiling, faintly lit by orange candlelight. And Flack's hair is long again. His wiry body is bare to Danny's touch. A variety of scars, long and short, wide and thin, mar the man's otherwise supple skin.

Danny's wrists remain pinned down, except he doesn't feel any fear, not anymore. He is naked too, his legs spread to accommodate his lover between them. Flack is laughing, and he laughs along. He playfully thrashes about in an endeavor to escape Flack's grip.

"Magister mundi sum!" Flack exclaims with a grin.

Danny returns a grin of his own, and his eyelids flicker.

The bright lights of the basketball courts blind him.

Flack is gazing at him, a stunned countenance setting his handsome features.

Terror unlike any Danny has ever felt before seizes him.

He yells a wordless cry for freedom. With an abrupt burst of strength, he hurls the homicide detective off his body and scuttles away on his hands and legs till he is at a safe distance from the other man. He pants. Quavers non stop from head to toe.

Flack is sprawled on the floor, his face hidden in the crook of his bent arm. Danny watches him sit up, moving like an aging man, shoulders drooping, head bowed.

"How long we gonna play this game, Danny?"

Flack's whispered question is as loud as a gunshot in Danny's ears.

He swallows perceptibly. His throat is as dry as the Sahara desert.

"How long is this gonna go on, Dan? Tell me."

Flack's blue eyes are old and heartbreaking.

A stinging hotness blurs his vision, blurs Flack to an unrecognizable blob of pale orange and green and black. His chest constricts in a sob he contains inside himself with everything he has. He doesn't stick around to see what Flack will do next. Something wet trails down his face as he scrambles to his feet and dashes for the steel exit doors, leaving behind a hunched over Flack who appears as if he's been stabbed in the heart.

He doesn't hear Flack calling him to come back.

For the first time in his life, Danny Messer flees.

Tonight is a bitter, lonely night.

Danny thinks this to himself while he stares at a spot on the wall of his bedroom, his sore eyes half-lidded and bloodshot. The sticky vestiges of his unsatisfying release slowly dries on his stomach. It is simply another reminder of how far he has fallen, and how far away the light in his bleak existence is from him now.

There is an ache between his legs, the bad kind that makes him speculate whether he'd been too rough with himself, whether he'd used too many fingers in a go, whether he should have used more lubricant. The fingers of his right hand jerk.

Perhaps, he wanted it to hurt.

He buries his face into his pillow, completely failing to not contemplate about the homicide detective who preoccupies his thoughts and his heart every day. It cleaves something within him to accept the fact that there is a gulf between them now. That he is the one who placed it there with his rejection.

His fingers claws into the pillow. He compels his mind to conjure up images of Flack, of the handsome, upstanding man who smiled at him without asking for anything in return, the friend who stood by him no matter the circumstances. It takes a long time for something to materialize in his imagination.

The anguish, and later, the indifference, in Flack's blue eyes is as excruciating to see in his thoughts as it is to see in reality.

The cloth his face is nestled in gradually becomes sodden.

And he spends the night lying to himself that this is what he wants, that it is for the best.

Everyone he loves always leaves him, in the end.

The dreams start a few weeks after his brother Louie awakens from his coma at the hospital.

At first, Danny assumes they are the by-product of all the stress and emotional difficulty he has had lately. A man doesn't walk away the same person after he has seen his only brother beaten to a bloody pulp, clinging to life by a thread. He doesn't complain about the dreams, seeing as they are about the only things keeping his inner demons and his loneliness at bay.

They are filled with blissful moments of Flack smiling at him, laughing with him, gazing at him with tender eyes. The ones he favors most are those where they make love. They are so real, he often wakes up with his underwear sopping and his throat scratchy from groaning and shouting.

In these particular dreams, Flack always has longer hair. Thick, vibrant hair that cascade past his extensive shoulders and glow in the sunlight. And the scars, Danny remembers each and every one of them by now, scars that appear to be made by sharp blades like swords and spears. The disfigurements have prompted him to ruminate the possibility this Flack in his dreams is a fighter of some sort. The fact that Flack speaks to him in Latin brings him to the intriguing conclusion the man is probably a warrior from an ancient Roman era. (He also has to admit it amuses him that he's become so caught up in his own dreams he is literally researching their fine details.)

He isn't surprised at all that the dreams revolve around the homicide detective, or rather, this nameless man who resembles Flack to a tee, this man who loves him when no one else does. The dreams are so remarkable and clear that Danny sometimes questions his sanity upon awakening.

Is it this life that is the dream, and the life in his dream that is real?

He doesn't know.

A vast portion of his soul yearns for the answer to be yes.

It being true will mean that there is someone out there who loves him.

He presses his hands over his ears to muffle the voices telling him that it's too soon to give up, that it isn't over yet as long as he gets up and tries again. He's made the mistake of listening to them too many times. He is burnt raw from the flames, and he's not certain if his soul will survive another inferno.

It doesn't matter that Flack had been there at the hospital with him while Louie was in surgery, watching over him like a corporeal guardian angel. He knows Flack was only there because Mac ordered him to do so. It has to be the only reason.

It hurts too much for him to consider the chance that Flack was there because the man never stopped caring for him, even after his callous rebuff.

It hurts too much to consider the smallest hope that Flack might still love him too.

Danny falls asleep in a fetal position on his bed, already soaring into another idyllic dream, watching the man who looks like Flack donning heavy armor and securing an angular-shaped helmet around his head. The helmet, metal breastplate, arm and leg guards glimmer in the sunlight streaming down from the open hatch above them. Two magnificent swords are strapped to Flack's back.

His sturdy warrior is an awe-inspiring, intimidating sight to behold.

He saunters up to the silent man, smiling as Flack caresses his cheek, the man's blue eyes sparkling with exhilaration and an emotion that removes the ground beneath his feet.

Danny tautens his hold around the hilt of his own sword, and turns his head to kiss the palm of his other half.

"Stella … do ya believe in reincarnation?"

Her raised eyebrow is already an answer in itself to Danny's outwardly nonchalant inquiry.

"Reincarnation? As in, a soul being reborn in a different body?"

Danny shrugs one shoulder. "Yeah, I guess."

His Greek colleague angles her head in reflection, her brow furrowed in her concentration.

"Well … interestingly enough, my tailor does." One end of her red lips curve up. "However, I don't. Not really."

"Oh." Danny scratches the side of his neck.

"What's with the sudden interest in it?" Stella asks with a friendly smile.

Danny is quiet for a moment before replying.

"Just curious."

Stella studies his face from the other side of the laboratory table, her green eyes discerning and astute. The knowing gleam in them makes him fidget on the lab stool he's sitting on.

"Maybe you should ask Hawkes. Walking encyclopedia that he is, I bet he'll have a lot to say about the topic."

Danny chuckles. "Yeah, he knows everythin'."

He turns his head towards Stella when he realizes she hasn't glanced away from his face yet. They peer at each other for a short time, and then she asks, "Are things alright with you, Danny?"

He isn't sure what to say.

"You've been pretty quiet lately." Stella stands beside him, an arm resting on his shoulders.

He avoids looking into her eyes.

"I'm okay, really."

Even he can hear the blatant falsehood in his words.

Stella doesn't point it out, and neither does she display any negative reaction.

"Flack's been asking about you."

Danny's head twists so fast, his neck emits a cracking sound.

"What?" His voice is gravelly. "What did he ask 'bout?"

"I think he's just concerned about you. Everyone knows how chummy you two are." Stella sends him a delicate smile. "And hey, he's not the only one who's worried, you know. The labs' plain boring without its resident drama queen."

Danny is taken aback at her first statement, and almost chokes on a laugh of disbelief. Chummy? Obviously everyone is blind to the increasing distance between him and the homicide detective, that Flack no longer wants anything to do with him outside of work anymore.

He blinks hard.

Or is it he who is blind?

What if it isn't everybody else who is blind at all? What if it's he who has become unable to see what has always been there between him and Flack?

He's never thought of the situation that way before.

He coughs to clear his throat, his awareness at an abruptly heightened level.

"I'm alright, Stella." Danny gives his fellow CSI a reassuring smile. "I am, really. Just haven't been sleepin' well, that's all."

Stella's lovely visage softens in a maternal expression. "Okay. But you know you can talk to me anytime, right?"

It takes Danny a little while to reply. He swallows past an obstruction in his throat.

"'Course I do."

"Good."

He feels her hand stroking the back of his head, and he thinks to himself, maybe, he's not as alone as he believes after all. His smile this time is much more genuine. It seems to please Stella, who moves away from him and returns to studying a set of photographs laid out on the table top.

Later, he's in the break room with Hawkes, who's eating fried noodles out of a white and red carton from a Chinese take-out. He tries not to smile in amusement at the other CSI's surprised expression upon hearing his question.

"Reincarnation? Wow, I sure didn't expect that."

Hawkes scratches at his chin while chewing on a mouthful of food. The man cogitates on the matter, brown eyes bright and sharp.

"Personally, I don't believe in it," Hawkes begins. "But it is a very interesting subject … Reincarnation literally means, to be made flesh again. It's the belief that some elemental part of a living being, like the soul, survives death and is reborn in a new body."

The former ME puts down his food carton on the table surface.

"Usually, a new personality is developed with each different life in the physical world. Each consecutive life you're reborn into is based on your integrated past experiences along with the newly acquired ones, but … some part of the person is constantly present throughout these successive lives too."

"So, no matter how many lives the person goes through, there's always a part of him that remains?" Danny asks.

"Yes, exactly. Many religions in the world believe in reincarnation, even today. Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism." Hawkes points to a finger with each named religion. "It's in Gnosticism and Christianity, and you can find it in Native American traditions and Norse mythology as well. Even modern Pagans and some New Age movements believe in it."

Danny crosses his arms over his chest, leaning back in his seat.

"What 'bout … the ancient Romans?"

Hawkes blinks.

"Hmmm." Hawkes puckers his lips. His forehead wrinkles in deliberation. "I'm not sure. What I do recall reading is that the ancient Romans didn't believe in reincarnation, not in the Eastern sense anyway. However, many of them believed in a spiritual existence after death, a life that transcends the physical realm."

Danny senses Hawkes' kind gaze on him.

"Do you believe in reincarnation, Danny?"

One of his hands clenches into a fist on his thigh, under the table and out of sight.

"I'm not sure."

"Hmm."

A heavy silence reigns in the room for a couple of minutes.

Hawkes picks up his chopsticks and carton of noodles, and takes another mouthful of his lunch.

"One of my biggest objections to reincarnation is that an identity, a personal and individual identity, depends on there being memories … and the thing is, most times, people don't remember any of their previous incarnations."

Hawkes makes a skeptical face.

"Which makes the concept of reincarnation rather meaningless to me. What's the point of living again and again in the world if you don't remember what your previous life was, and therefore, cannot learn from the mistakes you made then?"

Danny nibbles on his lower lip. He pinches the cloth of his khaki trousers.

"But … what if you do have memories?"

Hawkes gives him a penetrating look.

After a moment's pause, the former ME says, "Well, okay, if there are memories … is there any way they can be validated?"

It's Danny's turn to look sharply at the other CSI.

The evocative imagery of his dreams waft to the forefront of his thoughts. Flack, with his long, wavy hair, reclining on the grass in the summer. Flack, striding down a flight of stone steps, dressed in leather leggings, a sword hanging at his side. Flack in his silver armour, brandishing his twin swords, howling at the sky, the blood of slain warriors drenching him.

Flack, looming over him, whispering low love notes in Latin as they move in tandem to a dance older than time.

Danny dips his head, a mirthless smile on his lips. "I doubt it, Doc."

Hawkes is grinning broadly. It is a sincere one without any mockery. "Danny … are you telling me you're … having dreams of a past life?"

Danny feels his face warming. "I dunno. Maybe."

When Danny says nothing else, Hawkes asserts in excitement, "Well, come on, share with me! You can't lead me all the way here and then just keep quiet about it!"

Danny laughs.

"Okay, okay." His expression becomes solemn. "Promise ya won't tell anybody?"

"Of course, Danny."

He smiles. Hawkes is a good man, someone he can trust, someone who doesn't judge him.

"I've been dreamin' 'bout bein' … a gladiator."

Hawkes' jaw sags. "You're kidding."

Danny cackles once more. He feels as if he is being alleviated of an intolerable weight on his heart. The words spill out of his mouth in an animated torrent.

"No, really … I keep dreamin' that I'm this gladiator in ancient Rome or somethin'. And I'm not just one a' the average ones, I'm one of the best ones." Danny swings his right arm around like he's slashing with a sword. "Yeah, and I'm mowin' down everythin' in sight, lions and tigers and horses and other gladiators in this huge arena … and the crowd's cheerin' for me, and man, as violent and gory as it is, it feels great."

Hawkes chuckles. "So this is why you were interested in reincarnation from the viewpoint of the ancient Romans."

"Yeah, but ya said they didn't believe in it, right?"

Hawkes shakes his head.

"Well. Guess that means either I'm crazy, or I'm crazy," Danny says in a blasé tone.

The other CSI snickers. "I'm just going to go with the theory you've been watching too many movies with gladiators in them."

They laugh together, and Danny feels a lot better than he has in many months. He decides to watch some television while Hawkes finishes up his lunch and prepares to jump back into more evidence processing. He presumes his friend no longer has any interest in discussing the issue, so Hawkes' parting, insightful words came out of the blue to him.

"I may not believe in reincarnation, but that doesn't mean it doesn't ever happen," Hawkes says, placing a hand on his shoulder. "With God, all things are possible."

He mulls over this long into the night, lying in his bed on his back with a thin blanket swathing his body up to the chin. Although he's reminded himself day after day to not bring his hopes up in regards to a certain homicide detective, he's doing it anyway in light of his discussion with Hawkes. He finds it both bizarre and heartening that such little things like a few words could have such immense force over the state of a man's soul.

It'll be worth it, a soft but firm voice says in his heart. Flack is worth it.

He sighs, thinking back to that night at the basketball court. He wonders how things would be now, had he said something, anything, in reply to Flack's heartwrenching question.

Eventually, he falls into a deep slumber, travelling yet again into the safe haven of his lover's arms in his dreams. The man who looks like Flack draws him close, smiling at him, murmuring in that baritone voice and those sweet Latin sentences.

"Who are you? Please, tell me your name," Danny pleads.

The handsome man who looks like Flack merely touches his face, and guides him to a bed of furs, dispelling his questions with skilled caresses and kisses.

Lindsay is staring at him.

He's staring forward instead, at the parked car in front of his, and seeing absolutely nothing except Flack's ashen face, pale as the hospital pillow and bed sheets. Seeing the cavernous, bloody hole that was once the homicide detective's unblemished abdomen.

His fingers tighten around the steering wheel until his knuckles become white.

Lindsay, sitting in the passenger seat next to him, coughs faintly to break the uneasy hush in the car.

"Do you … would you like to come up for a drink?"

A whole minute ticks by before Danny mumbles, "Nah, I got somewhere else I gotta be."

He doesn't have to look at Lindsay's face to know she's disappointed. Some part of him is ranting at him to take advantage of the situation now, to accept her proposition and go up to her apartment and use her to forget Flack, forget that the man he loves nearly died today and he nearly lost his chance to tell Flack the truth -

"I got somewhere else I hafta be," Danny repeats in a gruff voice.

An iceberg is crushing everything inside him.

His vision is getting hazy.

Lindsay revolves her head to the side, glancing outside through the passenger window at the front door of her apartment building. Then, she looks back at him.

"Okay."

Danny feels a hand on his forearm. It is a gentle touch, a touch of concern for a friend.

"Drive safely, okay, Danny?"

He's gritting his teeth so hard, he is unable to verbally respond. He nods his head.

Lindsay pats him a second time, and reluctantly opens the car door to let herself out. He senses her worried gaze on him long after he's driven away, roaming the streets of the sleepless city for hours, not knowing where he is going and not giving a fuck. He just about runs over a few pedestrians crossing the road, and still, he doesn't give a fuck.

The memory of Flack's blood sluicing everywhere onto the dusty cement floor, onto his hands and CSI coat, taints his vision red.

Somehow, he ends up at the promenade of Battery Park City, leaning on the steel railing, eyes down towards the murky Hudson river. At this time of the night, there is hardly anyone else there, and he's thankful for that. Being there makes him reminiscent of his childhood days when his father used to bring him fishing at the Hudson. He smiles to himself, remembering how his father joked about eating free fish straight from the river and how his mother slapped his dad on the arm in good humor for thinking such a gross thing.

Those were happier days. Unperturbed days when his worst fear was doing homework, when his brother still loved him more than his gangster buddies, when he didn't know what evil was and how much of it existed in the world. He misses those days.

It's a very long time before he allows himself to acknowledge the tears rolling down his cheeks. His sobs are soundless albeit vehement, causing his chest to compress painfully with each one. He rests his head on his arms on the dark grey railing, and he wipes his face on the sleeve of his jacket.

His face swiftly becomes wet again.

He thought that there was nothing more unbearable than discovering his brother at door's death, but he is wrong, so very wrong.

He should be there at the hospital, sitting at Flack's bedside. He knows this, and yet, he isn't there. He's rooted to the spot, like a wilting tree out in the middle of a forsaken wasteland. He knows Mac is there with the injured homicide detective, and his boss' presence is just one deterrent of many keeping him from going back.

Nobody knows how he feels about Flack. Nobody could ever know, not unless he's willing to gamble and ruin both of their careers and futures. He can never commit such an act towards Flack. And even if they are permitted to retain their jobs, they are as good as done for anyway. People will constantly talk behind their backs, he's sure of it, talk about them with narrowed, disgusted eyes and sneers. Mac, Stella, Hawkes, Lindsay, none of them will never look at him the same way again.

He's all alone. Far, far away from the man he's madly in love with, the man he almost lost to a bomb and he can't tell a single soul about the all-encompassing torment shredding him apart.

Flack almost died today, and Danny can't even hold his hand.

A wail rips its way out of his raw throat. It journeys far across the hushed river, a tragic sound that seems to stop time itself for a moment. He doesn't give a shit if anyone close by hears him.

The one person whom he wants to hear him is on the other side of the city, in a deep sleep on a hospital bed, deaf to his sorrow.

The months trudge along at a sluggish, soul-burdening pace.

Danny has forgotten what it feels like to smile.

It is even more difficult to recollect what it feels like to laugh.

His only solace of the night has been replaced by nightmares, terrifying visions of Flack coated in blood, with a fatal, yawning wound in his chest. A severe cut runs along the man's forehead and down to his left eyebrow, and his lips are torn and bleeding. His warrior is dying. He sees the encroaching end in Flack's glassy blue eyes.

The crimson gore doesn't frighten Danny as much as the tears that flow down Flack's face. Flack is dying, and still, he cries for someone else. Danny grabs at the other man's face and neck, and he notices that his shaking hands are steeped in blood too. Flack is saying something to him, but he can't hear the words. He's saying something himself and he can't hear what he's saying either.

He cries as blood spurts out of Flack's wide open mouth. It is dark red, the color of life and Flack's face becomes more pale as more of it spews out onto Danny's chest, soaking his clothes. He drags Flack down onto him, hugging him close, keening in grief and wrath when Flack's body is devastated by death throes and then becomes immobile.

The nightmare doesn't halt once he wakes up. In fact, it simply becomes worse in reality, for he awakens each and every time to an empty bed, with nothing to assuage him apart from the hammering of his heart and his raucous sobs. He sustains his sanity by reciting to himself that Flack is alive and recovering and not dead, squeezing a pillow against his tremorous body. The nightmares don't stop even after Flack is discharged from the hospital and returns to full-time work a few weeks after that. Guilt plagues Danny; for the duration of the homicide detective's stay at the hospital, he had only visited Flack twice, with Stella or Mac, too rattled to face Flack alone.

He does his best to conceal his misery whenever he is at the labs or out on the field. His talent of exhibiting a poker face proves to be invaluable now, and over time, it saps him of both physical and emotional stamina. It is bad enough that Stella is troubled by whatever changes she's noticed in him, but to have Mac also worry about him is nearly too much for him.

And it hurts, it hurts so bad every time Flack crosses his path at work. Flack's blue eyes are large and yet shuttered. Glacial. Closed to him. It is so true, his heart realizes with a resonant pang, that a man never appreciates what he has … until it is gone.

He stares helplessly at the taller man during each brief encounter, desiring so much to embrace Flack and kiss him and lie with him on velvet pelts, like they would in his early dreams. He stares, memorizing every feature of that gorgeous visage, every wrinkle, every curve, every divine detail.

Now, it's all he has left to counter the darkness inside him.

And he fears the day when it will not be enough anymore.

Danny lives in a perpetual, numb dream.

He has no recollection of falling into slumber or waking up. He has no remembrance of eating or drinking anything. The days and nights blur into each other. The corpses in the homicide cases the labs handle all look identical to him, grisly hunks of lifeless flesh with no faces.

He feels no gratification in capturing the perpetrators, not anymore. With every one they catch, there are five more who come forth to take its place. It is an endless war, and the other side is winning.

He feels no satisfaction in baiting Lindsay with half-hearted enticements to encourage her infatuation towards him, knowing that he's manipulating her for his own selfish purpose. He persuades himself that she's a big girl who can take care of herself, and so what if he's lying to her and to himself and making them both believe a deception?

This lie is anything better than the truth he is coerced into suffering every night.

That Flack's beautiful countenance has become synonymous with the face of everlasting loss.

He feels nothing as he sits alone at the restaurant, staring sightlessly at the unoccupied seat on the opposite side of the table, hours after the designated time he'd confirmed with Lindsay for their first date. She isn't coming, and it doesn't matter. He's known all along that she wouldn't show up, prayed that she wouldn't show up.

He feels nothing as he watches Lindsay walk away from him, her back turned towards him, the ultimate blow of her rejection. Nothing, except a minuscule trace of relief that Lindsay is pushing him away, because it makes it so much more easier for him to cut loose at the end of the day, without any remorse.

Relief, because Flack is never there to witness his foolishness in behaving like a clown on strings, chasing after a stillborn fantasy.

Flack is never there anymore, and Danny is conscious of his absence with every waking moment.

He feels nothing. No anger, no frustration. No hate. No pain.

Nothing.

At least, it's what his mind chants to itself.

The moisture on his pillow tells another story.

Hammerback is peeling away the cold, fleshy tissue of the female corpse, exposing the stark bone of sternum and ribs.

"I thought you might like a sample of this, Detective Messer," the medical examiner says as he plucks out a tiny piece of bluish metal from a crack in the seventh right rib using a pair of tweezers.

Danny is quiet. He gazes into the Y-shaped, scarlet cavern that contains the victim's decaying organs, and thinks of Flack.

His entire left side tingles with the memory of sitting in the homicide detective's car weeks ago, escorting a misguided killer called Shane to be placed in police custody. His right arm is still ablaze, preserving the fleeting sensation of it having touched Flack's side. They were standing on the sidewalk, silently observing Shane hauled off by other cops and being hounded by reporters with their flashing cameras. He remembers the way Flack stared at him afterwards, the walls between them fading away in that brief instant.

And he remembers the slicing ache within him when he opened his mouth, finally ready to divulge the contents of his heart, and Flack turned away.

"Detective Messer?"

Danny jumps at Hammerback's murmured question. He pushes his spectacles up his prominent nose, his face flushed.

"Sorry."

He takes the small plastic container with the evidence from the other man's fingers.

Hammerback is gazing at him with heavy-lidded, incisive eyes. They remind Danny a great deal of Mac's hazel ones.

"Interesting."

Danny raises an eyebrow at Hammerback's non-sequitur. "Interesting what?"

The pepper-haired ME removes his detachable spectacles, then angles his head.

"Detective Flack had that precise look on his face when he was down here earlier today."

Danny's world suddenly freezes on its axis upon the utterance of the homicide detective's name. He stares at Hammerback with wide, blue eyes, his hands tight fists in the side pockets of his pristine lab coat. First Stella, then Mac, and now … Hammerback, of all people.

Has he already lost his ability to cloak his emotions so soon?

Or have these people whom he regards as friends become such a vital part of himself that his disguises are no longer effective?

"What look?" He shrugs his shoulders in agitation. "Why's everybody bringin' him up to my face all the time? What, is he my boyfriend?"

He fervently hopes his voice didn't actually break on the last word.

He waits for the ME to answer him, wary eyes following the older man who ambles up to the where the corpse's head lies on the metal autopsy table. It's then that he notices the dead victim's eyes are only half-closed.

"Sometimes, the dead can speak so much more than the living," Hammerback says.

The man skims a gentle hand over the corpse's eyes, shutting them for all time.

"And sometimes, a man can say so much, when he says nothing at all."

Hammerback's profound, enigmatic message spins around in Danny's thoughts right through the afternoon and into the evening, where he sits alone in one of the laboratories awaiting results for a DNA test.

He nearly leaps out of his skin after he feels a heavy, familiar hand on his shoulder.

"Hey."

Danny stares into big, blue eyes.

"Hey," he whispers in reply to Flack.

The homicide detective is wearing one of his usual suits, a dark grey one and a bright blue-and-grey tie decorated with baroque patterns. There are lines at the sides of those eyes and around those dark pink lips, creases Danny hadn't detected before. There are shadows under those baby blues too, bags that give Flack a fatigued countenance.

Flack is downright gorgeous in Danny's sight.

"It's been a while," Flack murmurs in a low voice.

Danny knows he's not talking about them not having seen each other in person.

He manages to show a wholehearted smile, even as a hot wetness develops behind his eyes.

"How ya doin'?"

"If ya really wanna know, I haven't slept more than three hours straight for the last four months," Flack replies, a mirthless smirk curving up one side of his lips.

Danny blinks.

"Huh. I was gonna say that myself."

"Well." The homicide detective leans back against the table, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "How 'bout hoops, this Saturday?"

Danny blinks a second time.

For a minute, he has no idea what to say. The last time they'd played basketball together, it had been that evening. That evening where Flack had asked him that question that changed his whole world for eternity.

He gazes into Flack's eyes, and it dawns on him that his friend has always been, and still is, patiently awaiting his answer.

It is a realization that staggers him.

"Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. I'll see ya on Saturday," Danny says. He senses a colossal burden starting to lift off his shoulders even before he's finished speaking.

Flack's convivial smile eradicates even more of the weight.

"A'right, I'll see ya then."

Danny watches the handsome detective saunter to the laboratory door, and his breath hitches when Flack makes an unexpected halt there and pivots halfway around to look at him.

The walls are gone, Danny hears a voice within him murmur as their gazes lock, and there it is, the door to his heart.

And Flack hands him the key in the form of a soft, parting smile.

That night, Danny sleeps a serene, dreamless sleep.

The thumps of the striped, white-and-blue basketball on the floor mimic the ominous thundering of distant war drums.

"So … I hear Montana's gone home to her wheat fields."

Flack's voice is frosty and jagged as a blade.

Danny remains silent, standing with his legs somewhat spread, his black tank top clammy with sweat. His brows lower in the beginnings of a suspicious scowl.

"Yeah, Mac and Stella saw her off yesterday afternoon."

The homicide detective bounces the ball on the floor a couple more times, keeping his eye on it. Evading eye contact with Danny.

And Danny knows he's deliberately doing it.

"Funny. Where were you?"

Danny glowers at the other man who's a dozen feet away, clenching his hands into fists.

"What's that s'pposed to mean?"

"C'mon, Danny," Flack replies, his tone rising a little. "Don't pretend like ya dunno what I'm talkin' 'bout."

"I was out doin' my job," Danny grinds out.

He doesn't understand why Flack is so angry. He was just fine and cool all the way through their game with the guys from his precinct and Chad and Adam from the labs. His friend's rapid shift from calmness to scalding fury causes his brain to reel.

The basketball goes thump, thump, thump on the slick floor.

"Wha, didn't even have time to say goodbye to yer girlfriend?"

Danny's heart stops. His eyes shut.

Flack knows.

Danny's eyes flicker open again. Of course Flack would know. Gossip travels like lightning in the labs and afar.

"She's not my girlfriend."

He isn't certain whether he whispers it or screams it.

The ball is in Flack's hands, and the silence in the indoor court is ear-splitting.

"That so?" Flack says in that dangerous voice. "I hear ya had a date with her."

The man's eyes glare in accusation at him.

He stays prudently quiet. He can sense the hostility within Flack brewing to boiling point. His friend is like a caged beast, simply holding back until the initial war cry has been declared.

The place's getting too small for the two of them, and only one is going to walk out.

"So what's she like, huh?"

The basketball strikes the floor with a violence that sends vibrations across the polished surface beneath their feet.

"C'mooon, Danny, we're buddies, aren't we? Buddies are s'pposed to share."

Flack's voice rises some more. His anger is undeniable now.

Danny sucks in a deep breath, forcing himself to relax, loosen his hands.

God, he gets it, he finally gets it.

Flack isn't furious at him.

Flack's jealous.

"No, I didn't fuck her ... is that what ya wanted to hear?"

The ball falls to the floor from Flack's open hands and rolls away.

"Don't lie to me."

The homicide detective storms up to him with terrible, enraged steps, getting into his face and snarling like a tiger, and for the first time, Danny is indeed scared.

"Don't lie to me, Danny! I got my stomach blown out, not my brain!"

He gapes at the other man, his face waxen with shock. It has taken him months just to put behind the bombing that almost killed Flack, but in a single moment, the horror of Flack sprawled among the ruins with his belly a shredded carnage rushes back with a vengeance.

He is unable to comprehend how the man he loves is capable of treating his own near death in such a trivial manner.

Flack's breaths are hot and heavy on his face.

"So tell me, buddy, tell me 'bout the night ya gave her a ride home and fucked her in her apartment while I was in the hospital with half my stomach missin' -"

Something within Danny shatters into a million pieces.

He gives Flack's broad chest a very vicious shove with his hands, his teeth bared in a rictus of infuriation. Flack tumbles backwards and barely catches himself with his hands. Danny charges at him, knocking him off his feet, bringing them both down hard onto the floor. He doesn't even feel the crack of his knees slamming into the smooth, unyielding surface, or Flack's punches at his face and torso. He gives the other man as good as he got, smashing his fist across Flack's jaw and whacking the guy in the chest and ribs when Flack seizes one of his wrists.

His eyes tear up at a blow to his side, but he doesn't give in and fights all the more harder. Flack is flattening him into the floor now, taking advantage of his shorter stature, and Danny knees whatever part of Flack's anatomy is within range. He hears Flack grunt in pain at one particular strike, and does it again, flinging them over so that he was on top of Flack instead.

The brawl ends as quickly as it started.

Flack is limp under him, chest heaving with exertion. His head turned away and eyes closed. One of Flack's cheeks is already beginning to inflame. It will bruise before tomorrow is over.

It occurs to Danny as he sits on the other man that they are back in the same position they were the last time they were here playing basketball, except that they've switched places. His hands are clamped around Flack's wrists, holding them down at his friend's sides. But Flack isn't putting up a fight to the restraint.

Pure misery fills those intense blue eyes. And they're glistening in the blinding light emanating from the basketball court's high ceiling.

All of a sudden, Danny is shivering.

He's not wearing his black tank top and track pants anymore. He's naked, stretched out on top of an equally naked Flack. Flack's hair is long and combed, tied into a loose ponytail that spreads over the downy hides they lie on. Ethereal moonlight delineates Flack's handsome features in the dark of the night, and there is a green flower stalk interweaved in the man's dark locks.

Danny senses Flack caressing his chest. Flack is smiling, like he used to do, like he always did in Danny's dreams where happiness was once real.

"Da mihi basilia mille," Flack whispers.

Except this man, who looks like Flack, is not Flack at all.

When Danny acknowledges this, he disappears.

And the Flack staring up at him is weeping silent tears.

Danny feels his face crumpling, feels hot trails down his cheeks.

"You stupid fuck," he rasps in a broken voice. "I never slept with Lindsay, and I wasn't there at the hospital when I fuckin' wanted so bad to be there …" - he draws in a shaky breath - "Because it hurt too much to not even be able to hold your hand without bawlin' my eyes out."

Flack's wet eyes are wide and startled.

"It's you … it's you I love, don't you get it? It's always been you."

He finds Flack's silence unendurable.

Danny is up on his knees and then his feet and then he's sprinting for the locker room at the other end of the court, shouldering his way through the door and crashing headlong into the steel lockers. Their cool exteriors send more shivers up his bare arms and through his shuddering body, and he leans his forehead against one, scrunching his eyes close in order to stop the damn tears. He tries to release his frustration by slamming a fist into the locker, but he can scarcely lift a hand.

He plasters himself on the locker door. He's exhausted to the bones. He ruminates over how he's going to write his resignation letter and how he'll deal with Mac's questions and that of his peers. There's no way he can work with Flack anymore, not like this, not in this hell where everything that he's familiar with will merely serve to remind him of what he'll never have -

There's a squeaking sound of the locker room door being opened.

Then, a click, and another louder one of the door being bolted.

Danny doesn't open his eyes or lift his head or turn to look at whoever's entered.

Sluggish, tentative steps draw closer and closer to him.

Then, they stop.

A minute, the length of a millennia, crawls by.

He straightens up at last when he hears a faint sob.

Flack's visage is streaked with tears but it is blank. Only his eyes speak, and it is more than enough.

The two detectives stand facing each other, neither backing away nor moving forward. They are at a crossroads, possibly the most crucial one they will ever meet. Danny knows this. He knows, should he walk away this time, it will be forever.

But should he stay … it, too, will be forever.

Flack is stationary, his arms at his sides, totally stripped of all pride and armor.

And Danny makes the most important decision of his life.

"Oh, God."

Flack's arms are strong and solid, squeezing him tight around his midriff in a vice. Flack's lips are moist and firm, molded against his own parted ones. Flack's hair is copious and silky, heaven to touch even cropped as it is. And most of all, Flack's blue eyes are full of love, a love he has only seen and felt in his dreams. Till now.

Fantasy is dust compared to reality.

Danny cries out when Flack heaves him up against the tall lockers, squashing him with his lanky, writhing body. The homicide detective's hands are everywhere, roving all over his body beneath his rumpled clothes, his head, his shoulders, his arms, his chest and stomach, between his legs.

"Don -"

Flack's hand wraps around his erect, throbbing cock, fondling it and pumping up and down and rubbing its sensitive, leaking head. The pleasure engulfs Danny, causing his wriggling body to jerk hard against Flack's, causing him to let out a few high-pitched moans that resonate in the room. His pants and underwear are wrenched down to his knees. He feels Flack's erection lined up against his between their bellies, and he thrusts upwards, rubbing their cocks together with agile, smooth motions of his hips. He feels Flack's hand cupping one side of his buttocks, and the other on the middle of his back, supporting him.

It feels so good, it feels so fucking good that his orgasm hits him without warning with the force of a supernova. His body goes rigid in Flack's encirclement. His head bangs fiercely on the locker behind him, but he doesn't feel that, only unbelievable pleasure that turns his being inside out.

Someone is yelling hoarsely. It sounds a lot like himself.

Flack's fingers dig into the flesh of his buttocks and thighs.

White seed spurts onto their stomachs and lower chests.

Eons later, Flack is still embracing Danny with a grip of steel, propping him up against the lockers. They pay no heed to the stickiness on their abdomens. It is proof that it wasn't just another dream. Flack's lips move on Danny's, noiseless and yet, uttering a perpetuity of revelations. Danny leaves butterfly kisses all over the other man's beautiful face, and then, he closes eyes in contentment, listening to Flack whispering, "I love you," over and over in his ear.

Flack's entry into his body between his spread legs sears like fire.

Danny strains to keep his eyes open, to gaze up at his friend, his lover, his other half. His hands clasp firmly on Flack's wide shoulders, short nails burrowing into smooth, pale skin. A whimper escapes his sucked in lips as Flack pushes another inch inside. He's glad now that he's played with himself down there using his fingers. Flack is huge, definitely bigger than his three fingers.

It burns, but it is a glorious, mind-blowing burn that fills up the emptiness within him.

His eyes brim over, and a single tear rolls down the side of his face as Flack finally buries himself to the hilt, thighs pressing against his bottom.

"Danny?" the homicide detective whispers. Flack's eyes are gigantic with awe.

Danny's mouth moves mutely for a moment, and when he finds his voice, he whispers back, "Please."

He arches his back, running his hands up Flack's stomach, lingering on the scars marking it, then up the broad chest with its sparse hair to the man's gorgeous face. He feels two fingers dabbing away the moisture on his cheeks, and he smiles.

Flack stares at him. The man is a blur, except for those big, blue eyes.

"Te amo."

Danny's breath catches in an audible gasp. He clutches at Flack's hair, and discovers it is still shorn. Flack is still unscarred, apart from his belly where the bomb explosion had wounded him. His bedroom is still there around them.

Nothing's changed. He isn't in one of his reveries, not this time.

Was it Flack who spoke in Latin, or himself?

Did he simply imagine it?

His mind blanks out when Flack pulls out until only the head is inside and thrusts back in. It is an astonishing sensation, one that ripples out from a place within his body that he never knew was there before. His back curves even more, and he hears someone releasing piercing groans. It isn't Flack, because the man is speaking to him even as he undulates his hips in relentless thrusts.

"Quis separabit?"

Flack places hands on the back of his thighs and shifts his legs up and wider apart, moving faster and harder in and out of his sweaty, pliant body.

"Quis separabit?"

Danny tosses his head on the pillow, toes curled inwards, whimpering and gasping with each unerring strike of his prostate. There is something unfurling within him, something that is being freed from the shackles of the past, something mysterious and yet, more familiar than anything else he has ever known.

He scrabbles at Flack's muscular arms and drags the man's head down.

"No one … no one shall ever separate us," he rasps into Flack's ear.

He doesn't know how he understands what Flack had said to him. He just does.

He always has.

Flack stops only long enough to tug at his hips, bending him double on his back on the sheets and placing his knees on top of strapping shoulders. The homicide detective withdraws, then plunges in.

His soul blooms into new and full fruition.

"Ohh! Plus! More … ohhh, aio, yes …"

A few more deep thrusts sends Danny's entire body shuddering from head to toe. Flack is quiet, his lower lip bitten beneath his upper lip, his eyes screwed shut in his focus. Flack's arms tremble with his movements.

"Pavesco … pavesco -"

He scratches at Flack's upper back. It's right there, it's right there at the tip of his fingers and toes -

Flack drives in with one last great thrust, then stiffens, a stunning form of defined muscles and pale skin in a sheen.

Those blue eyes snap open.

"Nunc scio … quid sit amor."

Upon hearing those words, Danny flies over the edge. Starbursts explode behind his eyelids. Something wet and hot splatters on his belly.

Suddenly, he sees himself on his bed, convulsing in extreme pleasure beneath Flack, head thrown back and mouth gaping in ecstasy.

There is a flash of light, and he sees himself, naked and in chains, kneeling before a man with a golden laurel wreath on his head. He glowers at this man with fierce, defiant eyes, and snarls in rebellion as soon as the man with the laurel wreath attempts to touch his face and his lengthy hair.

Another flash of light, and he sees Flack standing at the dim entrance to a vast arena, a sword in each hand. He sees himself beside his friend, decked out in light armor like Flack is. They gaze at each other, resignation in their blue eyes. He reaches up to caress the taller man's cheek, and Flack smiles a cheerless smile of defeat.

Another flash, and he sees them sprawled on the blood-spattered soil of the arena, a pool of sanguine spreading beneath their corpses and outwards, an ocean of evaporating life. The carcass of a lion lies near them. There is a gory hole going through Flack's chest and out his back. His own belly is slashed wide open, his intestines and innards already graying with putrefaction.

Danny twists his head away and closes his eyes.

And senses Flack clambering off the bed.

"Oh my God … what's happenin' to me?"

He opens his eyes when he hears the hysteria in Flack's voice.

He carefully raises himself to a sitting position, very cognizant of the drying semen on his stomach and the dampness trickling out between his legs. The bedroom is spinning around him. His eyelids flicker a few times. It takes him a few minutes to shake off the mild vertigo, and the trembling of his hands and torso take a little longer.

"Amicule?" Danny rasps.

Flack is sitting on the edge of the bed a couple of feet away, his head in his hands. He jolts violently, then looks at Danny with wide, petrified eyes.

"You … you were talkin' in … some kinda language I don't …" Flack stutters. One of his hand is over his mouth. "And so was I, so was I."

The homicide detective bounds to his feet, and proceeds to pace to and fro next to the bed, muttering to himself.

"I don't even know what the hell it is, and I understand you … I understand me … what …"

Danny gets onto on all fours on the bed. Crawls to the edge and stretches out a hand towards the frantic man.

"Noli me tangere!"

He recoils at Flack's bellow in that foreign language, and he scampers backwards until his back hits the bedstand. Endeavor as he might, the tears come uninvited to his eyes anyway. No, this is worse, this is worse by far. To savor paradise, only to have it ripped away from him just when he had faith that it is his at long last.

Flack is motionless as a statue, face turned away from him. The taller man is outlined by the moonlight spilling into the bedroom through the windows. Transfigured into an otherworldly being from another place, another time.

Danny sucks in a wobbly breath.

The window behind Flack is glassless. The walls are built of stone, the architecture of a different time, a time that existed centuries upon centuries ago. Flack's hair is long and winding, and there is a cloth bandage around his left thigh. His furious blue eyes gleam in the candlelight.

"Caesar will not separate us," Flack says, "I won't let him take you away from me."

Danny seems to hear his lover's declaration in both English and Latin at the same time. He glances down at himself, and sees that his bedsheets have become fur pelts, and like Flack, his own sinewy body is blemished by scars of battle. There are shackles around his ankles.

It is as if two different lives are combining into one, little by little.

"He won't … he won't." Danny shakes his head from side to side.

"He will make sure I am killed in combat tomorrow. He has you bound in chains, in his palace … no, he has already plotted the outcome of the fight." The tall, dark-haired man's face is hidden in the shadows now. "Even now … he taunts me, with this final night, our final night together."

Flack's tone becomes croaky.

"Who am I, a lowly gladiator, against the emperor of Rome?"

Danny reaches out an arm towards him, a silent entreaty for the other man to return to the bed, and he simply murmurs, "You're the man I love."

He blinks.

The stone walls are gone. Flack's thick hair is short and cropped once more. The bed under him is smooth linen. The shackles around his ankles are no more. And the only scars he carries are left on his heart.

He leaves him arm extended out, waiting with infinite patience for Flack to respond.

Flack's blue eyes are wider than ever, enormous with discovery and enlightenment. He reaches out and grasps Danny's hand in his. The bed sinks a bit as he sits down with Danny, their thighs and hips brushing.

"Your hair. It was longer."

Danny feels long fingers run through his shorn, brown hair, but he is too astounded to speak.

"You would leave it long … because I always told you how much I enjoyed feeling the strands in my hands," Flack continues in a strange voice. "And I left mine long, and you would braid it so flowers wouldn't get caught in it when we sneaked away to the fields behind the school in Ravenna."

Danny's lower lip trembles.

It is impossible, he thinks, too good to be true.

"You have the same dreams," he whispers.

Flack's fingertips trace the outline of his lips.

"No, not dreams ... Memories." Flack's handsome face lights up in a smile brighter than the sun itself. "Tempus omnia sed memorias privat."

Danny's tremulous hands cup the other man's grinning face. He feels his own mien shift into an elated smile, even as his blue eyes sting with wet warmth.

A very long, tempestuous chapter that has spanned millennias has come to a much awaited end.

And finally, finally, he is complete again.

"Cursum perficio," Danny rasps in a husky tone. He strokes the beloved features of his other half. "Cursum perficio."

Flack's smile exorcises the remaining scraps of the darkness within him.

"Salve, amator."

"I saw Livius' sword slash your belly," Flack says, much later in the early morning after their many bouts of lovemaking. "I was too late."

Danny ruffles Flack's hair with one hand, drawing circles on the man's lower back with the other. "There was nothing you could do. You were battling three other gladiators on your own."

He senses Flack tense for an instant. "Caesar's plan to kill me and take me away from you."

"It doesn't matter anymore. Caesar's been dead for ages past."

Danny lies on his back on the disheveled bed, his lower legs draped by a blanket. Flack reclines on his left shoulder, wrapping an arm around his midriff and twining their legs together. They converse in a mixture of English and Latin, which, in any other circumstances, they'd have considered rather out of the ordinary.

It isn't everyday that they learn they once lived as gladiators in love almost two thousands years ago, in a mighty empire that no longer exists. Or that they've become fluent in a disappearing language overnight.

"Do ya remember any of your past lives?" Danny murmurs.

Flack contemplates on this for a while before replying, "Before I met you, I thought reincarnation and all that was just hocus-pocus."

"You mean, you've had those dreams ever since you met me?"

"Me fallit … Maybe it was a while after." Flack wriggles a bit to find a more comfortable position on Danny's chest. "Around the time the whole Tanglewood Boys crap blew up."

Danny kisses Flack on his temple. "My dreams started around there too."

"Huh."

There is an tranquil silence for some time, and then Flack whispers into his shoulder, "You were so brave, facing that lion alone."

"Ne feceris ut rideam … you've killed ten lions on your own! My one is nothing."

Flack's arms are suddenly crushing his waist.

"It was hell, seeing you die over and over in my dreams. I thought I was gonna go crazy."

Danny squeezes Flack's shoulders and rolls them over so that Flack is on his back and he is lying on him.

"I think the dreams will stop now," he says, gazing down at Flack, smoothing out the brows low in a doubtful frown.

"Pro tempore."

"No. For good."

"You're so sure of that, hmm, deliciae?"

"Yes." Danny kisses Flack on the lips. "We have found each other, after all."

Flack returns his fond stare.

"So, do we go on bein' reincarnated after this?"

Danny stills. The thought had never occurred to him.

"Confiteor … I have no idea. Maybe we will, maybe we won't."

Flack rolls them over, pinning Danny down on the bed, and Danny rubs against the taller man's heavy, muscular body, reveling in his lover's smooth, warm skin and reassuring weight.

"It doesn't matter to me. If we've found each other once, we can do it again, no matter how many times we must live new lives." Flack says. "Difficile est longum subito deponere amorem."

Danny gazes into Flack's large, blue eyes. "And if this life is our last, hic et nunc?"

"Then …"

Flack moves between his legs, poised at the entrance into his body and his lover concludes into his parted lips, "Let us live this last life to the fullest … esto perpetua."

The bullet tears deep into his flesh, and it leaves an icy, numb streak in its wake.

Danny feels wet warmth soaking his Henley shirt over his chest and belly, a growing circle of scarlet that robs him of his breath and the vigor in his bones. His gun slips from his open hand, clattering on the marble floor of the bank lobby. His knees buckle without warning. His glasses splinter on impact on the floor.

The marble is cold and unyielding beneath his cheek.

He sucks in a shaky, agonizing breath. He notices a little girl crouching behind a table, her hands wrapped around her head, over her ears. She's crying, and he tries to tell her that it's going to be alright, sweetheart, the cops are here to catch the robbers, it's going to be alright. He feels warm fluid run in rivulets from the corner of his mouth and down his jaw and neck.

Someone is screaming his name, in that deep baritone he knows so well.

It's cold. So very cold.

It's suddenly very silent. The inundating hush is both odd and calming. The explosions of guns, the screams of the hostages and robbers and police officers charging in, the clamorous alarm, it is all gone. He hears nothing, not even the wails of the frightened little girl anymore. His head jerks to the side, and he sees a man in a business suit crumpled on the floor nearby. The man isn't moving. Perhaps the guy is also dying, like he is.

He looks up at the ceiling high above, and wonders from a distance whether he'll end up in heaven or in hell. He's not sure whether he wants to be in either at the moment, but he's very sure he doesn't want to be where he is right now.

His eyelids flutter. He's finding it more and more tricky to breathe.

He can't feel his body any longer, only his mind, dredging forth an exquisite memory.

Although his eyes are closed, he sees Flack's big, blue eyes gazing down at him, smiling even when their owner's lips did not. Flack's hair is soft and copious between his fingers, soft like the man's pale, supple skin that he so loves to touch. Flack is deep inside him, filling all the empty spaces of his soul, and he remembers how good it felt to connect with his other half this way for the first time so many years ago. Two souls becoming one. Union.

Someone is stroking his face.

And he opens his eyes, and there, Flack's gorgeous blue eyes are gazing at him once more.

Blood is streaming from a cut high on Flack's forehead. A large contusion discolors the right side of the homicide detective's face.

It will turn his cheek black and blue, Danny thinks, from far.

Flack's lips are moving soundlessly, and Danny blinks as transparent drops of water descend onto his forehead and cheeks. They are falling from those blue eyes.

He touches his lover's blood-spattered visage with a trembling hand. For some reason, he hurts him to see Flack shedding tears for him so much more than the fatal bullet wound that has mangled his body. He wipes them away, trying to smile, trying to inhale one more time, and another. To have just a little more time with the man who is half his soul and more.

Then, one of his hands slither down to Flack's chest. Blood also saturates the man's dress shirt and jacket, and Danny realizes that Flack has also been mortally shot. He looks back into those glassy eyes. Sucks in another painful breath, deep as he can, though it's utter torture.

I've found you, his mind intones over and over, I've found you.

The words cannot escape. He hears just his faltering breaths, senses the inescapable fit of death shutting down his lungs and his heart, throttling his precious fragments of life. He grabs at Flack's damp face and neck. An abrupt surge of strength rushes through him, and he knows, it's the last time he will ever speak.

"I love you … forever and always."

He sees Flack's handsome, sallow mien scrunch up in a rictus of grief, but his own transforms into a shadow of a peaceful smile. Flack has heard him, he's heard his avowal. He caresses the moving lips, not needing to hear the three words the homicide detective is whispering to feel them in his heart.

I know, I know you do, his soul says in return.

Suddenly, a torrent of blood pours out from Flack's mouth and onto him, drenching his already bloody shirt. Flack's eyes are wide and unseeing, beginning to glaze over. Danny pulls his friend and lover down on him, disregarding the weight pressing on his injured body, pressing their cheeks together, screwing his eyes shut while spasms tear through Flack's dying body.

A brutal convulsion also wracks his body, causing his back to bow upwards and his throat and mouth to fill up with blood.

They are both in their final moments of life.

I'll find you again, his heart affirms with utmost belief, I'll find you, no matter where you are.

As more blood flows from his parted lips, he nestles his face into Flack's lifeless neck, breathing in the man's scent for one last time. He can hear the blaring sirens of police patrol cars, and more gunshots resounding in the air.

"Love you … forever."

He's not sure at all if he merely said it in his thoughts, or out loud.

He can't move or breathe anymore.

Flack is still, so very still.

There is a dazzling light shining into his eyes, a compelling light that summons him, encouraging him to leave this place of pain and heartbreak and demise.

He exhales.

And feels the delicate petals of flowers brushing against his cheek.

Danny's eyes flicker open. He slowly sits up, and discovers he is sitting in a boundless field of grass and white-and-yellow flowers, dressed in nothing except a long, elegant tunic. The sun shines high in the clear, blue sky, and a cool breeze tousles the strands of his hair.

For a few seconds, he questions whether this is simply another of his dreams. It feels so surreal, so strange and wondrous and liberating.

Then, he hears a cry of sorrow, coming from very, very far. He glances back … and sees himself, lying on a cold, marble floor, embracing Flack in his arms. There is a broad lake of dark blood under their bodies, one that continues to grow with each passing second. Danny sees Stella and Mac and Hawkes surrounding them. Stella is crying, her tears smearing her make up. She is kneeling next to his head, gently stroking his head. Mac stands beside her, a tense figure of raw anguish and regret. His hazel eyes glisten with wetness. Hawkes kneels behind Flack, a hand on Flack's upper back, his head held up high. Hawkes is gazing up, looking beyond the ceiling, beyond the sky and the stars, and his lips move in a hushed prayer.

Danny gets up onto his knees, his hand over the left side of his chest, over his heart.

He wants so badly to tell his friends that he isn't dead, that life doesn't end when the heart stops beating and the eyes stop seeing.

He stands up, torn between staying in this place of peace and illumination, and going back to the mortal world.

And then, he hears someone calling his name.

He swivels around swiftly, peering far across the flourishing field.

He sees a tall figure standing at the horizon, attired in a loose tunic just like his. It is a familiar figure. He knows this person by heart, since before the dawn of time.

He looks back into the other side, watching his lifeless body being placed into a black bag and zipped up, and he understands, it is his time. Death isn't a finality, but a transition, a stepping point from one life to the next. Sooner or later, his loved ones, too, will come to this quiet and untroubled place, free from misery and sadness and death for eternity. They will see each other again.

His name echoes across the field a second time.

Danny pivots back, and starts to run to the source of the call through the flowers and lush grass. The sunshine is warm and full of life on his young skin. He laughs, feeling the wind beneath his arms and legs, carrying him, giving him flight.

His heart lifts as he hastens towards the person who has beckoned him.

It is Flack who stands there, waiting for him. Flack is smiling, holding out his hands, his arms open in welcome. White and yellow petals stick to his dark hair.

It seems as though a grand, sweeping applause imbues the very air when Danny dives into Flack's embrace and their lips meet in a kiss. It is cheer that springs from the hearts of others who have walked their path before them, and have come home, as they have. Time no longer has any meaning. Death is nothing but a word. Heartache is a forgotten memory.

And love is an inexhaustible verity.

Danny rests his head on Flack's chest, and smiles.

They are free, at last.

"Tam diu minime visu," Flack murmurs into his hair.

Danny doesn't have to look at Flack's face to know he's smiling. He raises his head, grins at the taller man.

"Time? What is time?"

Danny feels Flack stroking his cheek. They smile at each other and laugh as one. More flower petals drift through the air, and they pluck the tiny things out of one another's hair.

Flack's eyes are shimmering like diamonds.

He offers his hand towards Danny, who clasps it in his own, their fingers entwining.

And together, they walked into the light.

Etiam in morte, perdurat amor.

Translation for the Latin phrases:

Te valde amo ac semper amabo - I love you very much, and always will forever

Amor aeternus - Love forever

Damnant quod non intellegunt - They condemn what they do not understand

Te amo, amator - I love you, my love

Magister mundi sum! - I am the master of the universe!

Da mihi basilia mille - Kiss me with a thousand kisses

Quis separabit? - Who shall separate us?

Plus! Aio! - More! Yes!

Pavesco - I'm shaking

Nunc scio quid sit amor - Now I know what love is

Amicule - Baby / Darling

Noli me tangere! - Don't touch me!

Tempus omnia sed memorias privat - Time deprives all but memories

Cursum perficio - My journey is over

Salve, amator - Hello, my love

Me fallit - I do not know

Ne feceris ut rideam - Don't make me laugh

Pro tempore - For the time being

Confiteor - I confess

Difficile est longum subito deponere amorem - It is difficult to suddenly give up a long love

Hic et nunc - Here and now

Esto perpetua - Let it be forever

Tam diu minime visu - Long time no see

Etiam in morte, perdurat amor - In death, love prevails

 

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