Title: B is for Behind
Author: stellaluna_
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Mac/Danny & Mac/Peyton
Summary: These are the things we do to survive.
Disclaimer: None of these are mine. Characters are the property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer Television, CBS, and Alliance Atlantis.

***

Danny measures out the summer days by nights spent with Mac. The summer is almost completely devoid of signposts, of any means of separating one day from the next, and this adds to the feeling Danny has that something is slipping away from him, slipping out of his grasp. He doesn't keep a paper calendar, but he tries to mentally cross off each day as it goes by. The days are filled with work, with corpses and entry wounds and fingerprints, and at night he goes home, and three or four or five nights a week Mac shows up at his door. Danny uses this to chart the passage of time, to think Mac came over on Wednesday, and that was the 7th, but even so everything blurs and blends; the times Mac shows up aren't anything like predictable, and that doesn't help.

On the 21st of July, Mac shows up looking more distant and distracted than ever. On the 24th, he shows up already drunk. On the 30th, he says Danny's name when he comes, over and over in a low chant.

Nothing much happens for the first couple of weeks in August. On the 14th, or maybe the 16th, there's a perfect round lipstick stain on the shoulder of Mac's shirt, red enough to make Danny think it's a bullet hole at first glance. On the 19th, or the 17th, Mac fucks him hard and desperate, white-knuckled against the kitchen counter. After that, Mac doesn't come over anymore. Danny keeps making imaginary X-marks on his mental calendar, and doesn't say a word.

On a day either very late in August or very early in September, Sid says, "Meet our new M.E.," and Danny, not even thinking of Mac, steps forward to take her hand.

"Peyton, right?" he says. "What are you doing back here?", and Peyton smiles like she's glad to see him, like she has nothing to hide.

Danny doesn't see how these pieces fit together, not until months later when he's started keeping track of days again.

***