Title: My Last Cigarette
Author: stellaluna_
Rating: PG
Pairing: Mac/Danny
Summary: Some habits are impossible to break. Vague spoilers for "Run Silent, Run Deep".
Disclaimer: None of these are mine. Characters are the property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer Television, CBS, and Alliance Atlantis.
Notes: For fanfic100 (Prompt 020: Colorless).

***

The bed is empty when Mac wakes up, and the blankets and pillow are cold to the touch. He lies there without moving for a few minutes, staring up at the ceiling while he waits for his breathing to even out. The cadence he'd been marching to in his dream had still been echoing in his head when he opened his eyes, and all he'd registered at first was that the light and shadows in the bedroom were all wrong, but he hadn't been disoriented for more than a few seconds before he remembered where he was, or before he realized he was alone in the room.

As soon as he feels ready, he gets up and pulls on his pants, then goes up the hall to the living room. He pauses in the doorway before going in, just looking. Danny is leaning against the open window, staring out, one hand pressed to the glass. He has a cigarette in his other hand, and smoke rises around him in a slow coil. He either hasn't noticed Mac's presence or is pretending he hasn't, because he hasn't turned around or moved a muscle. Despite the confused churn of emotions running through his head, Mac can't help taking the opportunity to just look, to study him. People become too familiar, he thinks, and we stop seeing them.

He lets himself look at the clean line of Danny's bare back, the smooth ripple of muscles all the way down to his waist and the curve of his spine, the place where his shoulder blades rise like wings from the hollowed-out track of vertebrae. The place in the small of his back where the skin is soft to the touch.

Mac swallows hard. He's remembering the night before, and the way those muscles had moved under his hands as Danny backed him into the wall with an eager kiss, and the trickle of sweat Mac had licked away from the back of his shoulder as they rolled over together in bed, but he's also remembering other things. Like Danny, more than a year ago, his back shaking with angry sobs as he leaned against Mac's chest outside a hospital. All Mac had been able to do was press his cheek to Danny's and stroke a hand through his hair; there had been nothing to say. Nothing that would have been true, anyway, and he hadn't lied to him, hadn't tried to tell him everything would be all right.

He's glad he didn't, and has no regrets about that, but what does make him feel guilty is that even then, in the midst of offering what comfort he could, he'd been much too aware of how good it felt to have Danny in his arms again -- and aware that neither of them had ever held the other like this even in the brief interim when things had almost worked between them.

He needs to stop thinking about this. "I thought you quit a long time ago," he says, and steps into the room.

Danny jumps a little, cracking his head against the pane and almost dropping his cigarette. "Jesus Christ," he says. "Trying to give me a heart attack?" He turns around, but doesn't move away from the window.

"Sorry," Mac says.

"How long have you been standing there?"

"Just a minute."

"You know you don't make a sound when you move?" Danny says. "It's all that stealth training you got in the Marines, isn't it?"

Mac shrugs. "What about the cigarette?" he asks.

"Oh, yeah." Danny looks down at his hand. "I did quit. Mostly. I still have a couple a year, whenever the urge strikes. I can put it out if you want."

"It's fine," Mac says. He hesitates, then puts out his hand. "Can I have a drag?"

Danny raises his eyebrows. "You smoke?" he says.

"I used to. Now..." He's not sure how to finish the sentence.

"Now you just indulge a couple times a year?" Danny says.

"It's been even longer than that." Not counting his little cigarette experiment last year, anyway. "I haven't really smoked since I was discharged."

"Long time, then," Danny says, then holds the cigarette out. "Have at it."

Mac takes it and inhales, letting the smoke fill his lungs for a long moment before he exhales and hands the cigarette back to Danny. The acrid taste brings back an immediate tangle of memories: of being in the Corps, sitting on the grass and smoking after training exercises, or after guard duty on a hot desert night. And of Danny; he'd still had the same burning sensation in the back of his throat that night at the hospital, and his clothes had smelled like smoke that night when he'd undressed. He wonders that Danny didn't smell it on him at the time, or at least didn't comment on it, but he supposes he'd been too distracted to notice.

Danny takes a drag himself. He's not wearing his glasses, and in spite of the cigarette dangling from his lips, without them he looks oddly vulnerable. Mac knows it's an illusion even as Danny squints at him through the smoke. "So you really smoked back when you were a Marine?" he asks, and Mac nods.

"Just about everyone did back then," he says. "I didn't start until I was in, and I lost the habit once I was out, but..." Danny hands him the cigarette again, and he holds it for a moment before bringing it to his mouth. "This brings back a lot of memories."

"Yeah, guess it would," Danny says.

Mac decides he can't put it off any longer. "I'm sorry I fell asleep on you," he says. "I didn't mean to hog the bed."

"That's okay." Danny's voice is calm. "I seem to recall you pulling a few double shifts recently. When's the last time you got a decent night's sleep, am I right?"

"I suppose," Mac says.

"Hey, only reason I came out here is 'cause I couldn't sleep and got the urge for a smoke. Didn't want to disturb you."

Mac isn't sure what to say, and just looks at him. Danny blinks hard and then looks away for a moment. "Here," he says after a pause, and stabs out the cigarette. "This thing's about had it. Want a fresh one?"

"Sure."

Danny strikes a match against his thumbnail to light up, then lights a second cigarette from the first and passes it over. "Here," he says, and sits down on the window ledge. Mac sits down next to him, leaving the ashtray between them.

"Thanks," he says.

Danny nods, and they both smoke in silence for the next few minutes. Mac is still trying to think what he should say next when Danny speaks up. "Tell you the truth," he says in a low voice, "that's not the only reason I came out here."

Mac looks over at him, and he's rolling the cigarette between his fingers. "Oh?" Mac says. He'd been expecting this, he thinks. What he hadn't been expecting was that Danny would be so blunt about it.

"Yeah." Danny's mouth is tight, and his gaze is fixed on the movements of his hand. "Fact of the matter is, I wasn't sure how you'd feel about waking up and finding yourself in bed with me."

And that, Mac thinks, is about the last thing he'd expected to hear. "Danny..." he says, and then stops. "I wouldn't -- "

Danny shakes his head. "Don't bullshit me, Mac," he says. "Don't do that. You were ready to leave soon as we were done fucking, just like -- just like it used to be. If you hadn't gone and passed out cold, that's just what you would have done."

"And wouldn't you have preferred that?" Mac asks.

Danny opens his mouth, then shuts it again. "I don't know," he says at last. "You gonna tell me you would have been okay with it if I'd been in there when you woke up?"

"I don't know," Mac says after a pause. He thinks that he might have just gone ahead and left if Danny had been there when he'd woken up. Probably -- if Danny had still been asleep -- without saying anything. He doesn't know this for sure, but he thinks it's likely.

Instead, here they are, talking. Suddenly, Danny laughs and leans back against the window. "Fucking hell," he says.

"Guess we're about even," Mac says.

"Guess so." Danny taps his cigarette into the ashtray. "And here we are again."

"Yeah. Here we are." And he hasn't forgotten any of it, Mac thinks. Last night had been the first time in longer than he can recall, long after he'd thought they were both done with each other, and he'd remembered all of it. Danny's familiar body and his lips, and his rough voice in Mac's ear in between kisses as they'd shed their clothes, hands all over Mac's body and the little hitch he got in his breathing when he started getting close to coming. And the sounds they both made: the small sounds Danny still knew how to coax from his mouth.

He'd tried to forget all of it, and he realizes now that he'd failed at every turn.

Danny is biting his lip and his shoulders are hunched with tension, but he doesn't pull away when Mac sets his cigarette down in the ashtray and then touches the back of his hand. His lips taste like ashes, and another flood of memories washes over Mac as they kiss. He closes his eyes, and Danny's fingers dig into the back of his neck as his mouth goes pliant and yielding. Mac halfway expects to see a plume of smoke curling from his tongue when they finally break apart, or a puff of it drifting in between their mouths, but there's only Danny, staring at him with heavy-lidded eyes and parted lips. The cigarette is still burning in his hand, and that's all.

"Want to come back to bed for a few hours?" Danny asks.

"Sure," Mac says. He takes one last drag, holding the smoke in as long as he can stand it, then crushes out his cigarette and stands up. Danny is still finishing his as he gets to his feet, and he holds it in his hand for a moment instead of tossing it into the ashtray.

"I should really quit these for good," he says.

"Probably," Mac says, and Danny shrugs and pinches the end of it between his fingers before dropping it.

In bed, Danny curls against his back, pressing kisses along his skin and snaking one hand down his stomach. The curtains are half-open; Mac watches early-morning fog roll down the street, and his eyes fill up with smoke as he arches into Danny's touch.

***