Title: Formaldehyde
By: Bob J Montonelli
Pairing: Danny/Don
Rating: NC-17
Archive: Please do
Summary: A body, sprawled naked amongst the rats and roaches. slash, angst.

***

Flack is almost glad when the city's seething tide rolls up to spew the crazies-the real crazies, the ones you itch and rage and drive yourself down to the quick of death to put away, because when all is said and done you let the beat cops with their badges and batons lead them away and it's over, over.

Like you've put the whole world right. An exultory, orgasmic sense of relief humming heavy through his bones. There are a few blurry seconds where he is headily certain that this is the only reason anyone ever becomes a cop, this mad drowning rush. Make the city safe. Make it right. All the pieces in their place, block by block arranged...

Like the Atlantic's winter waves, crash and slice back down smooth, unmarred sand, sucking sharp below. Current.

Almost glad. The high retreats and he skates barefoot on a piano-wire giddiness.

He pays attention now, as the tunnel vision of the case, the chase, the interrogation recedes and he can smell the earthy, murky metal tang of nightmares on his skin. Like waking in the dark with the sick and dire certainty of something dead...

(he is not afraid of anything. really. not afraid.)

A body is a body is a body. Sprawled naked among the rats and roaches.

(he is now certain that there is not a single stone in this city untouched by blood)

They have the eyes of rats and watch and twitch and Flack can and will put the holy fear of god into their pitiful little hearts. The pupils of the perps go wide and deep and swallow sallow flourescent reflections. He knows what they see: him, blurred. Looming like a ghost.

(go to hell)

He will send them all to prison and-

(the city will be empty)

(we are all guilty)

The locker room is a mausoleum of metal. Clinking, shrieking, old, hinges and molded panels. Trickling tears of rust from rotting bolts. Humid, dead and damp, bleach and blood. Latex because the goddamn fetid stench of it crawls onto you, into you, crouches dormant like a cat with its eyes half-lidded waiting for just the moment you cannot stand for it to be there.

He remembers. They all do. Every case-(their eyes like milky marbles)-everywhere-(what is he doing out so late he's so young)-they can't stop it. Remembering. Mack as if he sees it waiting just beyond his eyes, Stella right in front of her, Aiden catches it creeping across her keyboard (the pounding snap of keys), Danny when his body begs to dream-

That he knows. Oh, that he knows.

He could smell the gloves and the chemicals and the lab (and swore to god he could smell the blood and the vic's cheap perfume the bottle fell and crashed into the pavement) all over him, his skin, and-

(he couldn't do it not this not the remembering-)

He had been lucky, because Danny had good, solid balance. He had been lucky, stumbling over the words, half-syllables and unwieldy consonants, and Danny had looked at him (but not touched) and said, "Don-"

"Sorry." For everything, he had wanted to say, but he was not sure why he was sorry except for all those dead eyes that watched him and the stiff blue fingers that came clawing at him with the smell of plastic and drano.