Title: Look Away
By: geekwriter
Pairing: Danny/Don
Rating: NC-17
Summary: It didn't count, what he'd done before.

It didn't count, what he'd done before. He'd been a kid, after all, barely seventeen. It wasn't his fault. It's not like he'd known what he was doing.

No. No, that wasn't true. Even he had to admit that it wasn't true. He'd known damn well what he was doing. But he'd been a kid. He'd been curious. That was all.

People got curious, after all. Guys got curious. And he was a teenager and horny and so what if it had been another guy that sucked him off? It's not like he was picky or anything, not at that point.

He tried not to think about the rest of it, tried not to think about what it felt like to be so completely open, to be naked and stretched out on top of that old quilt, moaning and arching up towards every touch. He tried not to think about how good it felt, that tongue on his cock, laving his balls, then dipping lower and, fuck, he'd never even heard of anybody doing that before.

It was just one night, one time, one stupid thing he'd done as a kid. It didn't matter and it didn't mean anything.

Sometimes, though, he thought about it. Sometimes he couldn't stop himself. Sometimes, late at night, his hand slipped beneath the sheets and he closed his eyes and he was seventeen again, making love with a man he barely knew.

He thought about it that way, as making love, though he knew it was stupid. He'd barely known the guy, never even knew his last name, just knew he was Jimmy from the hardware store. He'd run into him one night, gone back to Jimmy's place in the Bronx, had a beer and then suddenly Jimmy was touching him, kissing his neck, telling him he was beautiful.

He hated that memory the most, the memory of Jimmy's voice liquid smooth against his skin, whispering over and over that Don was beautiful. He hated it because he remembered how that voice had sunk even deeper into him than Jimmy's fingers, because even at seventeen he knew he'd never wanted to hear anything else. He hated it because that's what turned him on the most when he thought about that night, lying there being kissed all over, worshipped, vibrating, beautiful.

But he wasn't that kid anymore. Could he have been any more stupid and naïve? He'd gone home with a virtual stranger just on the promise of some beer and the hope that maybe something could happen. He'd wanted it to happen, he knew that. He'd seen the way Jimmy looked at him, knew that there was a possibility they'd end up in bed together. He was a stupid naïve kid who didn't know how dangerous going home with strangers was, who didn't know that shit like that could ruin your entire life. What if somebody'd found out? What if he'd done something even more stupid and gotten busted by vice? Just the thought of his father's face, the legendary Don Flack Sr. having to bail his kid out for being a queer...man, that put the brakes on anything he'd ever wanted to do since. It wasn't worth it.

Not that he was queer. No way was he queer. He'd fucking break the nose of anybody who suggested it. No way he was queer. He just felt things sometimes, thought stuff. It didn't matter, though, because it's not like he was ever going to do anything about it. People thought about stuff, didn't mean they'd do it. People thought about stuff all the time, but it wasn't like thinking about killing your boss made you a murderer or thinking about stealing a car made you a criminal. People thought about stuff all the time, and it wasn't like he was queer just because sometimes he thought about dropping to his knees and sucking Danny Messer's cock.

They were buddies, him and Danny, and he knew damn well that was all. The stuff he thought about at night didn't mean he even wanted to do anything but hang out with Danny and be buddies. Buddies was good. Buddies was all he wanted.

Danny's apartment was small, even by Manhattan standards. Flack always teased him about it, couldn't help but tease him since, after all, it was literally possible to browse the fridge while sitting on the sofa.

"What's this place, five, six square feet?" he asked as he walked in, shrugging his coat off his shoulders.

"Seven if I open a window," Danny said, taking his coat and hanging it on a hook near the door. He didn't have a front closet. He didn't really have a front entryway, either, it was just his kitchen and then his living room and then his bedroom, which were really all the same long room.

Flack flopped down on the couch, then reached out to open the fridge and grab a beer.

"How come you always gotta do that?"

"Because I can. Is it your turn to cook or mine?"

"Yours," Danny said, tossing Flack a pile of take-out menus. Flack thumbed through them as Danny squatted down and began fiddling with the TV.

Danny didn't have a table to eat at or a bathroom big enough to turn around in or a separate bedroom. That didn't matter, because what Danny did have was a big screen plasma TV hung on the wall, a big screen plasma TV that got over 500 channels and an amazing sports package. They could see every Yankees game, every Knicks game, every Rangers game, every Giants game, even if they were blacked out on the local stations. Danny got fucking Australian sports channels and channels that showed things like lumberjack contests and guys pulling trains with their teeth. Danny got the golf channel and the yachting channel and soccer channels in languages Flack couldn't even come close to naming. He got horseracing channels and motocross channels and a channel with big guys in skirts competing to see how far they could throw tree trunks.

Flack would never admit it, but he was a little bit in love with Danny's TV.

He ordered in Chinese and it got there right as pre-game coverage started. Danny claimed the sweet and sour pork right away, just like Flack had known he would. Flack had wanted the shrimp in lobster sauce but he'd gotten tea-smoked chicken instead, because Danny had this thing about the smell of shrimp.

They ate their Chinese food and drank their beer and watched the game. Danny sat forward with his arms on his elbows, staring intently at the screen as his beer bottle dangled from his fingertips. He never dropped it. He took his glasses off and ran his hand over his face. He squinted at the screen, then put his glasses back on. Every muscle was tense and he was poised on the edge of the couch, ready to jump up and cheer or curse or declare that he couldn't watch any more and stalk to the other side of the room before stalking back and taking his place on the edge of the seat once again. It made Flack tired just to watch him.

And he did watch him. He watched the game most of the time, at least half of the time he was sure. The rest of the time, though, he couldn't take his eyes off Danny, couldn't look away from all that energy just vibrating there so close to him.

Sometimes he wanted to touch, wanted to put his hands on Danny's skin, wanted to touch and smell and taste instead of just looking, but he never did. He never did anything but drink his beer and eat his dinner and cheer for his team and bullshit with Danny about work and women.

When the game was over they bullshitted some more, finished up the egg rolls, finished up the beer. Then Flack went home like he always did, with a friendly punch to Danny's arm as he left since they were friends, buddies, nothing more. If, when he got home, Flack didn't even have time to take his coat off before his hand was in his pants and he was stroking himself and coming, coming hard to the memory of the way Danny'd smelled that night, the way the muscles in his arms had flexed as he'd gestured wildly and yelled at the TV, well, that was just in Flack's head. It had nothing to do with who he was or what he really wanted.

**********

Flack sighed as he looked down at the body of a young woman partially hidden in the marshy grasses of the Randall's Island wetlands. A jogger had found her half an hour earlier. She was naked from the waist down, arms bent at the elbows, hands near her shoulders, blonde hair splayed out around her head. He could still see how pretty she'd been during life. If he didn't know better, he would have thought she was posing for one of those old paintings in the Met, the ones with titles like "The Ecstasy of Saint Whomever."

"What do we got?" Danny's voice startled him out of his musings.

"Body dump," Flack said. "Unidentified Caucasian female, looks like a teenager."

"How do you know it's a dump?" Aiden asked, walking past him with her kit in one hand.

"Position of the body," he said. "The way the legs are crossed, position of the arms-she rolled down the hill and landed that way."

She grinned at him. "You've been paying attention."

He shrugged. "You're the brains here, Aidan, I'm just the pretty one."

She laughed brightly and continued towards the body.

"There's a bundle of clothes next to her, looks like jeans, maybe," he said to Danny. "Wrapped up with what's probably a shirt, you can see a strap on the side that might be a purse. They're tied up tight, though, and there's stuff on 'em, looks like syrup, maybe. I didn't let anybody touch it, but let me know if there's an ID in the purse."

Danny adjusted the focus of his camera as he walked parallel to the body, "You have been paying attention. You sure you don't wanna be a CSI?"

Flack laughed. "Please. I only passed high school chemistry because I had a good lab partner. I'll stick with detective work, leave the microscopes to you."

"Was she cute?" Danny asked, squatting down to take a picture from a lower angle.

"Who?"

"Your high school lab partner."

"He was five foot two and maybe 100 pounds if he'd had a big lunch. I didn't let anybody kick his ass, though, so he let me slide on my half of the work."

Danny grinned. "Ah. The symbiotic relationship of the jock and the geek. I used to let Connie DeLuca write my history papers."

Aiden made a disgusted noise and looked up, tweezers poised in her hand. "You let her? Like you were the one doing her a favor."

Danny grinned playfully. "She had a crush on me."

"You're a pig," Aiden said before going back to tweezing whatever it was she'd found out of the victim's hair.

Danny laughed and seemed pleased by the comment. Flack suddenly wondered if Danny and Aiden were more than friends, if they were so comfortable around each other because they were...what? Dating? Lovers? Danny'd never said anything to make him think that, but he doubted Danny would even if it were true.

Flack could feel the hot dog he'd wolfed down for lunch sitting heavy in his gut, and he blamed it on the fact that he'd ordered extra relish. He excused himself quickly and left to see if the jogger had calmed down enough to remember anything new.

**********

No ID on the vic, no prints on file, no DNA match in CODIS, and at the end of the day all they knew was what they'd known to begin with. Somebody'd killed a teenaged girl and dumped her body like it was nothing.

Sure, they knew some of the specifics, things like the fact that the girl had been strangled and that she was covered in tiny red fibers, but stuff like that never made Flack feel any closer to catching the guy. He knew the CSIs lived for stuff like that, for evidence that would tie the case up once the perp was on trial, but Flack always felt a little on edge until he actually had a guy in the interrogation room. He might not have been able to tell you what tri-lobal fibers meant, but he damn well knew when someone was lying.

Danny must have known he was frustrated because as they left for the night, he invited Flack over. "I think there's Chilean women's soccer playing," he said with a grin.

Flack laughed and followed Danny back to his apartment where they sat on the couch and each nursed a beer, though they never did get around to turning the TV on. Flack knew Danny's mind was on the case, and Flack's mind...well, Flack's mind was on Danny.

"So, uh, Aiden looked nice today," Flack said after a few minutes of silence. It wasn't what he'd planned to say, but he'd found that a lot of times his mouth moved before his brain gave it permission.

Danny shrugged and picked at the corner of the beer label.

"Don't you think so? I mean, you think she's hot, right?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Danny asked.

Flack shrugged. "Nothing. I just...you know. You guys are close."

Danny took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. Instead of putting them back on, he set his glasses on the end table.

Flack swallowed hard. Fuck. Danny was going to yell at him or, worse, tell him that he did have something with Aiden.

"OK," Danny said softly, "here's the thing. You wanna know if I'm seeing Aiden, you just ask me. Don't go hinting around. You wanna know, you ask me straight up."

"Are you seeing Aiden?"

"You know I'm not." Danny shifted closer to him on the couch. "Don," he said softly. "I...this thing, we gonna do something about it or not?"

"What? What thing?"

Danny sighed and looked up into Flack's eyes. "This thing between you and me."

Flack tried to swallow again but his mouth had gone dry.

"I thought we were just going to ignore it, but that's not working so good anymore, is it?"

Flack took a deep breath and looked down at his hands. Danny knew? He'd known the whole time?

He saw Danny move out of the corner of his eye, then Danny's hand was over his. Flack turned his hand palm up and they laced their fingers together.

"We don't gotta do anything about this," Danny said, and he was so close that Flack could feel his breath as he spoke. "But since ignoring it isn't working anymore, maybe we should at least talk about it."

Flack didn't want to talk about it. He didn't even want to think about it, didn't want to think about what it meant that he was holding another man's hand.

Danny's thumb was stroking his wrist and it made Flack dizzy. He turned to say something, he didn't know what, and then Danny's mouth was over his and he was done. That was it. There was no fighting it, not when it felt like just the thing he'd been waiting for most of his life. It felt right in a way that nothing ever had before. He reached up and cupped the back of Danny's neck in his palm.

Danny's lips were smooth and cool against his, his tongue hot as it slipped into Flack's mouth. The stubble of Danny's five o'clock shadow scratched his lips and his cheek, but he didn't care. He pulled Danny closer, felt strong muscles beneath Danny's shirt, felt Danny's flat chest against his own. He should have been freaked out, he should have been running, but all he wanted was to pull Danny even closer and never stop kissing him.

"Nice," Danny whispered as they parted for breath.

Flack didn't say anything, just closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to Danny's as he caught his breath. He didn't know what he was allowed to touch, what he was allowed to do. Could he touch Danny anywhere he wanted?

Danny kissed him again, quickly. "Want you so fucking bad."

Flack nodded. "Yeah," he managed to whisper. He gathered all his courage and placed his hand between Danny's legs and squeezed gently. It had apparently been the right thing to do because Danny groaned and arched up into his touch.

"Come on," Danny whispered, and at first Flack was confused because Danny was moving away from him, standing up. Then he let Danny pull him to his feet and he slid his arms around Danny's waist, kissed him as he backed Danny up the seven steps to the bed.

On some level he knew that they were taking their clothes off. On some level he knew that they were going to have sex, but he didn't let himself think about it. He concentrated on the feel of Danny's skin against his and their fierce kisses and how every cell in his body seemed to be vibrating and how he could taste Danny's smile on his tongue.

Then they were naked and he tumbled Danny onto the bed, couldn't help but grind against him even as he felt Danny's own cock digging into his hip.

"Here," Danny whispered as he gripped Flack's ass in his hands. He pulled Flack up and moved his own hips and, fuck, he was a genius. Danny was a goddamn genius because suddenly their cocks were lined up and rubbing together and it felt so good that Flack couldn't help but moan.

He wanted to see it, wanted to see Danny's naked body and his hard cock, wanted to know if Danny was cut or uncut, if his cock curved or was straight, if it was smooth or veined or if he had a thick tip. He wanted to know all of that but finding out would have meant pulling away and there was no way he was doing that.

He was frantic with it, with how good it felt. He couldn't have stopped or slowed down if he'd had to. He didn't have to, thankfully, because Danny was just as frantic as he was, wrapping one leg around Flack's waist and clawing at his back and whispering, "please," and, "so good," and "fuck," and "Don," over and over again mixed with Italian that Flack didn't understand but made him shiver anyway.

He pressed his face against Danny's neck, his hips moving of their own volition, grinding and pumping and he wanted it to last, he did, but it felt so good to have another man's body beneath his. Not just any man, but Danny, Danny beneath him, panting and arching up and wanting it just as bad if not worse. Flack pressed his face hard to the side of Danny's neck and cried out as he came and when he started to shake Danny held him tight and murmured tender words and with a few more arches against him Danny was coming, too.

Flack was trembling, couldn't stop it, and he let Danny hold him close and stroke his hair and kiss the top of his head. Danny's leg was still around his waist, and he felt Danny's foot on his thigh moving back and forth lazily. He would have stayed like that forever, but Danny pushed against his shoulder and said in a strained voice, "Come on, Don, you're gonna asphyxiate me here."

With a groan, Flack rolled over onto his back. He laughed as their bodies peeled apart with a wet, smacking sound. "Sorry," he said, though he wasn't sure exactly what he was apologizing for.

Danny took a deep breath and stretched his arms up above his head. "Hey," he said as he grabbed the undershirt he'd been wearing off the floor. "What's a little sborra between friends?"

Flack grunted something in response, felt Danny wiping off his stomach, and he thought he said "Thanks," but he wasn't sure if he said it or just thought it before he dropped hard into sleep.

When he woke up, he didn't know where he was. Danny's arm slung across his stomach made him remember, though, and remember quick. He closed his eyes hard, as if by shutting out the sight he could erase what had happened. He thought he might be sick.

He eased Danny's arm off him and slipped out of bed, dressing as quietly as he could. It wasn't quiet enough, though, because when he looked up from tying his shoes Danny was awake and propped up on one hand, wearing nothing but a sheet tangled around his waist.

"You taking off?" Danny asked. His spiky hair was even wilder than usual, sprouting up at odd angles.

"I, uh, yeah," Flack said, backing up slowly. "I, uh, you know, I don't sleep that great if I'm not in my own bed, and if we're gonna get up and get to work on the case tomorrow-"

"You don't have to bullshit me."

Don sighed and leaned against the door. "I can't do this."

Danny sat up and nodded, wrapped his arms around his waist. "OK," was all he said.

"This isn't...I'm not...you're my friend. You're my friend and I can't..." He raked his fingers through his hair. "Fuck."

"It's not a big deal," Danny said with a shrug.

"Things aren't going to be weird? I mean, we're gonna have to see each other practically every day."

"What's to be weird about? We had something to get out of our systems, and we did what he had to do."

Flack nodded. Yeah. That was it exactly. He'd just had this thing about Danny in his head and it hadn't gone away, and now that they'd done something about it he could get on with his life. "OK," he said. "Yeah, that's...I'm gonna go. Get some sleep."

Danny nodded and smiled sleepily at him. "You'd better. I expect you to be ready to go bright and early tomorrow morning."

"I'll be raring to chase those red fibers," Flack said, then he turned and left. He'd gotten two blocks before he had to detour into an alley and puke behind a dumpster. He coughed and spit, then straightened up and wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve.

As he walked the rest of the way back to his place, he told himself that the only reason he was shaking was because it was cold outside.

The next day, he went to the lab and Danny was there and he didn't know what he'd been expecting, but it wasn't for Danny to be the same as he'd always been. If he hadn't had a faint bite mark beneath his jaw, Flack would have thought maybe the whole night had been a dream.

Still, even though it seemed like everything was cool, Flack wasn't exactly sure what to say or how close to stand, wasn't sure if he could touch Danny's arm to get his attention or lean in to hear the explanation of where the fibers came from. And then Danny smacked him on the back of the head and Aiden looked at the two of them like they were nuts, and things were fine again. He and Danny and Aiden were all buddies like they'd always been and what had happened didn't change anything. Aiden couldn't even tell, since she always looked at them like they were nuts, anyway. They headed out to the scene and Flack went off to help canvas the area and things were fine, just fine, just the way they'd always been.