Title: Untangling
By: Perpetual Motion
Pairing: Danny/Mac
Dis: Not mine. CBS owns them of course.
Author's Notes: A response to the events in "Tanglewood". Danny, with his fine suits and lovely accent in the mob? Surely not.
Summary: After the events of "Tanglewood", Danny and Mac hash out the facts.

Danny was already waiting in his office when Mac walked in from the Sassone interrogation. He was sitting ramrod straight in Mac's extra chair. His left knee was bouncing up and down. His head shot up when he heard the door open. "Mac-"

"Hold on, Danny." Mac made sure the door latched behind him. He walked around his desk and sat down. "Go ahead."

Danny looked mildly disconcerted by Mac's actions. He pushed his glasses up his nose to buy a little time. "What Sassone said-"

"I know you don't have any connections to him." Mac raised his eyebrows at Danny's grimace. "What is it?"

"I…I didn't give you everything about me and the Tanglewoods. When I told you they tried to recruit me…" Danny pushed his glasses up again. "Sassone was the one who tried to recruit me."

"I figured as much." Mac relaxed a little. "He's a few years older than you, and he's obviously the leader of the Tanglewoods. He was the leader then, too?"

"No." Danny shook his head, still as tense as he'd been. "There was a different guy in charge. Peter. Sassone just tried to recruit people."

"Do they recruit outside of mob families?"

"No."

Mac leaned back in his chair. His left hand stayed flat on the desktop. His right hand was on this thigh, clenched into a fist. His question sounded like the opening to an interrogation. "Do you have connections?"

Danny's jaw tightened for a moment. "Oh, yeah. I've got a whack already in the works for Sassone." His tone was scathing. "This whole law enforcement gig is just a cover so that I can fix mob cases for the *family*." The word ‘family' was punctuated by Danny raking his fingers under his chin in Mac's direction.

Mac tapped his fingers on his desk but didn't respond in a similar fashion. "I'm serious, Danny."

"You want to know the family connections, talk to my pops or my gramps. I don't know nothin'." The last sentence was spoken in an extra-thick accent while Danny gave Mac a challenging stare. "I was never part of it."

"Why not?" Mac couldn't stop himself from asking the question. The Danny in front of him, this man with cold eyes and a body ready to spring violence, was not the Danny he knew. "Why not keep up the family tradition?"

"I've got-had-an uncle. Uncle Robby. My mom's brother. He did some work for my pops. He tried to cheat a little at his work. He lost a thumb. He tried to cheat again, and they found his decomposed body in the Hudson three years ago when they were looking for a drowned kid."

Mac remembered the case. He'd worked it solo. The body of a man in his late forties had been found a hundred yards from the six-year-old's body. Cinderblocks had been strapped to his feet with thick chains, and he'd had rocks sewn into his suit. A tiny Italian woman with a mangled accent and watery eyes had claimed the body as her son, Robert Carmine. She'd told Mac that she had no idea how he'd gotten to the bottom of the river. Danny had said nothing. "Why didn't you say something?"

"Like what? ‘Oh, hey, Mac? The guy from the river? My uncle. My gramps had him killed when he cheated him out of five grand and two boxes of Cuban cigars'." Danny slouched back in his chair, one arm over the back, the other resting high on his thigh. His expression was insolent. "And what would you have done, Mac? Consoled me? Questioned me? Put IAB on my ass to see if I went home to offer my forensic services to the family?"

"Stop it." Mac was suddenly very angry. His tone was sharp. "Why the hell haven't you told me any of this? Why didn't you say anything when I asked you about Tanglewood?"

"When would I have told you? Out in the middle of everyone and their fucking nosy hearing, or when I was on my knees sucking your cock?"

Mac sprang up from his chair, stalked around his desk, and yanked Danny out of his chair by the front of his shirt. "Don't you *dare* bring up our outside life in here. It has nothing to do with this."

"Yeah, it does." Danny's voice was barely a whisper. He stared Mac down from a space of three inches. "What bugs you more, Mac; the fact that there's mob blood in my veins, or the fact that I've never told you myself? I know you knew before tonight. You wouldn't have asked me about the Tanglewoods if you hadn't figured it out."

"It's not that you didn't admit to it,' Mac tightened his hold on Danny's collar. "You left me a trail to follow. Hints. Insinuations. Suits much too nice for a regular criminalist to afford," Mac rubbed Danny's collar between his thumb and forefinger and gave Danny a pointed look. "I put it together years ago. I left it alone because I could tell you wanted it left alone. My *problem* is that you didn't leave me at *least* a bread crumb that would tell me that you and Sassone knew each other. Why not?"

"And what would you have done when I told you I used to fuck Sassone?" Danny stumbled backwards as Mac released him with a shove. "Did I break the great Mac Taylor control?"

"Stop it. *Now*." Mac took a deep breath and forced himself to unclench his hands. He saw Danny open his mouth, clearly ready to go another round. "You fucked him, did you?"

"Yeah." Danny lifted his chin. "Feel like you need a shower?"

"No. Do you?" Mac caught the flicker of unease that traveled over Danny's face. He wasn't surprised to see it. It had been only recently that he hadn't had to smooth the look from Danny's features when they spent time together. Danny had spent the first few months of their relationship convinced that Mac would come to his senses about dating a co-worker or decide that Danny was just a rebound from Claire's death. "When did you sleep with him last?" Mac's voice was very calm.

Danny eyed Mac warily. He couldn't' tell how much of Mac's calm was a cover. "Years ago."

"How many years?"

"Ten, twelve, maybe."

Mac did the math in his head. "So, you were about 18 or 20?"

"Around there, yeah." Danny relaxed a tiny bit. Mac's voice was getting calmer. They were getting out of the jam.

"So it had no bearing on this case."

"None. I haven't talked to him in at least ten years."

"Okay." Mac nodded. Danny was telling the truth. He had no recent connections with Sassone. "So he dropped your name to rattle us?"

"I think he thinks that I'm going to help him because of what we used to be."

"What'd you used to be?" Mac hated to ask the question, but he had to know the details.

"He used to beat up kids for me. I was a scrawny nerd with glasses and science books. He kept the bigger kids off of me. Later on, we had sex sometimes."

"Sometimes?"

Danny shrugged. "Sometimes we had sex. Sometimes we wouldn't. It wasn't a great love or any of that."

"Okay." Mac pretended like he wasn't breathing easier hearing that. "Next time you've got a history with someone, tell me." Mac didn't add that he meant that on both sides of their relationship.

"I will." Danny meant it on both sides of the relationship.

Mac nodded. "Good." He walked over to his chair and sat down. He motioned for Danny to sit as well. "Just one more-"

"I won't give you names or fronts or the lists of things that people are into. I won't be a snitch." Danny shook his head to keep Mac from trying to convince him. "There's enough power in my family to keep me safe if I let something slip accidentally, but the things I know are told to me to test my loyalty. I'm the only one who knows them. If I tell you, they'll leave me alone and kill you."

"You're not made." Mac didn't phrase it as a question.

"No, I'm not. You know that old mob you told Sassone about?"

"Yes."

"That's my family. Family, made or not, is family. Business is business. As long as I stay quiet about the business, my family outside of the family gets left alone."

Mac nodded. "Okay."

Danny returned the nod. "Okay." He stood up to leave.

"One more thing." Mac stood as well.

"What's up?"

"If you ever flip me off again," Mac raked his fingers under his chin just like Danny had done a few minutes before, "you won't get those fingers back. We clear?"

Danny smiled a little. "We're clear."

"Good. Now get back to work."

"See you later." Danny left the office.

Mac sat back down in his chair and tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling. He sighed, rubbed his eyes, and pushed himself out of his chair to go finish his shift.