Title: Falling,
Flying, Tumbling
Author: S.N. Kastle
Category: Sports Night, Danny/Casey
Summary: "I may be obliged to defend every love, every ending."
Before
and after.
Rating: R.
Distribution: List archives OK.
Disclaimers:
Not mine. Props to Aaron Sorkin, Josh Charles and Peter
Krause. Also Paul
Simon, the bard of New York City.
Originally posted 29 July 2001.
Thanks:
For Sab, wherever I may find her. A monthlong MetroCard each
for Dawn, Anna,
Jae and k. And George, who can have mine.
Feedback: Welcomed at snk@wearemany.net
---------------------------------------------------------
FALLING,
FLYING, TUMBLING
I.
Dallas, 1993.
CASEY
KEPT TRYING to go slowly, to make it last, because when it's the
last time
you want to remember it as long as possible or at least have
longer before
you start forgetting. But Danny didn't know it was the
last time and
all night he'd been looking at Casey like they'd be lucky
to get in the house
before they ripped each other's clothes off. So now
that they had,
now that Casey could feel the light brush of Danny's
chest hair against his
bare back, now that Danny was panting into that
pocket between Casey's neck
and his ear, now Casey couldn't quite
remember to go slow.
He
woke up at 5:30, Danny's leg thrown across his own thigh, no light
yet through
the naked windows. The house creaked and settled itself into
the dawn, three
floors of half-furnished bedrooms and wooden planks with
dirt still stuck
in the cracks from dust storms in the thirties. Danny
paid two hundred bucks
a month, really he could have gotten it for less
just to keep squatters out,
but for two hundred he'd wound up with a
battered cardboard box of a mansion,
and Casey and Lisa and Charlie were
all crammed in a tiny apartment so Lisa
could be downtown.
The
birds were still quiet, just crickets playing in the dark night, and
already
Casey could feel the air temperature starting to inch upward. He
pulled his
legs out and swung onto the floor. Danny mumbled and huddled
closer to where
he sat on the edge of the bed, and Casey said his name a
couple times until
he blinked and opened his eyes.
"I
have to go," Casey said, leaning down and feeling around in the dark
for
his underwear.
Danny
murmured and put a hand on Casey's lower back, fingers splayed out
from tailbone
to hip. Casey's fingers snagged cotton and he wrestled his
feet into the
briefs but didn't pull them up. "Danny," he said again.
"Mmmm."
"I'm going."
"Myeah."
Casey
twisted and shook Danny a little at the shoulder. "Danny." Danny
blinked. "I'm going home."
"Yeah,"
Danny said into another yawn, not covering his mouth. "I heard
you the first
time." He laid his head back on the mattress and stared at
Casey.
"I have to, Charlie
is going to be up soon, and he's gonna want to watch
cartoons and, you know,
I should be there." Casey wondered whether, when
there were two kids, it
would be like he and Lisa each had to play with
one, or if they would entertain
each other. He wondered if he'd do any
better the second time around.
"Okay," Danny
said, curling over again, like every other morning when
Casey left and they
both wanted him to stay.
TUESDAY
CASEY HAD come home right after the broadcast, three messages
from Lisa in
his pocket and a kicking claw of dread in his gut.
Charlie
was asleep in their bed. Lisa shut the bedroom door halfway and
they
sat at the kitchen table, box and instructions and the test wand
spread out
on the Formica. Lisa was happy, already talking about how
nice it would
be to have a girl. In her seventh month with Charlie,
Lisa had stopped
yelling all the time and Casey had thought, this is
going to change things.
And then it hadn't.
They
had sex on the couch because she wanted to celebrate, quietly, only
the fourth
time they'd done it in the three months since Charlie'd
caught a nagging
cough, and then he didn't tell her then about his agent
and the Conan offer.
It wasn't really worth arguing about.
Lisa
had long ago staked out the corner in their conversations where she
was always
right. "You've got hang-ups you wouldn't recognize if you
bumped up
naked against them in the dark," she said, making fun of his
knees and the
patchy hair on his thighs. Lisa had speckles on her
shoulders like an Appaloosa
and when he wanted too much she shooed him
away with a flick of her auburn
ponytail. She exhaled and the smoke
blew around his cheeks, inside
his ear, and he closed his eyes against
the wooly cushion and pretended to
sleep.
Lisa
shook him awake at three a.m. and he drove to Wal-Mart for
pediatric cough
syrup and more diapers. Charlie had worn himself out
crying by the
time he came home, and Casey stood over the glorified crib
in the glorified
walk-in closet and squinted in the glow of the Big Bird
nightlight.
He still didn't really understand genetics. There were
inherited traits,
and there was nature and nurture, and there was a
sense that for the first
time in his own relatively brief life, he was
doing something quite badly.
A long
life in comparison to Charlie's 26 months. Still shorter than
his father's
48 years and a lump in a testicle that had made its way
through lungs and
bones and blood before being found. Nights his dad
had smoked cigars
in a fraying lawn chair on a slab of concrete out back
so the drapes wouldn't
need to be cleaned so often, cowboy shirt with
mother-of-pearl snaps open
at the neck and black socks halfway up to his
knees.
The
thing with Danny had just happened, too many beers and too many
times they'd
finished each other's sentences, tripping over one another
to tell a story
that hadn't been funny at all, broken down on a west
Texas highway with no
spare, no gas and no water. Danny was 24 and
acted it most of the time.
But after a few more times they'd given up
the illusion of drunkenness and
fucked in Danny's big, empty house,
cracks in the ceiling widening each time
he rolled off and stared up,
trying to know when he should leave.
"I have to go,"
Casey said, again, as the Dallas Morning News slapped
against the screen
door. "Danny, for real, I can't do this any more."
Danny
sat up and the sheet slid off the bed to the floor. "Okay," he
said
slowly, not young at all. "Okay."
And
then Lisa'd been wrong, it turned out, or the test had been too
cheap or
the whole thing had been bullshit to begin with, and he never
told Danny
any of it. Dana was back in Texas, L.A. had been a mistake
for everyone,
but she was there now and with Danny they were going to
make something better
than what he could ever find on his own in the big
city. It had been
a long spring and what Casey remembered most was a
clear April morning when
he'd watched goosebumps rise on Danny's stomach
and tried to lick them off.
---------------------------------------------------------
II.
New York City, 2001.
DAN
HAD FOUR weeks left and the city was turning against him, as if it
could
tell he was leaving, as if it or anyone in it cared. New York in
the
summer smelled six kinds of something awful, urine and vomit and
stagnant
gutter water percolating under the July sun like a science
experiment gone
horribly wrong. But he was used to all of that, proud
of it almost
when the tourists plugged their noses and the transplants
without real jobs
fled for the Hamptons, because he knew that New
Yorkers didn't scare that
easily. What was really pissing him off was
the subway.
Dana
still laughed at him every time he talked about the train. "You
can
afford cabfare now," she'd say, but it wasn't the same. Three days
a week he took the 1 or 9 down to Battery Park and ran around the tip to
the South Street Seaport. Saturdays he maybe ran across the Brooklyn
Bridge and back again. Sometimes he carried his bike onto the train.
And Dana would laugh and Dan would dig out that old photo of JFK Jr.
from
when he was assistant D.A., holding open the subway doors, and Dana
would
start talking about single-engine planes instead.
But
now there was construction on the Manhattan Bridge, so if he wanted
to keep
going all the way up to Grand he had to take a shuttle to the
train, or walk
aways over, and it wasn't so far but it was a matter of
principle.
Four weeks, four goddamn weeks and the city was turning on
him, had begun
three years of construction that would tear up tracks and
change commutes
and ensure that even if he wanted to come back nothing
would be the same.
Casey'd
moved, too, to a co-op in Murray Hill where he'd actually
unpacked all his
books, and when Dan had gone by to help corral the last
round of boxes, the
old man who lived next door had pulled his yapping
dog away from Dan's ankles
and asked, "Is he leaving?" When Dan nodded,
the guy had said, "Good
riddance," and stepped into the elevator.
THE
ARIZONA AGENDA, as Mike Drake and his four golfing buddies liked to
call
themselves when they were making business deals, had rented a suite
at the
new Ian Schrager hotel. They were going to give Dan five percent
if
he would be the public face of their state's revamped, refinanced
baseball
team, and all Dan had to do was move to the godforsaken desert.
He'd
put them off for the better part of a year, because he wasn't about
to leave
when things were bad. Things had improved, but they still
sucked.
Turned out that network execs were pretty much all the same,
not that they
hadn't known that before this recent bunch took over. On
New Year's
they'd all been at Isaac's and Casey had turned to him and
asked, Champagne
glass in hand, as if it were a toast, "How do you
know?"
"Know
what?" Nina Simone was singing about the new dawn and the new day
and Dana
was dancing with some guy who'd come with Casey, someone he'd
met at the
gym.
"When
it's time," Casey said, and Dan swallowed hard against his
flailing fears,
all the things they never quite talked about again that
hung over his head
like a low pressure field. "When you've stayed too
long."
"When
you can't remember why you came," Dan said, only intending to be
about half
the asshole he sounded. Casey had met some guy at the gym
and no one
seemed to care, so Dan went home and fucked some girl Natalie
knew.
It was finally the actual millennium but really it felt like the
last few.
"This
is a win-win situation," Mike Drake said, and Dan shifted on the
L-shaped
purple couch. When he'd come out of the subway by St.
Vincent's on
his way to meet his agent for breakfast, there had been a
guy staggering
his way down the stairs, stained T-shirt cut open down
the middle of his
chest and ribs bandaged beneath. Nine o'clock in the
fucking morning
and a guy who'd been stabbed or shot and didn't have
someone to help him
home was climbing onto the uptown train with a bunch
of people who would
move as far away as possible.
"Win-win,"
echoed one of the other guys, Larry or maybe Bob. "You don't
have to
worry about anything but enjoying the game. We'll take care of
everything
else."
"But
you're an accountant," Dan said halfheartedly, because they both
were, and
trying to make sense of it all only made it harder to go.
"That's
all baseball is, Danny, you know that," Mike said.
"Accounting. Record-keeping.
Statistics. We keep the books balanced,
and you're the color commentator.
If you still want to be on-air."
Dan
shrugged. He couldn't remember so much why that had mattered,
either.
"Anyway,
you're the guy who says he'll shave his head if the team wins
10 in a row.
You're the guy who gets to go to all the parties, meet all
those cute Arizona
girls, be on the news every night and in the owner's
box every game.
Travel with the team, if you want. Even a sports
anchor can do that
kind of math."
DAN
DID THE math, counted the number of times in the last year he'd had
a meaningful
conversation with the people who used to feel like family
and multiplied
it by the number of times he'd been spit on or stepped in
dog shit or gotten
yelled at for trying to offer directions. Then he
shook hands and went
back home.
Casey
was sitting on his stoop reading last week's Sunday magazine,
wearing the
sunglasses every stand on Canal was selling for five bucks,
except Dan knew
they were real because Casey had come over after buying
them to show off.
"I'm a handsome devil," he kept saying, and finally
Dan had laughed and agreed
and Casey had gone home, apparently satisfied
with the compliment.
"What
are you doing, Danny?" Casey asked, peering up but not standing.
His voice
was too even.
"I'm
just --" Dan hadn't told Casey about the Arizona Agenda, but it
wasn't like
he'd thought Casey wouldn't find out, and this was easier
than figuring out
how to say it. He shook his head and dug around in
his pocket for his
keys. "It's air conditioned inside," he said, and
Casey followed him
up the stairs.
"Do
you want a beer?" he asked, opening the fridge. There was a
six-pack
of Bass, leftover Thai from dinner four days before and a block
of molding
cream cheese.
"It's ten thirty in the morning," Casey said, but not vehemently.
"Fuck
it," Dan muttered, prying caps off into the sink and handing a
bottle to
Casey. "It's hot," he said, and shrugged.
"Are
you coming back?" Casey leaned his elbows on the kitchen counter
and peeled
at the label. The blond hair on his arms was sun bleached
and the glasses
had left fine white stripes on the sides of his face.
"I
don't know," Dan said, and it felt like the first true thing he'd
said in
weeks. There was a lot of sky in Arizona, like in Texas, sky
and dirt
and roads with grooves cut into the sides so you didn't fall
asleep on your
way to somewhere even more boring.
"Is
this something you need to go do? Or is this, you know, it?"
Casey'd
flipped the sunglasses up on his head and he was squinting at
Dan like he
was trying to make out small type on a sign across the
street.
"I
don't know," Dan said as he swallowed, and some of the beer went down
the
wrong way. He coughed and Casey whacked him on the back unhelpfully
but moved closer and stayed there behind him. Casey's hand was warm on
Dan's shoulder through his shirt and scorching where it touched his bare
neck.
"What
are you doing, Danny?" Casey asked again, his lips near Dan's ear
and his
voice soft. Casey's hand trailed down from Dan's shoulder
across his
chest and settled on his stomach. Dan tried to breathe and
coughed
again and Casey pulled him closer, tugged him back so they were
standing
flush.
"Are
you trying to make me stay?" Dan asked, hoping it sounded like the
answer
would make a difference in what came next.
"You
love this city," Casey said, pressing lips to the tendon in Dan's
neck, puffs
of air exhaled across his Adam's apple, hair tickling his
collarbone.
"You made me love this city."
Arizona
had too much space, Dan decided. Too much space and not enough
people,
or not the right ones, anyway. "I don't want to be a bitter old
New
York guy, Case," he said, but he pressed back into Casey's warmth
and closed
his eyes.
Casey
licked like a cat across Dan's jaw where he had nicked himself
shaving
and it stung and, without meaning to, Dan whimpered. "We won't
let
you," Casey said against his skin and it was like the voice came
from inside
of him.
"What
if it's been too long?" Dan murmured, running his hands down
Casey's forearms
where they wrapped around his waist.
"We'll do something different," Casey said, smiling against Dan's cheek.
"This
is different," Dan said, grinning himself, because it had only
been a handshake
and he could always walk to Casey's apartment. Sirens
sang and an ambulance
clattered across the loose metal plate in the
street beneath his window.
"We'll
do more," Casey said, and Dan let him.
END.
snk@wearemany.net
---------------------------------------------------------
There
is a girl in New York City
Who calls herself the human trampoline
And
sometimes when I'm falling, flying
Or tumbling in turmoil I say
Whoa,
so this is what she means
She means we're bouncing into Graceland
And
I see losing love
Is like a window in your heart
Everybody sees you're
blown apart
Everybody feels the wind blow
In Graceland, in Graceland
I'm going to Graceland
For reasons I cannot explain
There's some
part of me wants to see Graceland
And I may be obliged to defend
Every
love, every ending
Or maybe there's no obligations now
Maybe I've a
reason to believe
We all will be received
In Graceland
-- Paul Simon
down by the schoolyard, a sequel of sorts