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kathierif_ficTitle: Bridge Over Frozen Water
Author: Kathie
Fandom: CSI:NY
Pairing: Sheldon Hawkes/Don Flack
Rating: FRM
Content: AU, slash
chapter 1
The first time Sheldon Hawkes heard about Donnie Flack, drafted by the New York Rangers hockey team, it had been years ago, when Flack had been a promising prospect and Hawkes had been a young and promising surgeon at the hospital. He’d worked a shift at the ER when this young guy had come in, a bloody towel pressed against his cheek. His t-shirt had been sweat-drenched and had clung to his muscular chest, but he’d been smiling at Hawkes as much as he had been able to while holding still so that Hawkes could put stitches into the cut in his cheek.
“Puck,” he’d simply said by way of explanation and had shrugged slightly, muscles moving under his t-shirt. “It happens.”
Hawkes had sent him off, to get x-rays of his cheekbone taken, to make sure that he hadn’t suffered a break, and had tried to return to his regular schedule and the next patient who was already waiting for his attention.
Flack had been okay, besides the cut, and Hawkes had expected him to disappear as quickly from his life as he’d stepped into it. However, he hadn’t been able to get that smile and those bright blue eyes out of his mind, no matter how often he told himself that thinking about Flack was absolutely ridiculous.
He’d started to develop a modest interest in hockey, and, when he had the time, he watched the occasional game on TV. It was something he kept on doing even after he left the hospital after the death of a patient on his table, and when he took the job at the coroner’s office, and he didn’t stop either when he applied for the job as a CSI.
By the time they met again, Hawkes had been watching the game for long enough to be able to follow the puck in any given situation of the game, something he’d found difficult in the beginning. He had blamed his obsession with those bright blue eyes for his inability to keep track of what was happening in the game, even if Don Flack wasn’t even playing for the Rangers at that point. He was still in the AHL, to develop the skills and strengths he already possessed.
Hawkes still remembered those bright blue eyes.
He hadn’t expected Don Flack to remember him.
~*+*~
The first time Danny Messer heard of Don Flack, third line center for the New York Rangers, was one night after his shift. He and a few coworkers, among them Aiden and Hawkes, had decided to go out for drinks and a game of pool. They had been exhausted after a long day in the lab, standing hunched over microscopes and the evidence they’d collected at a crime scene earlier, or in Hawkes’ case, exhausted after a long day of doing autopsies, and their little group had been almost quiet and subdued as they stood by the bar, waiting for their drinks.
It wasn’t long until Danny and Aiden wandered off, toward the pool tables in the back, and when Danny came back, to get a fresh round of drinks for them, he found Hawkes in a corner with a tall man who was dressed in a blue button-down dress shirt and a black leather jacket. His black hair was combed back, his blue eyes twinkled as he smiled about something Hawkes had said to him. He had an old scar on his cheek, Danny noticed absent-mindedly as he inched closer, interested almost despite himself.
“Danny,” Hawkes said when he caught sight of him. “I’d like to introduce you to a good friend of mine.”
Danny bounced carefully on the balls of his feet. He was still holding his and Aiden’s drinks and didn’t want to spill them on himself, but he gave Hawkes’ friend a quick nod and a grin.
“This is Don,” Hawkes continued. “Donnie, this is Danny Messer, one of the CSIs I work with.” He tilted his head toward Flack again. “You know Don Flack, NYPD legend?”
Danny nodded. “Yeah, who doesn’t?” he replied and mustered the dark-haired man again. Flack was looking down at the table with an unreadable expression on his face, but his entire body language expressed discomfort or embarrassment.
Hawkes didn’t seem to notice. “This guy is his son,” he said with a smile.
Danny nodded. “Nice meetin’ you,” he said. “Let me guess, you didn’t follow Daddy’s footsteps and became a cop.”
Don shook his head. “No,” he said and smiled faintly. “Not really.”
“What are you doing, then?” Danny asked and finally put down the drinks on the table, Aiden and their game currently forgotten.
Again, Don shrugged. “I play hockey for a living,” he explained with a small, but proud smile on his face.
“So…” Danny looked from him to Sheldon and back. “How did you two meet?” he asked curiously.
Don’s hand moved to brush over the faint scar on his cheek. “Doc here stitched me up,” he explained before lowering his hand again. “And then we ran into each other a couple times.”
“Literally,” Sheldon grinned. It had been a while since Danny had seen the other man this relaxed, he thought quietly.
“Sounds interesting,” Danny said and took a sip of his drink. “I’m sure you can tell us all kinds of things about Doc Hawkes here.”
Flack laughed, a warm, carefree sound. “I’m sure I can,” he’d said, and that had been the beginning of a great and tight friendship.
~*+*~
The first time Detective Mac Taylor heard about Don Flack, it was at Madison Square Garden, at a crime scene in the middle of the hockey team’s locker room, when he suddenly found himself face to face with the younger man.
“Detective Mac Taylor,” he introduced himself to the man in front of him. He was dressed in expensive suit pants and a faded t-shirt. His hair was cut short, his bright blue eyes narrowed slightly.
“Don Flack,” he replied now with a brief nod. “Do you know already who tried to kill our goalie?”
Mac raised both eyebrows. “Where were you when the shot was fired?” he asked, not answering the question.
Flack brushed a hand over his forehead and folded his arms over his chest. “Waiting for the trainer,” he said. “At the trainer’s room.”
“Any witnesses?” Mac asked while putting his case down and snapping on a pair of gloves.
Again, Flack’s hand went to his face, and Mac’s sharp eyes saw a dark smudge across the back of his left hand. It looked a lot like gunshot residue, he thought quietly.
“No, I was alone,” Flack replied. “I know what you’re thinking, Detective, but I didn’t try to kill Hank.”
Mac nodded toward the smudge. “I’ll have to test your hands for gunshot residue,” he explained calmly.
Flack shifted subtly on his feet. “I didn’t try to kill Hank,” he said again, but he held out his hands for Mac to swab.
“Do you have any idea who would want him dead?” Mac asked as he sealed the evidence bag and put it in his kit.
Flack laughed, a dry, humorless sound. “Every Islanders fan?” he suggested, his voice laced heavily with sarcasm. “He had a shutout in the last game against them. He’s a damn good goaltender, Detective.”
Mac didn’t comment. “Did you see anyone around here that looked out of place?” he asked instead. “Someone you’ve never seen before?”
Flack shrugged and looked down at his hands. “I haven’t been paying attention,” he admitted quietly. “I came in late, and most of the guys were already out, on the ice. I went to the trainer’s office to get my knee looked at. There’s always people around – from the press, from the organization, from the other teams that use this facility. I really don’t know.” He grimaced. “This is Madison Square Garden, after all. Busiest arena in the world, and all that.”
“If you remember anything else,” Mac said and pulled one of his cards from his pocket, “Call me.”
Flack took the card with a small frown, and Mac allowed his attention to drift away from him as he left the locker room and went down the tunnel to join Lindsay, who stood at one end of the rink, the camera in her hand.
“The bullet,” she said as soon as Mac was within earshot, “grazed Lundqvist’s arm, hit the goalpost here.” A gloved finger pointed at the goal behind her. The red paint was chipped in several places, the goalpost dented by the impact of what, Mac was sure, had been pucks, and one bullet.
“It ricocheted off the post and ended up in the ice,” Lindsay continued and pointed to the ice. Mac squatted down as he calculated the angle of the shot, trying to figure out where the shot had come from.
“Shooter must’ve been up there,” he said out loud and stood again.
“What are you doing?” Lindsay asked as she grabbed a pair of tweezers and expertly extracted the bullet from the ice. She held it up, to inspect it briefly. “Nine mil.”
“I’m going to look at it from another perspective,” Mac explained and squinted up, into the stands, again. “Maybe our shooter left us something to work with.”
“He already did,” Lindsay replied and dropped the bullet into an evidence bag. “But maybe there’s more.”
Mac smiled at the hopeful tone in her voice as he looked across the ice, toward the benches. The whole area was wide open, he thought. If someone really had been determined to kill Henrik Lundqvist, this had been the perfect opportunity. There was no cover on the ice, and, as far as Mac could tell, a goalie moved in predictable patterns. It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out those patterns.
And yet, for some reason, the shooter had barely grazed the goalie’s arm, and Mac couldn’t help but wonder if there was more than luck involved.
~*+*~
Jess Angell managed to look somber while at the same time offering Don a small smile.
“Donnie Flack. It’s been ages since I saw you,” she said and pushed her dark hair behind her shoulder.
“Jess,” Don said, surprise coloring his voice. “What are you doing here? How are you doing?”
She shrugged. “I’m good. Working this case.” She shook her head slightly. “Look at you, all grown up and famous. Who would’ve thought that.”
Don’s lips twitched slightly as he allowed her to put her hand on his elbow, to guide him a short distance away. “Yeah, who would’ve thought that,” he agreed. “Hey, can you tell me how Hank is? Your co-worker couldn’t or didn’t want to, I don’t know.”
“He’ll be fine,” Jess promised. “He’s been lucky.”
Don sighed in relief. “Thank God,” he said quietly. “Any idea who did this?”
“Don, you know I can’t talk about an ongoing investigation,” she pointed out, her voice pitched just as low. “Besides, you know him better than I do. If he has any enemies…”
“I already told Detective Tyler,” Don said, suddenly feeling tired. “I don’t know if there were any serious threats against him. I’ve been keeping thinking about it, but I just…I just can’t imagine anyone trying to do something like that. Hank’s a good guy.”
Jess gave him another small smile. “I’ll have to talk to your teammates, too,” she said. “But hey, when this is over, we should get together and catch up.”
He nodded. “Yeah.” The corner of his mouth twitched again. “When you talk to Sean, please don’t hurt him too badly if he says something you don’t like,” he said in an attempt of a joke. “We need him.”
“I’ll do my best,” Jess promised and reached out to squeeze his arm again before returning to the locker room, where twenty other guys were waiting to be interviewed. Jess hoped that one of them had seen anything, but the odds for that were probably minimal. From what she’d gathered so far, the players had been focused on the coach.
She just hoped that Mac and his team were more successful in finding clues to this particular puzzle than she was.
~*+*~
“It looked like you and that Flack guy got along really well,” Lindsay observed as she stepped up to Jess, her kit in one hand and her discarded gloves balled up in the other.
Jess closed her memo book with a shrug. “We know each other, actually,” she revealed.
“Oh yeah?” Lindsay asked, a mix of surprise and interest in her voice.
Jess shrugged again. “His old man and mine were friends,” she said. “We practically grew up together, he and I.” She chuckled slightly. “I haven’t seen him in years, to be honest with you.”
“Having him as one of our potential suspects is probably not the reunion either of you have ever pictured,” Lindsay muttered.
Jess shook her head. “No,” she said. “The Don Flack I know would never kill anyone. All he was about was hockey.”
“But you said it yourself, you haven’t seen him in a long time,” Lindsay pointed out reasonably. “People change.”
Jess nodded. “I know that,” she said calmly. “And I’m going to treat him just like every other suspect.”
She didn’t point out that she still didn’t think that Don had been, in any form, involved in the attempted murder they were investigating. Lindsay was right, people did change, after all.
TBC in chapter 3.
Author: Kathie
Fandom: CSI:NY
Pairing: Sheldon Hawkes/Don Flack
Rating: FRM
Content: AU, slash
chapter 1
The first time Sheldon Hawkes heard about Donnie Flack, drafted by the New York Rangers hockey team, it had been years ago, when Flack had been a promising prospect and Hawkes had been a young and promising surgeon at the hospital. He’d worked a shift at the ER when this young guy had come in, a bloody towel pressed against his cheek. His t-shirt had been sweat-drenched and had clung to his muscular chest, but he’d been smiling at Hawkes as much as he had been able to while holding still so that Hawkes could put stitches into the cut in his cheek.
“Puck,” he’d simply said by way of explanation and had shrugged slightly, muscles moving under his t-shirt. “It happens.”
Hawkes had sent him off, to get x-rays of his cheekbone taken, to make sure that he hadn’t suffered a break, and had tried to return to his regular schedule and the next patient who was already waiting for his attention.
Flack had been okay, besides the cut, and Hawkes had expected him to disappear as quickly from his life as he’d stepped into it. However, he hadn’t been able to get that smile and those bright blue eyes out of his mind, no matter how often he told himself that thinking about Flack was absolutely ridiculous.
He’d started to develop a modest interest in hockey, and, when he had the time, he watched the occasional game on TV. It was something he kept on doing even after he left the hospital after the death of a patient on his table, and when he took the job at the coroner’s office, and he didn’t stop either when he applied for the job as a CSI.
By the time they met again, Hawkes had been watching the game for long enough to be able to follow the puck in any given situation of the game, something he’d found difficult in the beginning. He had blamed his obsession with those bright blue eyes for his inability to keep track of what was happening in the game, even if Don Flack wasn’t even playing for the Rangers at that point. He was still in the AHL, to develop the skills and strengths he already possessed.
Hawkes still remembered those bright blue eyes.
He hadn’t expected Don Flack to remember him.
~*+*~
The first time Danny Messer heard of Don Flack, third line center for the New York Rangers, was one night after his shift. He and a few coworkers, among them Aiden and Hawkes, had decided to go out for drinks and a game of pool. They had been exhausted after a long day in the lab, standing hunched over microscopes and the evidence they’d collected at a crime scene earlier, or in Hawkes’ case, exhausted after a long day of doing autopsies, and their little group had been almost quiet and subdued as they stood by the bar, waiting for their drinks.
It wasn’t long until Danny and Aiden wandered off, toward the pool tables in the back, and when Danny came back, to get a fresh round of drinks for them, he found Hawkes in a corner with a tall man who was dressed in a blue button-down dress shirt and a black leather jacket. His black hair was combed back, his blue eyes twinkled as he smiled about something Hawkes had said to him. He had an old scar on his cheek, Danny noticed absent-mindedly as he inched closer, interested almost despite himself.
“Danny,” Hawkes said when he caught sight of him. “I’d like to introduce you to a good friend of mine.”
Danny bounced carefully on the balls of his feet. He was still holding his and Aiden’s drinks and didn’t want to spill them on himself, but he gave Hawkes’ friend a quick nod and a grin.
“This is Don,” Hawkes continued. “Donnie, this is Danny Messer, one of the CSIs I work with.” He tilted his head toward Flack again. “You know Don Flack, NYPD legend?”
Danny nodded. “Yeah, who doesn’t?” he replied and mustered the dark-haired man again. Flack was looking down at the table with an unreadable expression on his face, but his entire body language expressed discomfort or embarrassment.
Hawkes didn’t seem to notice. “This guy is his son,” he said with a smile.
Danny nodded. “Nice meetin’ you,” he said. “Let me guess, you didn’t follow Daddy’s footsteps and became a cop.”
Don shook his head. “No,” he said and smiled faintly. “Not really.”
“What are you doing, then?” Danny asked and finally put down the drinks on the table, Aiden and their game currently forgotten.
Again, Don shrugged. “I play hockey for a living,” he explained with a small, but proud smile on his face.
“So…” Danny looked from him to Sheldon and back. “How did you two meet?” he asked curiously.
Don’s hand moved to brush over the faint scar on his cheek. “Doc here stitched me up,” he explained before lowering his hand again. “And then we ran into each other a couple times.”
“Literally,” Sheldon grinned. It had been a while since Danny had seen the other man this relaxed, he thought quietly.
“Sounds interesting,” Danny said and took a sip of his drink. “I’m sure you can tell us all kinds of things about Doc Hawkes here.”
Flack laughed, a warm, carefree sound. “I’m sure I can,” he’d said, and that had been the beginning of a great and tight friendship.
~*+*~
The first time Detective Mac Taylor heard about Don Flack, it was at Madison Square Garden, at a crime scene in the middle of the hockey team’s locker room, when he suddenly found himself face to face with the younger man.
“Detective Mac Taylor,” he introduced himself to the man in front of him. He was dressed in expensive suit pants and a faded t-shirt. His hair was cut short, his bright blue eyes narrowed slightly.
“Don Flack,” he replied now with a brief nod. “Do you know already who tried to kill our goalie?”
Mac raised both eyebrows. “Where were you when the shot was fired?” he asked, not answering the question.
Flack brushed a hand over his forehead and folded his arms over his chest. “Waiting for the trainer,” he said. “At the trainer’s room.”
“Any witnesses?” Mac asked while putting his case down and snapping on a pair of gloves.
Again, Flack’s hand went to his face, and Mac’s sharp eyes saw a dark smudge across the back of his left hand. It looked a lot like gunshot residue, he thought quietly.
“No, I was alone,” Flack replied. “I know what you’re thinking, Detective, but I didn’t try to kill Hank.”
Mac nodded toward the smudge. “I’ll have to test your hands for gunshot residue,” he explained calmly.
Flack shifted subtly on his feet. “I didn’t try to kill Hank,” he said again, but he held out his hands for Mac to swab.
“Do you have any idea who would want him dead?” Mac asked as he sealed the evidence bag and put it in his kit.
Flack laughed, a dry, humorless sound. “Every Islanders fan?” he suggested, his voice laced heavily with sarcasm. “He had a shutout in the last game against them. He’s a damn good goaltender, Detective.”
Mac didn’t comment. “Did you see anyone around here that looked out of place?” he asked instead. “Someone you’ve never seen before?”
Flack shrugged and looked down at his hands. “I haven’t been paying attention,” he admitted quietly. “I came in late, and most of the guys were already out, on the ice. I went to the trainer’s office to get my knee looked at. There’s always people around – from the press, from the organization, from the other teams that use this facility. I really don’t know.” He grimaced. “This is Madison Square Garden, after all. Busiest arena in the world, and all that.”
“If you remember anything else,” Mac said and pulled one of his cards from his pocket, “Call me.”
Flack took the card with a small frown, and Mac allowed his attention to drift away from him as he left the locker room and went down the tunnel to join Lindsay, who stood at one end of the rink, the camera in her hand.
“The bullet,” she said as soon as Mac was within earshot, “grazed Lundqvist’s arm, hit the goalpost here.” A gloved finger pointed at the goal behind her. The red paint was chipped in several places, the goalpost dented by the impact of what, Mac was sure, had been pucks, and one bullet.
“It ricocheted off the post and ended up in the ice,” Lindsay continued and pointed to the ice. Mac squatted down as he calculated the angle of the shot, trying to figure out where the shot had come from.
“Shooter must’ve been up there,” he said out loud and stood again.
“What are you doing?” Lindsay asked as she grabbed a pair of tweezers and expertly extracted the bullet from the ice. She held it up, to inspect it briefly. “Nine mil.”
“I’m going to look at it from another perspective,” Mac explained and squinted up, into the stands, again. “Maybe our shooter left us something to work with.”
“He already did,” Lindsay replied and dropped the bullet into an evidence bag. “But maybe there’s more.”
Mac smiled at the hopeful tone in her voice as he looked across the ice, toward the benches. The whole area was wide open, he thought. If someone really had been determined to kill Henrik Lundqvist, this had been the perfect opportunity. There was no cover on the ice, and, as far as Mac could tell, a goalie moved in predictable patterns. It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out those patterns.
And yet, for some reason, the shooter had barely grazed the goalie’s arm, and Mac couldn’t help but wonder if there was more than luck involved.
~*+*~
Jess Angell managed to look somber while at the same time offering Don a small smile.
“Donnie Flack. It’s been ages since I saw you,” she said and pushed her dark hair behind her shoulder.
“Jess,” Don said, surprise coloring his voice. “What are you doing here? How are you doing?”
She shrugged. “I’m good. Working this case.” She shook her head slightly. “Look at you, all grown up and famous. Who would’ve thought that.”
Don’s lips twitched slightly as he allowed her to put her hand on his elbow, to guide him a short distance away. “Yeah, who would’ve thought that,” he agreed. “Hey, can you tell me how Hank is? Your co-worker couldn’t or didn’t want to, I don’t know.”
“He’ll be fine,” Jess promised. “He’s been lucky.”
Don sighed in relief. “Thank God,” he said quietly. “Any idea who did this?”
“Don, you know I can’t talk about an ongoing investigation,” she pointed out, her voice pitched just as low. “Besides, you know him better than I do. If he has any enemies…”
“I already told Detective Tyler,” Don said, suddenly feeling tired. “I don’t know if there were any serious threats against him. I’ve been keeping thinking about it, but I just…I just can’t imagine anyone trying to do something like that. Hank’s a good guy.”
Jess gave him another small smile. “I’ll have to talk to your teammates, too,” she said. “But hey, when this is over, we should get together and catch up.”
He nodded. “Yeah.” The corner of his mouth twitched again. “When you talk to Sean, please don’t hurt him too badly if he says something you don’t like,” he said in an attempt of a joke. “We need him.”
“I’ll do my best,” Jess promised and reached out to squeeze his arm again before returning to the locker room, where twenty other guys were waiting to be interviewed. Jess hoped that one of them had seen anything, but the odds for that were probably minimal. From what she’d gathered so far, the players had been focused on the coach.
She just hoped that Mac and his team were more successful in finding clues to this particular puzzle than she was.
~*+*~
“It looked like you and that Flack guy got along really well,” Lindsay observed as she stepped up to Jess, her kit in one hand and her discarded gloves balled up in the other.
Jess closed her memo book with a shrug. “We know each other, actually,” she revealed.
“Oh yeah?” Lindsay asked, a mix of surprise and interest in her voice.
Jess shrugged again. “His old man and mine were friends,” she said. “We practically grew up together, he and I.” She chuckled slightly. “I haven’t seen him in years, to be honest with you.”
“Having him as one of our potential suspects is probably not the reunion either of you have ever pictured,” Lindsay muttered.
Jess shook her head. “No,” she said. “The Don Flack I know would never kill anyone. All he was about was hockey.”
“But you said it yourself, you haven’t seen him in a long time,” Lindsay pointed out reasonably. “People change.”
Jess nodded. “I know that,” she said calmly. “And I’m going to treat him just like every other suspect.”
She didn’t point out that she still didn’t think that Don had been, in any form, involved in the attempted murder they were investigating. Lindsay was right, people did change, after all.
TBC in chapter 3.