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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. | chapter 2. | chapter 3.
“Well?” Don asked as Sheldon slipped in the booth opposite him. He was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, his long fingers played impatiently with the cell phone he’d placed on the table in front of him.
Sheldon sighed. “I’m supposed to stay as far away from the case as possible,” he said. “Desk duty, until Mac needs me on another case.”
Don grimaced. “That sucks for you, man,” he said softly, and Sheldon felt a leg brush against his own. Don was subtle in his affections, that much was for sure, too used to the presence of cameras and reporters in his life to allow himself big gestures of affection in public. It made Sheldon smile slightly.
“At least I still have a job,” he replied with a small shrug while shifting his own leg and pressing it firmly against Don’s.
Blue eyes twinkled as Don leaned over the table with a teasing grin. “You can have a job as my personal assistant,” he suggested. “Any time. I pay well.”
Sheldon laughed. “Thanks, but no thanks,” he replied. “I like the job I have.”
“Too bad,” Don said. His fingers went to his cheek, to rub the faint scar that was left over from the cut Hawkes had stitched up so many years ago.
For a moment, they were silent, both caught in their own thoughts, until Don stirred and dropped his hand back to the table. “Will you come to my place tonight?”
Sheldon hesitated. “I don’t know, Don,” he said. “You’re still part of an ongoing investigation, you know. I shouldn’t even talk to you. It could question every bit of evidence Mac found at the scene.”
Don’s eyes narrowed. “What are you saying there, Doc?” he asked suspiciously.
Sheldon sighed irritably. “You know exactly what I’m saying, Flack,” he replied, his voice still pitched low. “Don’t pretend to be stupid.”
Don straightened slowly, until he was sitting ramrod straight. “I guess I do,” he said sharply and pressed his palms flat to the tabletop. “I thought you had my back, but apparently, I was mistaken.”
He pushed himself up.
“Don…” Sheldon started, but Don wasn’t listening to him.
“Let me tell you one thing, Doc,” he said, his voice deadly cool and controlled. “I was not involved in the shooting, no matter what your Detective Taylor thinks. I thought you knew me better.”
“What are you talking about?” Sheldon snapped, growing irritated, but Don didn’t answer as he left the diner without turning around again, leaving Sheldon with his shoulders tense and his hands balled in tight fists.
~*+*~
The next morning, when the doors of the elevator opened, Sheldon stepped into the crime lab, the collar of his black coat folded up, a deep horizontal line etched into the skin of his forehead between his eyes. He hadn’t slept well the night before, his thoughts circling and always circling back to Don and their conversation, and the more he thought about it, the angrier he became for Don jumping to conclusions, not giving him a chance to explain himself, and not realizing how it had to look to an objective outsider, like Mac, when Sheldon spent more time at Don’s apartment than at his own.
It wasn’t that he didn’t understand where Don came from. He did, and he also realized that the events of the day had shaken Don deeply. But still, it wasn’t fair to him that Don only thought about himself, his own comfort, and completely disregarded what that would mean for Hawkes’ career – for his life, really.
He’d turned their conversation over and over in his head, until his compassion for Don’s situation had been overwhelmed by first annoyance and then a deep, burning anger that had kept him awake and pacing. He had turned on the TV, but when he’d realized that he had, out of habit, turned in on the Rangers’ game, he’d quickly turned it off again. He couldn’t watch this game, not with knowing that Don was there, sitting on the bench with all the other players, his eyes slightly narrowed as he focused on the movement of the puck as it slithered over the slick surface of the ice, not when Sheldon knew exactly how the body underneath all the protective padding looked, and what kind of sounds Don would make when he was touched just right.
He had growled at himself and had tossed the remote on the couch, to get ready for bed, but all he’d done for half the night was tossing and turning and wrapping the sheets tightly around his body until he had the feeling that he couldn’t breathe anymore.
It was all Don’s fault, he had thought darkly as he stared up, into the darkness, and something dark and bitter had clenched itself around his throat and into his stomach.
All Don’s fault.
And now, he was back at the lab, with nothing important to do, a headache the size of the Empire State Building and a foul mood to match. He didn’t talk to any of the lab techs that crossed his path as he went to the office he shared with Danny and Lindsay and sank down behind his meticulously clean desk. Digging through the top drawer, he soon found what he was looking for: Ibuprofen, to get rid of his headache.
It didn’t take long for the headache to clear up, but even before it had completely disappeared, Mac stuck his head into the room and handed him a folder with information to a new crime scene. This case was unrelated to the one Mac was working, and he knew that Sheldon was a good and reliable investigator and could handle this alone, even if he fucked up sometimes.
Sheldon made sure his kit was fully stocked before heading out.
~*+*~
It was several hours before he returned to the lab, his hands filled with evidence bags that contained material he needed processed, and he dropped them off with Adam, trying to ignore the items carefully placed on the table that had been collected from the Rangers’ locker room. He recognized Don’s lucky t-shirt, and his heart picked up its pace. He had to turn away from the table to stop himself from reaching out and feeling the thin, worn material of the grey t-shirt with the faded print of a clover across the chest.
Mac would kick his ass if he contaminated the evidence further, he knew that, and briefly, he wondered if Don would ever get his lucky shirt back before he pushed the thought firmly away.
It wasn’t his problem. Besides, Don deserved to play without that shirt, simply for acting like an asshole.
Adam finally turned away from the computer and toward him. He leaned back in his chair and gave Sheldon a grin.
“Hey,” he greeted. “What’s up?”
“Evidence,” Sheldon said briefly. He didn’t feel like having a conversation with Adam and quickly put the bags down, but apparently, Adam didn’t pick up on his mood and nobody had told him that Hawkes was cranky that day, because, as he rose and helped Sheldon to sort through the bags, he said, “Did you watch that game last night?”
“No.”
“Oh. Well…” Adam frowned and picked up one of the brown paper bags that held the victim’s clothes. “You didn’t miss much. Your guy played like crap. What’s wrong with him anyways? I mean, he normally doesn’t…”
“Adam,” Sheldon cut him short, his voice cold and with a final tone to it. “He is not my guy. Can you concentrate on the evidence, please?”
Adam flinched as if Sheldon had just hit him and snapped his mouth shut. He nodded quickly before turning back to the evidence and sorting through the items, his shoulders hunched up and his head bent low.
Sheldon only stayed as long as he had to before leaving the room again, happy to escape the heavy silence that had fallen between them after his outburst. He stared straight ahead, not turning to look at the t-shirt, as he made his way to ballistics. He knew that he had to apologize to Adam later, but he couldn’t find it in him to do it right now.
It was, he thought darkly, all Don’s fault.
~*+*~
“Hey, Doc. What’s up?”
Sheldon looked up from the microscope as Danny stepped into the lab. He was comparing fibers he’d collected at the crime scene – if the red cotton fiber he’d found under his victim’s ripped and broken nails matched the sweater he’d seen the husband wear, it would be enough to pick the husband up for questioning. Witnesses, the Detective on duty had told him, had reported fights between the couple that had grown more and more violent in the past weeks.
“Murdered woman, found face down in her apartment. Husband claims he’s been on a business trip and found his wife like that,” Sheldon replied. “Fiber under her nails is a match to his shirt.” His lips twitched into the first smile of that day.
Danny nodded and pulled a chair close. Sheldon knew that Danny was working on the Ranger-case and didn’t even bother asking how it was going. Danny couldn’t talk about an on-going investigation with someone not directly involved in it, and that included Sheldon. Besides, Sheldon didn’t want to get Danny in trouble – he was sure that Mac would find out if he asked about the case.
“Listen,” Danny said after a long moment of silence. “I talked to Angell…” He hesitated and nervously tugged on the sleeve of his shirt.
“I imagine you talk to her quite a lot, considering the amount of cases you work together,” Sheldon pointed out mildly.
“Yeah.” Danny reached up to scratch a hand through his hair. He was so uncomfortable and twitchy that Sheldon didn’t need to be a crime scene investigator to figure out what the other man wanted to talk about.
“Danny,” he said, trying to keep his voice even and calm. “I don’t want to talk about Flack. Not now, okay?”
“You’re an idiot, doc,” Danny replied. His hands stopped tugging at the loose thread on his shirtsleeve as he squared his shoulders, ready to take on Hawkes. “What are you doing here, man, you know Don didn’t do this.”
“Danny,” Sheldon shook his head and closed his eyes. “Which part of I don’t want to talk about this didn’t you understand?”
“I’m just saying,” Danny repeated stubbornly, but Sheldon only needed to shoot him a dark glare to get him to stand, lift his hands in a gesture of surrender, and leave the room.
Sheldon took a deep breath. It wasn’t his fault Don was acting like an asshole, he thought again, irritation creeping back into his body and making his hands clench on the edge of the table. It wasn’t Sheldon who was an idiot. Don had completely overreacted, and now, Sheldon had to deal with Danny on top of everything else.
It was, he thought to what felt the hundredth time that day, all Don’s fault.
~*+*~
“I’m sorry, Don. I tried talking to him,” Danny said instead of a greeting.
Don shrugged and tossed him the ball. “Yeah, I believe that,” he replied and shook his head. “Sounds like Shel. Stubborn idiot.”
“I’m sorry,” Danny offered and moved his fingers gently over the surface of the well-worn leather of the ball. “Is there anything…you know.” He shrugged and passed the ball back to Don.
He didn’t know anymore what had moved him to invite Don, who he’d barely known back then, to join the basketball games he and a few co-workers had every other Saturday, if work permitted it, considering that Don was both taller and more athletic than him. He looked lanky, but Danny knew from personal experience not to underestimate Don.
“Nah, I’m fine,” Don told him with a smile that looked a little bit too forced, a little too brittle, for Danny to believe that Don really was fine. “It’s not my fault Shel is being a stuck-up idiot.”
“Yeah,” Danny murmured.
“So? Are we playing?” Don wanted to know and bounced the ball off the pavement a few times.
“Sure,” Danny replied. “I’ll kick your ass today, you’ll see!”
Don laughed, a real and carefree laugh, and for a moment, the haunted expression left his face as he tossed the ball back to Danny. “In your dreams, Messer.”
“You only wish I’d dream of you,” Danny teased back.
Don stared at him with raised eyebrows. “You sayin’ there’s something better to dream about?”
Danny dropped the ball and shifted from one foot to the other. “Actually…” he said hesitantly. “There is.”
“This I have to hear,” Don grinned and bent down, to pick up the ball that had rolled up to him.
Danny shrugged. “My wife, and my little girl, of course,” he said with a faint smile.
Don chuckled. “Of course,” he said. "But I'm a close second."
He winked at Danny, to show that he was simply joking, and Danny shook his head and took the ball from Don's hands. "Let's play," he said, and Don agreed.
TBC in chapter 5.
Author: Kathie
Fandom: CSI:NY
Pairing: Sheldon Hawkes/Don Flack
Rating: FRM
Content: AU, slash
chapter 1. | chapter 2. | chapter 3.
“Well?” Don asked as Sheldon slipped in the booth opposite him. He was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, his long fingers played impatiently with the cell phone he’d placed on the table in front of him.
Sheldon sighed. “I’m supposed to stay as far away from the case as possible,” he said. “Desk duty, until Mac needs me on another case.”
Don grimaced. “That sucks for you, man,” he said softly, and Sheldon felt a leg brush against his own. Don was subtle in his affections, that much was for sure, too used to the presence of cameras and reporters in his life to allow himself big gestures of affection in public. It made Sheldon smile slightly.
“At least I still have a job,” he replied with a small shrug while shifting his own leg and pressing it firmly against Don’s.
Blue eyes twinkled as Don leaned over the table with a teasing grin. “You can have a job as my personal assistant,” he suggested. “Any time. I pay well.”
Sheldon laughed. “Thanks, but no thanks,” he replied. “I like the job I have.”
“Too bad,” Don said. His fingers went to his cheek, to rub the faint scar that was left over from the cut Hawkes had stitched up so many years ago.
For a moment, they were silent, both caught in their own thoughts, until Don stirred and dropped his hand back to the table. “Will you come to my place tonight?”
Sheldon hesitated. “I don’t know, Don,” he said. “You’re still part of an ongoing investigation, you know. I shouldn’t even talk to you. It could question every bit of evidence Mac found at the scene.”
Don’s eyes narrowed. “What are you saying there, Doc?” he asked suspiciously.
Sheldon sighed irritably. “You know exactly what I’m saying, Flack,” he replied, his voice still pitched low. “Don’t pretend to be stupid.”
Don straightened slowly, until he was sitting ramrod straight. “I guess I do,” he said sharply and pressed his palms flat to the tabletop. “I thought you had my back, but apparently, I was mistaken.”
He pushed himself up.
“Don…” Sheldon started, but Don wasn’t listening to him.
“Let me tell you one thing, Doc,” he said, his voice deadly cool and controlled. “I was not involved in the shooting, no matter what your Detective Taylor thinks. I thought you knew me better.”
“What are you talking about?” Sheldon snapped, growing irritated, but Don didn’t answer as he left the diner without turning around again, leaving Sheldon with his shoulders tense and his hands balled in tight fists.
~*+*~
The next morning, when the doors of the elevator opened, Sheldon stepped into the crime lab, the collar of his black coat folded up, a deep horizontal line etched into the skin of his forehead between his eyes. He hadn’t slept well the night before, his thoughts circling and always circling back to Don and their conversation, and the more he thought about it, the angrier he became for Don jumping to conclusions, not giving him a chance to explain himself, and not realizing how it had to look to an objective outsider, like Mac, when Sheldon spent more time at Don’s apartment than at his own.
It wasn’t that he didn’t understand where Don came from. He did, and he also realized that the events of the day had shaken Don deeply. But still, it wasn’t fair to him that Don only thought about himself, his own comfort, and completely disregarded what that would mean for Hawkes’ career – for his life, really.
He’d turned their conversation over and over in his head, until his compassion for Don’s situation had been overwhelmed by first annoyance and then a deep, burning anger that had kept him awake and pacing. He had turned on the TV, but when he’d realized that he had, out of habit, turned in on the Rangers’ game, he’d quickly turned it off again. He couldn’t watch this game, not with knowing that Don was there, sitting on the bench with all the other players, his eyes slightly narrowed as he focused on the movement of the puck as it slithered over the slick surface of the ice, not when Sheldon knew exactly how the body underneath all the protective padding looked, and what kind of sounds Don would make when he was touched just right.
He had growled at himself and had tossed the remote on the couch, to get ready for bed, but all he’d done for half the night was tossing and turning and wrapping the sheets tightly around his body until he had the feeling that he couldn’t breathe anymore.
It was all Don’s fault, he had thought darkly as he stared up, into the darkness, and something dark and bitter had clenched itself around his throat and into his stomach.
All Don’s fault.
And now, he was back at the lab, with nothing important to do, a headache the size of the Empire State Building and a foul mood to match. He didn’t talk to any of the lab techs that crossed his path as he went to the office he shared with Danny and Lindsay and sank down behind his meticulously clean desk. Digging through the top drawer, he soon found what he was looking for: Ibuprofen, to get rid of his headache.
It didn’t take long for the headache to clear up, but even before it had completely disappeared, Mac stuck his head into the room and handed him a folder with information to a new crime scene. This case was unrelated to the one Mac was working, and he knew that Sheldon was a good and reliable investigator and could handle this alone, even if he fucked up sometimes.
Sheldon made sure his kit was fully stocked before heading out.
~*+*~
It was several hours before he returned to the lab, his hands filled with evidence bags that contained material he needed processed, and he dropped them off with Adam, trying to ignore the items carefully placed on the table that had been collected from the Rangers’ locker room. He recognized Don’s lucky t-shirt, and his heart picked up its pace. He had to turn away from the table to stop himself from reaching out and feeling the thin, worn material of the grey t-shirt with the faded print of a clover across the chest.
Mac would kick his ass if he contaminated the evidence further, he knew that, and briefly, he wondered if Don would ever get his lucky shirt back before he pushed the thought firmly away.
It wasn’t his problem. Besides, Don deserved to play without that shirt, simply for acting like an asshole.
Adam finally turned away from the computer and toward him. He leaned back in his chair and gave Sheldon a grin.
“Hey,” he greeted. “What’s up?”
“Evidence,” Sheldon said briefly. He didn’t feel like having a conversation with Adam and quickly put the bags down, but apparently, Adam didn’t pick up on his mood and nobody had told him that Hawkes was cranky that day, because, as he rose and helped Sheldon to sort through the bags, he said, “Did you watch that game last night?”
“No.”
“Oh. Well…” Adam frowned and picked up one of the brown paper bags that held the victim’s clothes. “You didn’t miss much. Your guy played like crap. What’s wrong with him anyways? I mean, he normally doesn’t…”
“Adam,” Sheldon cut him short, his voice cold and with a final tone to it. “He is not my guy. Can you concentrate on the evidence, please?”
Adam flinched as if Sheldon had just hit him and snapped his mouth shut. He nodded quickly before turning back to the evidence and sorting through the items, his shoulders hunched up and his head bent low.
Sheldon only stayed as long as he had to before leaving the room again, happy to escape the heavy silence that had fallen between them after his outburst. He stared straight ahead, not turning to look at the t-shirt, as he made his way to ballistics. He knew that he had to apologize to Adam later, but he couldn’t find it in him to do it right now.
It was, he thought darkly, all Don’s fault.
~*+*~
“Hey, Doc. What’s up?”
Sheldon looked up from the microscope as Danny stepped into the lab. He was comparing fibers he’d collected at the crime scene – if the red cotton fiber he’d found under his victim’s ripped and broken nails matched the sweater he’d seen the husband wear, it would be enough to pick the husband up for questioning. Witnesses, the Detective on duty had told him, had reported fights between the couple that had grown more and more violent in the past weeks.
“Murdered woman, found face down in her apartment. Husband claims he’s been on a business trip and found his wife like that,” Sheldon replied. “Fiber under her nails is a match to his shirt.” His lips twitched into the first smile of that day.
Danny nodded and pulled a chair close. Sheldon knew that Danny was working on the Ranger-case and didn’t even bother asking how it was going. Danny couldn’t talk about an on-going investigation with someone not directly involved in it, and that included Sheldon. Besides, Sheldon didn’t want to get Danny in trouble – he was sure that Mac would find out if he asked about the case.
“Listen,” Danny said after a long moment of silence. “I talked to Angell…” He hesitated and nervously tugged on the sleeve of his shirt.
“I imagine you talk to her quite a lot, considering the amount of cases you work together,” Sheldon pointed out mildly.
“Yeah.” Danny reached up to scratch a hand through his hair. He was so uncomfortable and twitchy that Sheldon didn’t need to be a crime scene investigator to figure out what the other man wanted to talk about.
“Danny,” he said, trying to keep his voice even and calm. “I don’t want to talk about Flack. Not now, okay?”
“You’re an idiot, doc,” Danny replied. His hands stopped tugging at the loose thread on his shirtsleeve as he squared his shoulders, ready to take on Hawkes. “What are you doing here, man, you know Don didn’t do this.”
“Danny,” Sheldon shook his head and closed his eyes. “Which part of I don’t want to talk about this didn’t you understand?”
“I’m just saying,” Danny repeated stubbornly, but Sheldon only needed to shoot him a dark glare to get him to stand, lift his hands in a gesture of surrender, and leave the room.
Sheldon took a deep breath. It wasn’t his fault Don was acting like an asshole, he thought again, irritation creeping back into his body and making his hands clench on the edge of the table. It wasn’t Sheldon who was an idiot. Don had completely overreacted, and now, Sheldon had to deal with Danny on top of everything else.
It was, he thought to what felt the hundredth time that day, all Don’s fault.
~*+*~
“I’m sorry, Don. I tried talking to him,” Danny said instead of a greeting.
Don shrugged and tossed him the ball. “Yeah, I believe that,” he replied and shook his head. “Sounds like Shel. Stubborn idiot.”
“I’m sorry,” Danny offered and moved his fingers gently over the surface of the well-worn leather of the ball. “Is there anything…you know.” He shrugged and passed the ball back to Don.
He didn’t know anymore what had moved him to invite Don, who he’d barely known back then, to join the basketball games he and a few co-workers had every other Saturday, if work permitted it, considering that Don was both taller and more athletic than him. He looked lanky, but Danny knew from personal experience not to underestimate Don.
“Nah, I’m fine,” Don told him with a smile that looked a little bit too forced, a little too brittle, for Danny to believe that Don really was fine. “It’s not my fault Shel is being a stuck-up idiot.”
“Yeah,” Danny murmured.
“So? Are we playing?” Don wanted to know and bounced the ball off the pavement a few times.
“Sure,” Danny replied. “I’ll kick your ass today, you’ll see!”
Don laughed, a real and carefree laugh, and for a moment, the haunted expression left his face as he tossed the ball back to Danny. “In your dreams, Messer.”
“You only wish I’d dream of you,” Danny teased back.
Don stared at him with raised eyebrows. “You sayin’ there’s something better to dream about?”
Danny dropped the ball and shifted from one foot to the other. “Actually…” he said hesitantly. “There is.”
“This I have to hear,” Don grinned and bent down, to pick up the ball that had rolled up to him.
Danny shrugged. “My wife, and my little girl, of course,” he said with a faint smile.
Don chuckled. “Of course,” he said. "But I'm a close second."
He winked at Danny, to show that he was simply joking, and Danny shook his head and took the ball from Don's hands. "Let's play," he said, and Don agreed.
TBC in chapter 5.