Flack nearly had a damn heart attack when Danny snuck up behind him in the lab parking lot and latched onto his elbow with a tight hand.

“Fuck, Messer! You tryna gimme a damn heart attack!” he asked the CSI loudly, louder than he needed to. “Jeez, what’re you doin’, sneakin’ up on me like that?”

Danny just smirked and shrugged, studying him carefully from beneath heavy eyelids, his face all angles and shadows in the lot’s half-light. “I wasn’t sneakin’. I walked up and said your name. When you didn’t respond I touched your arm. Spaz.”

“Dweeb.”

Danny sneered a little, showing off his fangs, but didn’t say anything in response. Flack frowned and leaned casually against the door of his patrol car. Danny mirrored him against the car parked beside his, even going as far as studying the way Flack had his feet crossed at the ankle and his hands in his pants pockets and copying it. Danny was big on not looking or talking or standing like anybody else, but sometimes he couldn’t help mimicking people, particularly suspects and Flack, the latter of whom found it oddly flattering, even if was meant to be mocking to the suspects.

“What’s up with you?” Flack asked in an offhand way. He knew he ran the risk of Danny not answering or snapping if he demanded or pushed.

Danny shrugged again. Then sneered again, this time towards his shoes at the wet pavement.

“The case sittin’ alright?”

Danny’s head came up at that and he glared hard at Flack. Flack scowled back and nodded in concurrence. It’d been a fucked case.

Danny dropped his eyes again. “That crazy Russian fuck…I got nothin’ against immigrants – I ain’t white All-American myself, I’m ‘Talian – but fuck. Why’d he haveta come here, huhn? To my city?”

Flack’s scowl deepened in response. He felt the same way. Immigrant, descendant of Mayflower pilgrims, ancient Aztec…he didn’t give a fuck. If you hurt an innocent, the NYPD was going to fuck you up, Don Flack Jr., Danny Messer, Mac Taylor and the rest of the crew would see to that. Even kids who came from screwed up backgrounds and neighbourhoods like Danny (and Flack if he was feeling particularly honest and drunk) were insanely protective of New York City. So he couldn’t really blame the other man for his anger and frustration.

“At least we got ‘em, am I right?” Flack said, nudging at Danny’s shoe with his own.

Danny swung his head back and forth in obviously strong denial. He continued to glare at the ground.

“Just – fuck, the idea of that, y’know? So fucked…” he trailed off.

Flack tilted his head at him and asked, “Idea of what?” knowing that there was always one part or person or word that stuck particularly in that hectic CSI mind.

Licking his lips distractedly – making Flack half-hard at the sight of it despite the concern he had for his friend – Danny muttered, “Pinnin’ ‘em down. Just…havin’ strapped down like that. Makin’ it so they couldn’t move. I…I couldn’t ever not move, y’know?”

“I know,” Flack intoned jokingly to lighten the mood, “You stop movin’ and you’d have a fuckin’ brain aneurysm, Dan.”

The corners of Danny’s mouth twitched, but he didn’t quite make a smirk. “Okay, so I like sugar, fuck you…But seriously, Don, I…the idea of not bein’ able to move, bein’ pinned down like that...”

Flack straightened. “You keep sayin’ ‘pinned down’. What bothered you more, them bein’ strapped down or bein’ paralysed?”

Danny raised his gaze again to meet Flack’s. His grey-blue eyes were sharp and haunting in the bad light and his mouth was set in a thin line. “Louie…he’d pin me down sometimes when I was kid. He was six years older and a lot bigger, y'know? And it’d happen at school. I was always smaller. No matter how hard I fought – I was always fuckin fought my hardest – I’d get pinned. I fuckin hated that. That fuckin’…helplessness. They were always tryna pin me down…Worst fuckin feelin’ in the world.”

Flack winced, pressed his lips together and remained silent for a moment. Danny mentioned his brother maybe once a month. Usually it was some funny anecdote about the Messer boys lucking their way into and out of trouble, and it was always offhand, but once in a while, Danny made known that the absent older brother sometimes hurt him. And it was an even rarer occasion when Danny Messer revealed such a vulnerable part of himself.

Flack knew he was the closest person in the world to the private but dead-loyal man, but that didn’t mean he had open access to Danny’s secrets and past. If he gave something up, it was to be treasured and held in confidence.

Danny looked at Flack sideways, shrugged jerkily and went on. “S’why I don’t like bein’ touched by a lot of people. You, Stella, Aid, my old man…sure, I’m okay. But when other people get in my space, get too close…”

Flack finally found his voice. “I pin you sometimes. When we’re goofin’ around…or messin’ around.”

Danny jumped slightly and glared at him. It wasn’t an angry glare, it was ‘don’t be fuckin stupid, Donnie’ glare. “I’m sayin’ that’s different. ‘Cause I trust you. It’s okay ‘cause I know that if I asked for real, you’d let me up…Am I right?”

“Yeah, you are.”

They’d only been doing this…thing, this thing that involved crashing at each other’s apartments about every second or third night even and stealing odd kisses in the lab supply closets and locker room for just a few weeks now, but they’d been best friends for so long, that banter and comfort and taking the piss out of each other was nothing but natural.

Since the beginning, almost five years ago now, Flack had been the cocky, sharp-tongued and surprisingly independent son of a son of son of a cop born with a badge in his mouth who managed to make friends with a belligerent, no-good, smart-assed hothead named Danny (never Daniel) Messer who had rumours of mob connections hanging over his head. While Flack had been off mentoring with Gavin Moran, his father’s best friend, Danny been over in Hell’s Kitchen, taking his intimate knowledge of hustlers, conmen and illegal bookies with him. They’d made detective the same year and both went for homicide, meeting and becoming friends as a result of being stuck as partners. They quickly became a pair famous for their seamless balance and bad cop/bad cop routine. A year later Danny was asked by Mac Taylor to join the CSU, because of his college degree in chemistry and noted attentiveness to detail, but Flack knew he still knew the Messer better than anybody. He knew his fluctuating moodiness and high-strung nature as well as his own steady strength and notorious temper.

So they were best friends first, and that meant reasurring Danny and making sure he had his head on straight.

“Man, you gotta let it go,” he told Danny in a firm but low voice, as if he was trying to placate a cornered dog. “That guy’s goin’ straight away for what he did to those women. Nobody’s gonna pin you. I won’t let ‘em.”

Danny gave him a suspicious, angry look. Flack just stood there and took it. Finally, Danny slumped back against the car he’d been leaning on and sighed the tension out. “I know. I know you won’t.”

Flack took a cautious step closer and slung a lose arm around Danny’s case-weary shoulders, one that could just as easily be knocked away or pulled tighter.

Danny ducked his head and turned his face away from Flack, but leaned into Flack’s warm side and wrapped his own arm snugly around the taller man's waist.

“C’mon, I’ll buy you a beer and kick your ass at pool.”

Danny shook his head. “Nah, m’tired. Maybe tomorrow, huhn?”

“You wanna come over to my place?”

“For what?”

Flack pursed his lips in frustration. Danny’d never say it out loud himself, but he was always trying to make Flack do it. “I dunno. Pizza, maybe? Knicks are playin’ at seven. Maybe…other stuff.”

Danny grinned his evil little grin. “’Other stuff’…physically tiring ‘stuff’?”

Flack grinned back broadly and smacked lightly at Danny’s shoulder. “Maybe.”

“Yeah, fine. I do love a nice, hot, satisfying…pizza.”

“Whadda brat...”

Danny made himself move away from Flack so they could get into the patrol car. When they were strapped into their seats, he said quietly, “Mac’s fucked up over it too.”

Flack stilled. “Really. He okay?”

He liked Mac and knew Danny worried about the guy a lot. It was one of those ‘striving to be a good or at least acceptable surrogate son to the hurting and oblivious but still hard-assed father figure’ sort of deals. 9/11 had been hell on all of them, but particularly Mac, for obvious reasons.

“Yeah…I dunno. Stella checked on ‘em…C’mon, forget ‘bout the case now. I want Famous Ray’s.”

Flack regained his smirk and nodded as he cranked over the engine. “Fine. But we are orderin’ in.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“B’cause the kid who delivers don’t care if you answer the door in your BVDs.”

Danny returned the smirk full-blown and Flack mentally forgave him for almost giving him a damn heartattack.