Aiden followed him when he left the lab, silent and fuming.

She’d never followed him anywhere before. Not that time a body was found in the foundation of an old construction site that he’d once mentioned his father and uncles worked at and he took off for four hours in the middle of a case, not that time almost two years ago when she’d answered his desk phone for him and taken a message down saying ‘meet Louie at the airport right now’ and he took off in such a rush that he knocked Stella over, and not when he had a particularly bad case or day or confrontation with Mac and he took off muttering and clenching his fists. She had wanted to follow him each time, badly, but never had, and never let Flack either.

So she had no idea where he might go, where he usually went to cool down and recharge. She was pretty sure he didn’t go home, because he always answered his cell when she called no matter how pissed he might be, and she always tried his home number first when she knew he was off-duty. When he left the labs or precinct in a foul mood, he never picked up there at least for a couple hours. There was a range of possibilities for him to run to, especially in this city, especially with someone as in tune with said city as he was. Places Aiden knew he loved and visited when he could, like Coney Island, the Met, Yankee Stadium, Battery Park, Little Italy, Famous Ray’s, and Sol’s, his favourite pool hall in the Bronx, near where he grew up.

She didn’t expect to follow him off the subway at a Washington Heights’ stop though, and have to follow him through the rain and garbage strewn streets to the apartment building that the Reyes’ live in. Aiden waited twenty minutes with him, standing at the edge of the corner about fifty feet away and ducking under an awning for cover from his notice and the cold rain. She watched as he stood by the stoop with his hands tucked in his pockets, his hair slicking, stomping his feet and bouncing lightly up on his toes, either from the cold or impatience, maybe both.

Finally she noticed Antonio coming up the street from the opposite direction. She watched as the boy stopped and the two spoke, their postures easing up with each passing moment. Antonio was given something and even at the distance, Aiden could see his face crease with sadness and longing. Her partner jerked his shoulders and seemed to say something more, and Antonio nodded slowly, and then headed into his building.

Danny stood on the sidewalk for another moment, before turning and striding towards her, his gaze darting from the wet pavement to his left then right, then down again. He was almost upon her before he finally looked up to see where he was going and immediately spotted her. He stopped short and stared at her, his blank cop-face in place, his eyes hard. Aiden felt a swell of guilt, knowing this was breaking some level of trust between them, her following him, but just lifted her chin at him and gazed back.

Slowly his stony expression crumbled into one more akin to…bewilderment…? Aiden wasn’t sure was it was, but she didn’t like it. Rain droplets were beading off his soaked and spiked hair, clinging to his eyelashes and dripping off his nose and chin. He looked cold and absolutely drenched, but he wasn’t shivering like she was or wiping away the water. He looked lonely too.

“You wanna take a walk with me?” he asked, sounding oddly breathless.

Aiden nodded. “Yeah, I think I do, Messer.”

He paused, then held out a hand. She took it. It was cold and he was holding on a little too firmly, but she felt reconnected to him again; physically and emotionally.

Danny didn’t look at her as he led the way, didn’t speak either, despite her various attempts to get him to answer her. Occasionally he nodded or shrugged or gave her hand a brief squeeze, but nothing more. He did slow his pace when she yanked his arm and snapped lightly at him to though, so she knew he was at least partially listening.

Finally, when Aiden could feel her feet starting to blister in her shoes and her hair really getting tangled and matted under her NY:CSU cap and she was shivering not in short bouts but continuously, she decided that this was too much. She opened her mouth to tell him that they were hailing a goddamn cab and either going to a warm diner where they could get coffee and hot food, or to one of their apartments, or maybe to Sullivan’s for a couple drinks. She knew Flack and a couple other detectives they hung out would be there, and maybe that would make things feel better.

But Danny beat her to it by saying, “See that drain gutter right there? With the sneaker in front of it?”

She peered around him, holding his hand in both of hers now, and spotted it. “Yeah. Thrillsville. Whaddabout it?”

“That’s where he tossed the knife.” Danny’s voice was nonchalant, soft even, and it took a moment for Aiden to process what he’d actually said.

“What? What knife? What’re you talkin’ ‘bout?”

Danny licked his lips. He looked at her sideway, opened his mouth again, failed to come up with any words, licked his lips again, then managed to speak.

“My old man and I were headin’ home from fishin’ down at Battery Park. It’d been a nice day, sunny and warm, but it’d gotten cloudier and colder as it got darker out. And we didn’t feel like gettin’ on the subway, so Dad hailed a cab. He couldn’t get a yellow, not to go into our neighbourhood, so we just grabbed a gypsy. About halfway home the cabbie slammed on the breaks, makin’ Dad bounce his head off the plastic divider. The cabbie managed to pull him outta the back – you’ve met my old man, he’s built like a boxer, right? No lightweight neither – and started wailin’ on ‘em.” Danny paused, his breathes quick and uneven, the hinge of his jaw knotting and un-knotting. “I-I thought I could help ‘em, y’know? I mean, I could usually hold my own wrestlin’ with Louie and gettin’ in playground fights, so I thought I could do somethin’. I…punched and kicked ‘em as hard as I could. I think I might’ve bitten ‘em a couple times too. He…beat me up. Put a knife in Dad’s ribs and tossed it in the gutter. Cops came evetually, ambulance too, but they never found ‘em or figured out why he did it. Didn’t even try to grab Dad’s wallet.”

Aiden stepped close to him and pressed up against his side. “Danny…”

Danny stared at her wide-eyed, trembling badly all of a sudden. “That’s what I tole Antonio. Not exactly like that, but enough. ‘M sorry, Aid, I-I screwed up. I ain’t makin’ excuses here, but-but that’s what happened, that’s why I-”

“Awright, Danny, s’okay. Okay? C’mon, let’s go, please?”

He looked sharply over at the unassuming curb and soggy sneaker and said nothing.

Aiden reached out and took hold of his stubbly chin in firm fingers and gently forced him to face her again. “It was a long time ago. And you apologized to Antonio. So it’s over, awright, Messer? Now c’mon, let’s get inside. We’re soaked and freezin’.”

He swallowed visibly and nodded his head too quickly. “Yeah. Fuck. Yeah, let’s geddoutta here…Where?”

She thought for a moment, then said, “My place. It’s closer. You can have a nice hot shower and I’ll order us some food, okay? I got some old clothes of my brothers’ you can borrow.”

An hour later, Aiden was sitting on her couch, wearing warm sweats and wrapped in an afghan, staring at the TV without really seeing what it was showing.

She was thinking about her partner and friend.

She kept trying to imagine being the kind of person who would beat a helpless little kid, but like always, she couldn’t do it. Aiden couldn’t imagine Danny being a very big ten-year-old either; in her head he would have been scrawny and a little on the short side with bony shoulders, dirty blonde hair probably in a skater’s or punker’s cut even then, and huge blue eyes. Imagining someone taking on Jack Messer, a maybe not tall but definitely built and heavy-shouldered man, on in a random fight was difficult as well. Especially a fight in which Jack would be defending his youngest son.

No wonder Danny had ‘issues’ with gypsy cabbies. In fact, now that she thought about it, Danny could be really weird about what cab’s he got into. Before she’d assumed he was either nuts or trying to annoy her when they’d get into a yellow cab, settle down and give their destination, only to have Danny suddenly jump out and say he was walking, or didn’t like that cab and wanted another. It only happened maybe half a dozen times, but she'd wanted to smack him upside the head every time. But now she understood and sympathized.

Danny had made a complete turnaround on the train ride to her building, babbling and laughing breathlessly the whole trip, almost hyper with energy and nerves. He’d told her stories and little anecdotes about his dad and brother and kids he’d grown up with, about going to school in California – which he’d never mentioned before – about stuff going on between him and Flack and the lab geeks. It was babble and didn’t mean anything really, but Danny was talking again, so Aiden listened.

When they got to her place, he insisted she shower and change first, and when she’d come out of the bathroom, he was standing stock still at the window, staring blankly out into the darkness and rain. She let him have his dark, switching on only the kitchen stovetop light, and told him it was his turn to get warm. He went without a word, silent again.

Now as he emerged from the bathroom, the sweats stolen from her big brother Charlie hanging low off his narrow hips and pooling at his feet and the baseball style tee from Tommy at least one size too big, he looked tired and worn-out, but not cold or lonely anymore. He also looked even more like how she imagined him as a kid than ever, with too-big-older-brother’s clothes and uncontrollable hair, just shuffling across the rug in his socks like a sleepy kid headed for the cartoons on a Saturday morning.

“You gotta learn to come in from the rain, Messer,” Aiden told him as he padded over to stand at the window behind the couch again. “You coulda gotten hypothermia.”

“You gotta learn not to follow crazed men ‘round in the rain, Burn. You looked like a drowned rat.” She opened her mouth to snap back, but he continued in a low voice, “’Sides. I like the rain. S’like…you’re in your own little world and nothin’ can touch you. Nothin’. Y’know?”

Aiden stood and moved around the couch to join him. As she wrapped the afghan around his shoulders, she said softly, “I know.”

Danny shuddered, just briefly, and leaned in close to her. She slipped her arms around his waist and laid her cheek against his shoulder, hugging him from behind.

“That gypsy hack really messed you up, hahn?”

“…Yeah. He did. However way you mean that, yeah, he really fuckin’ did.”

Danny twisted in her embrace till he was facing her and grasped her hands in his own. He pulled and shoved them under his shirt, one hand against the left side of his ribcage, the other up onto his right clavicle, pressing her fingertips into his now warm and soft skin and the protruding bones.

“He-he grabbed my arm and twisted it till the shoulder dislocated, my collarbone broke and my forearm snapped. Ya feel that?” He rubbed her fingers over a jutting lump on the clavicle. “Dad tried to geddup, but the cabbie got the knife in ‘em then. Then he pushed me to the ground and started kickin’ me.”

He pressed her other hand harder against his ribs, where she could feel a serious of juts and lumps of healed breaks. She could also feel the too-quick beating of his heart and his chest moving with each worked up breathe. Aiden knew Danny had broken his ribs at least a dozen times over the years, and wondered briefly if he was showing her the correct scar tissue, if he was remembering right after twenty years. She was sure he was. “I busted four ribs. I…I was cryin’ and screamin’ but nobody came and he wouldn’t stop. Dad couldn’t get up. Finally I, uh, I must’ve passed out, y’know? ‘Cause after that all I got is wakin’ up in the hospital with my mother and Louie there.

“I-I had, uh, a panic attack and almost really hurt myself ‘cause I didn’t see Dad and my mother was bawlin’ and Louie looked like he wanted to beat the shit outta someone. Dad was always tellin’ ‘em that he hadta protect me from gettin’ hurt by the bigger boys in the neighbourhood, and I think he saw our attack as a failure on his part. Dad was okay, he was just asleep in another room, but, I don’ know, I was just a little guy then, ten-years-old, and I was pretty spooked. I was so black and blue. It hurt so much…I couldn’t believe how fuckin much it hurt, Aid.”

Aiden sighed and swallowed back tears. “Don’t talk ‘bout it anymore if you don’ wanna, Danny. S’okay to just forgeddabout this, okay?”

“I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t…I can’t forget how Dad yelled and how it hurt and how I screamed…I thought it was someone else screamin’ at first, and I couldn’t believe how bad it sounded. Couldn’t believe no one would come save us.”

She circled her arms around him again and pressed her forehead into his neck. He stiffened for a moment, then slowly returned the embrace, holding her tightly flush to his body.

“Don’ tell nobody. Please. Not Don or Mac or nobody. Only my family knows, and you and Antonio. I can’t – I don’ want – just don’t tell nobody, Aid, promise me.”

“Why not? You were a kid, just a little kid, why would it matter if people knew?” Aiden demanded, even though the promise was already in her next breathe.

Danny hunched his shoulders and buried his face in her damp hair. “I hate it when they look at me. Like I’m weak or a screw-up or trouble. I hate it. I couldn’t stand it, not with this. Let ‘em think whatever the fuck they want ‘bout the Tanglewoods and my old man, but not this. They can’t have this.”
“Awright, Messer, I promise. But you can’t keep it for yourself either. Let it go now, okay? Just let it go.” She hesitated, then pushed aside the collar of his tee and kissed him softly on the clavicle, over the knot of healed bone. “For your Dad and Louie and Antonio and for me. For yourself. Just let it go.”

Danny was silent for a long moment, standing perfectly still. Aiden could tell he was calming down though because his muscles were relaxing and his breathing was evening out. Only she and maybe Flack could get him to chill out so quickly and efficiently.

“Awright,” he finally murmured. “Awright. But I just – can you…?”

Aiden pulled back a few inches to look him in the eye. “What?”

He chewed his bottom lip and asked quietly, “Can we go to bed? I-I’m tired. I’ll go home if you prefer but tonight I just…”

“Yeah, Danny-O. Let’s go.” She gave him a mockingly stern look. “But don’t you go tryin’ any funny stuff now, you got me? ‘Cause you know I can righteously kick your ass if you do.”

He managed a feeble half-grin. “No, no. I got ya, Burn. No funny stuff. You know me, I’m a goddamn saint.”

Smiling back at him took all her remaining strength, but when his grin widened a little more, it was worth it. She lead him silently to the bedroom and they settled down easily, as if it was perfectly natural for Danny to lie in the middle of the double bed with Aiden curled up against his side with her head on his chest. After a moment of just lying there, feeling the warmth returning to their still damp bones, she realized that she was idly fiddling her fingers against his ribs.

“Messer.”

“Mm.”

“I’m sorry ‘bout what happened to you.”

“…’Ppreciate that. So’m I.”

Aiden closed her eyes, deciding that the feeling she felt most at the moment was relief. Relief that Danny was okay, that he trusted her enough to seek comfort from her, that she’d chosen to follow him today.

“Danny-O.”

“Uhn.”

“…Did I really look like a drowned rat?”

He grinned in the dark. “Yeah. But a really cute one.”