This is meant to be tongue in cheek as it’s completely different from my usual style. Sorry if it sucks.

For those at the BC.

Disclaimer: Not mine don't sue.

Rating: T - some language and insinuated adult situations.

No spoilers.

The Eagle and the Mountain

“Breathe in… two… three… four and exhale… two… three… four. Well done, guys, breathe in… and relax.”

Danny looked to his right and glared at Don. Not just a ‘wait till I get you alone’ look, but a full force ‘you are going to die through lack of sex’ look. Don was clearly aware of the glare and it’s meaning, but chose to ignore it, steadying his concentration on the yoga teacher and the next posture she was demonstrating.

“Right, guys, it’s time for a balance. We’re going to try trikonasana, the triangle pose. This is very good, guys, for toning the spinal nerves and helping the proper function of the digestive system. We need to start in tadasana, pose of a mountain…”

Danny watched as Don pre-empted the instructions. So far he had proved to be a bit of a teacher’s pet, having been used twice as an example, looking as if he was trying desperately not to beam with pleasure every time Rhonda, the yoga tutor, purred his name.

“That’s excellent Don. Danny, if you just look up one minute and look at how Don holds his back - your knees need to be straight and your hips forward,” Rhonda put the palms of her hands on his hips and tried to tilt them a little further. He could have sworn she touched him for a little too long.

Dammit. Flack would know pain later.

This had not been his idea of fun. In fact it was anything but. Don had been attending yoga classes at the YMCA for over a year and had come home from each session remarkably relaxed, with an ‘inner calm’ that Danny, try as hard as he might, had just not been able to irritate. Don had even refused sex on yoga nights, saying that he didn’t want to disrupt his karma and that Danny should join him at a class one night so he could understand something Don enjoyed.

Danny had scoffed and sulked at the idea, passing the predictable comments.

“I don’t do poncey, girly stuff like yoga,” he had said, taking out his dumbbells to make the point. Don had laughed, sat back in his chair and watched the spectacle.

“You not going to take your shirt off, Messer?”

Danny looked at him then looked down to Flack’s tousers, turning up his nose in disgust and let the dumbbells bash against the floor, narrowly missing Don’s toes and causing an almighty bang that would have Mrs. Lennox downstairs complaining.

“So it’s alright for you to ogle me and get your rocks off while I’m exercising, but I’m not even allowed to take a quick look at you when you’ve come back from yoga as it ruins your inner calm?” Danny spat, pulling a sweater over his wife beater.

“If you came with me to a class, you’d understand, Dan. Yoga’s not like messing around with weights or building up a sweat, it’s doing you mind good as well,” Don said, leaning in towards the now petulant man on the sofa. “You should come, pay a bit of interest in something I’m interested in, instead of it always being about you and shooting hoops!”

“You like doing that!”

“Variety is the spice of life and all that. Try it Dan, you might like it.”

“Variety like them women in tights and leotards like on that music video? Bet you like watching them bend…” Danny snorted, turning on the television and refusing to look at Don.

“Aw, Dan. Don’t be like that. There’s quite a few men there as well, all wearing tight…” A cushion hit him on the head. “Dan!”

The resulting sulk had lasted for two days with Don doing his best to pacify Danny, ordering his favourite pizza, cleaning the apartment they had just started sharing unbeknown to the rest of their friends and colleagues, and even buying him a new shirt, going against all Don’s laws of buying clothes for someone other than himself.

“’S’not going to work,” Danny said, as the bag lay on the kitchen table. The kitchen table that contained too many memories of how they had first christened the apartment to ever actually eat at it. “I can’t be bought.”

“You have been before,” Don said, referring to the tickets to game he had bought Danny after their first tiff.

“Not this time,” Danny said, dying to know what was in the bag.

“Danny, I go to yoga to relax, not to ‘ogle’ other people. And if you came with me then I wouldn’t have to look at any one else.” Danny noticed the blue eyes becoming wider and the soft pink lips turning into a pout.

“Danny…”

Danny felt the lump of lead in his chest begin to warm.

“Dan… please come with me… just see…”

The lead began to beat a little faster.

“You know you can look at me all you like in those shorts…”

Damn Donald Flack!

And now Danny was cursing Donald Flack once more, but not for having eyes that were enough like the sea that you drown in them, or for having one hell of a tush, but for getting him into this goddamn awful position that was called something ridiculous like a trick – answer.

“That’s great, guys. Take a deep breath and slowly fold out of the position. Well done, guys. We’re now going to do the other side.”

Danny stifled a groan. He glanced at Don, stood like a… mountain or was it mountie? He couldn’t remember. He had never seen such concentration etched upon his face since well, the last time Danny had been doing a different type of ass –ana altogether. Danny smirked. Maybe he had approached this with the wrong type of attitude altogether.

He watched Rhonda as she demonstrated another way to get into trikanasana and this time he concentrated. There was no way he was letting Flack Junior get away with this, finding it so easy to focus when Danny was stood next to him modelling the shortest pair of shorts that Flack could have possibly bought. Flack had brought them back for him after Danny had argued he had no suitable attire to perform yoga in an attempt to wrangle himself out of doing this bendy stuff. The relationship between them had been much less strained once Flack had got the shorts back off of Danny. Danny smirked at the memory, remembering the aches he had had the morning after that. He mentally prepared himself to become flexible, remembering all the limbering up exercises he had done before baseball, and all the experiences he had of being a contortionist since living with Flack.

You are going to regret me ever coming here, Donnie-boy, he thought, tipping his shoulder and dropping the tips of his fingers to his toe.

“Well done, guys! Danny, that’s excellent, you’re really getting into this now! I could fit you in between two panes of glass you are that straight!” Rhonda cooed. He managed to glance at Don whose concentrated look had now changed to one of mild irritation. Danny smirked.

“Return to tadasana, facing me, guys. Thank you. We are now going to try an asana we’ve not done before, the garuda-asana, the eagle pose. This is quite fitting as we have two NYPD officers here with us and in Hindu mythology, garuda helps Vishnu and is said to be keen to help humans fight against demons, a bit like our two heroes over there.” Danny was sure she was batting her eyelids at him. He smiled. There were no laws against using the old Messer charm in a yoga class.

Don’s eyes flickered over to him, shooting him a warning glare. Danny licked his lips, making Rhonda smile. Flack was so going to regret even suggesting Danny take a yoga class.

“Right guys. Start in tadasana. Imagine planting your right foot in the ground and it growing roots as we do when we stand in vriksha-asana. Find your balance and slowly bring up your left foot and wrap it round your right leg. Good, well done guys. Now cross your arms over at your elbows, left over right. Good, good. Now join the palms of your hands together and point the finger upwards. Excellent.”

Rhonda left the pose and came over to Danny, bending down and moving his legs a little more.

“You have amazing balance for someone who’s never done yoga before,” she said, keeping her voice low. The room was in such silence that Danny was sure everyone heard it. “But you do seem very strong.”

He grinned at her. “Thank you. I do a bit of weight work and I play a lot of sport.”

“I can tell!”

Flack fell over.

Danny fought the urge to turn around and check that his partner was alright, instead staying perfectly still, concentrating on one spot in front of him and not letting anything distract him.

“Just have a breather for a minute, Don. It is a difficult posture.” She let them stay in agony a moment or two longer. Danny was dying to look at Flack, but restrained himself, concentrating on keeping his amazing balance. “Right, guys. Come out of the position, straighten out your arms first then your legs. Give them a shake and then we’ll go back into tadasana and do the other side.”

Danny sneaked a look at Don who was standing in tad-something, trying to look serene and failing miserably. He had a quick look round the room while he was shaking out his muscles, surprised at how they were being worked. Eighteen months ago he would have been like a pig in muck in this place. There were at least eight, no nine, women he would have considered to have been potential Messer-mates and a couple of guys that he knew Don would have noticed. Danny wondered if Don had noticed them, or any of the women there. He had been left unchaperoned for far to long in coming here.

Rhonda made them turn the other way, so this time Danny was facing Don’s back. He watched as the muscles in Don’s back tightened as he moved his arms into position and saw his strong legs twist around each other, his left buttock tensing visibly through his shorts. Danny gave a slight smile of appreciation, his mind drifting away from achieving karma and onto what other pleasures had been achieved.

“And relax. That was good guys. Next time we’ll hold it for a little longer. Right, can we get into shivasana – the corpse pose.”

Danny caught Don’s eye as he began to lie on his back. Corpse pose? Was she taking the piss? Don ignored the look, clearly thinking himself above such inanities. Danny’s face fell back into its huffy expression as Rhonda ran them through the instructions for the next posture.

“You only have to go the once,” Don had said, once Danny had been pacified in the ways that only Don knew how. “If you don’t like it then you don’t have to go again. It’ll be nice to do something together.”

“We already do do things together. It’s good to have separate interests,” Danny protested.

“Go on, Dan. At least you’ll understand why I go then.”

Danny ran through the conversation in his mind while stuck in some asana called naga-saki or something, feeling like his back was slowly being broken the wrong way. He then had to lunge up and bend completely forward for what seemed like the hundredth time in something called salute the sun. He wished there was a sun to salute given that it was near freezing in the middle of November in New York.

“Right guys, one last salutation then we’ll start to cool down,” Rhonda’s voice whispered through the room. He found himself sweating and a little out of breath. Maybe that last cigarette before he came in here hadn’t been such a good idea, but hell if he was letting Don know that. He was already on about nicotine patches and going cold turkey. Danny needed to have at least one vice other than Don.

Finally, finally, Rhonda let them breathe, ordering them to sit with their backs straight.

“We’ll do one last twist and you’ll be glad to know guys that we do this one lying down…” Her voice disappeared as he found himself almost curled up next to Don, thinking about other things they could do lying down that would be slightly less painful than this was probably going to be. The class had been packed, so their mats had had to be placed almost touching. Danny found himself looking into the other man’s eyes that he had thought - until ransacking his bathroom cabinet once - were that blue due to tinted lenses. It hadn’t been the case. They were that blue.

He found himself giving Flack a light smile, wondering if he had been forgiven for flirting with the yoga teacher. Flack ignored him and closed his eyes.

Fine, thought Danny. Two can play at that game. He turned quietly and put his back to Don, hoping that he got the message.

By the time Rhonda had begun the soft, lilting music that Danny swore was meant to be the sound of whales conversing he felt as if every muscle in his body had been run over by one of Montana’s tractors. No wonder Don wasn’t interested in any other form of exertions after this, he was too goddamn knackered, nothing to do with not wanting to ruin his karma.

Rhonda lit some candles and turned the lights in the room off, her voice lowering and beginning to tell him something about going placidly amongst the noise and the haste and that he was, indeed, a child of the universe.

Danny closed his eyes, having faint recollections of what a long day it had been. The room was warm and he did feel rested and relaxed. His mind began to empty, following Rhonda’s advice, although he missed the next instruction to tense his muscles having fallen asleep, comforted by the gentle, soothing sound of Don’s breathing not too far away and having pleasant dreams about being in bed, covered with a duvet thick with down.

The next thing he was aware of was the bright lights and Don’s voice coming from fairly close by.

“Hi, yeah, I’m Don. I have seen you hear a few times.”

Danny sat up on his yoga mat, wiping the small trail of drool that had collected at he corner of his mouth.

“I’m Fay. I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a few weeks, but you always seemed in such a rush to leave.”

Danny was immediately awake. And not happy with what he was seeing.

“You’re really good. Have you been doing yoga for a while?” Don asked Fay. Danny’s head swung from side to side with the conversation like watching a game on tennis. Only tennis did not usually provoke such an internal reaction in him.

“Five years now. I’m hoping to become a yoga teacher.”

“Well, I’d definitely come to your classes.”

Bastard!

“Really? That’s sweet of you to say. Maybe we could go and get a drink one night after class? You could bring…” Fay looked round to where Danny was sat, an incredulous look plastered across his face.

“Danny,” Don said, not taking his eyes off Fay’s face. “He’s a colleague from work – one of the CSI’s. This was his first time doing yoga, he might not come again.” Danny was sure Flack was sending him a message.

“Oh, really? That must be so interesting. Did you say you were a detective?”

Danny stood up and made his way over to Flack, giving as many pointed looks as he could muster and having each one pointedly ignore.

“Flack,” he said. “I think I heard your pager.”

Don now looked at him. “I swear I switched it off.”

“Maybe it’s Mary-Sue. You know she gets pissed off when you’re late.” Danny looked at Fay who was now looking wide-eyed and unimpressed with Mr Straight and Single Flack. Flack was now looking at Danny, giving him the sneer he usually reserved for crooks that had pissed him off.

“Maybe it is, Fay. It was good to meet you.” She stared at him in answer and then scuttled back to her mat, clearly unimpressed that he had a girlfriend called Mary-Sue.

Don said nothing to Danny as they made their way to the car park. The silence was that thick that Danny began to get a little worried. Don didn’t sulk or give him the silent treatment. He was rational. He was level headed. He never let arguments get out of hand.

“Don, I’m sorry…” Danny said.

“Just get in the car and drive Danny. We’ll talk about this when we get home.”

Danny switched on the ignition and began to make their way back to the apartment, cursing himself. If only he hadn’t licked his lips when Rhonda was looking at him, or pretended that Flack had a girlfriend called Mary Sue. Don was quiet in the car, looking broodily out of the window. Danny didn’t even try to say anything. He wasn’t sure what to do.

Back at the apartment Danny found himself stood next to the table, sadly remembering its first use. “Don, I’m…”

“Did you enjoy yoga, Danny?”

Danny was surprised at the question. And at the heat in Don’s voice.

“Well, it was alright, I suppose.”

“Did you enjoy yoga, Danny?” Danny wondered why he was being interrogated. Man, he knew that Don liked to be the best at what he did, yoga, interrogating suspects, but he didn’t have to demonstrate it here.

“It was good.”

“You think you’ll be going there again?”

“Probably not.”

“And why’s that?”

“I don’t think you’ll want me there.”

Don stayed silent, hands in the pockets of the jacket that barely covered his shorts.

"Maybe you were a little of a distraction."

"Maybe."

“Why don’t we do some yoga here?” Don said, shrugging his shoulders. Danny felt worried.

“If you want,” he said, wanting to appease him.

“Do that forward bend again. While you’ve got those shorts on.” A note of desperation sounded in Don's voice.

Danny began to get the idea. He smiled broadly. The full Messer charm.

“Sorry, Don. I’m tired. More yoga might ruin my karma.” Danny began to make his way toward the bedroom.

“Danny!”

Danny smiled as he through the jacket and t-shirt across the room. He knew exactly how to destroy Don’s karma. Eagles and mountains. And shorts.

Make a girl happy and review. :) Pwetty pwease...