the memory of hurts

What if this present were the worlds last night?
Marke in my heart, O soule, where thou dost dwell--

--John Donne

why don't you tell me 'bout the mystery dance?
I wanna know about the mystery dance--
why don't you show me 'cause I tried and I tried
and I'm still mystified--
I can't do it anymore and I'm not satisfied.

--Elvis Costello

"Passover symbolizes the hope and renewal of spring."

Dan could still hear the rabbi saying that. His family's habit had been to only attend temple on the high holidays, and most of his memories were of him and his brothers fidgeting in boredom under the stern eye of his father, but he did remember the rabbi saying that, possibly because he hadn't understood it very well at the time. At ten what did you really know about the need for hope and renewal? Now he understood. But, he thought, Passover is also about avoiding disaster by the skin of your teeth. And that's what we did, he thought as he looked at Casey. Even days after the impromptu conference room Seder, Dan still felt that he wanted to move softly and speak quietly, in order not to upset their delicately balanced peace.

In compensation, it seemed, he looked at Casey alot. In fact, a large part of his working day now seemed to be occupied with finding opportunities to stare at Casey when he felt he wouldn't be observed doing so. He found that times when Isaac was present were useful, since he tended command the collective attention of the staff. Sally, particularly when wearing one of her jungle priestess outfits, was also an excellent decoy. He was like a man who, after nearly dropping something priceless--a T'ang Dynasty vase, say, or his newborn child--returns obsessively to check and make sure that the vase and the child are intact.

Hope and renewal, Dan thought.

Casey, for his part, was trying not to look at Dan, because he was afraid of what might happen if he did. This is what I get, he thought, for never sowing a single wild oat. Casey had been aware of his occasional impulses toward other men since college, but had never felt a great need to act on them. In the years with Lisa, these impulses had receded so far into the background of his thoughts that he sometimes went months without remembering that, strictly speaking, he wasn't perfectly cast in the role of All-American straight guy--the role Lisa had seemed so desperately to need him to play. Since the divorce, he had made a few gestures toward reclaiming those things about himself which didn't quite fit the part of "Lisa's perfect husband". He got a new haircut. He bought some clothes that he knew would have displeased Lisa, but which pleased him greatly. A little tighter, a bit flashier--"Do you have to look like a peacock," he could hear her say. Well, tough shit, Lise. At first, these actions had merely seemed like background music to the action--something that added piquancy to being newly single and independant, but wasn't the real story. The real story was Sally, and Pixley: their perfumed hair and their warm wetness and their uncomplicated desire for him. For a while he had also thought the real story was Dana. Then the background music began to grow louder and louder, and the hand on the volume control was Dan's.

"I can't imagine the last ten years without you." He had said that, and the moment he had said it he felt a click in his solar plexus and the world seemed to rearrange itself around that statement. He had hugged Danny and when Danny moved out of the circle of his arms, Casey only wanted to pull him back. Sitting next to Danny in the Seder, feeling Danny's hand on his wrist gently stop him from drinking the wine too soon, hearing Danny's voice give the responses to Jeremy's prayers, was a relief so pure it was painful. He had their friendship back--he had Danny back. In the days that followed, if that relief was gradually transmuted into a burgeoning desire to see Danny naked, well, he would just have to deal. I did not go through all that crap, Casey said determinedly to himself, just to fuck this friendship up.

Into this precarious peace, the news of the sale of Continental Corp. dropped like an unexploded bomb. A few hours after the sale was announced, the fuse was lit by phone calls from a big network affiliate in Los Angeles, offering the three of them--Dan, Casey, Dana--new jobs on a new show. Dan and Casey sat in Dana's office, listening to her talk on the phone to a man named Lou DiSaltorno, who was apparently the station manager. She managed to be at once encouraging and non-committal, and sounded charming to boot. After a final exchange of pleasantries, she hung up the phone.

"We don't have to take any action on this for a while, you know." Dana looked at both of them. Dan wondered if he looked as panicky as he felt, for she added gently, "The sale was just announced. With a little luck, we'll have a nice smooth change of ownership, and that will be that."

"Jesus." Dan swiveled to look at Casey, who appeared slightly shell shocked as he spoke. "What's going on? CSC goes on the block and three hours later we have a job offer?"

"Don't get paranoid," Dana warned. "It won't help."

"We can't help it, Dana," Dan said. "We've all been working for Luther way too long for this not to seem pretty sinister, you know?"

Dana sighed. "Listen, you know these guys are sharks. They patrol the waters, waiting for the first scent of blood. The sale was the first scent, that's all. Now, I don't know this Lou Di-whatever, but he sounded okay, and his network has a bigger budget for this new show than we ever had, so if we end up needing a fallback position, the one he's offering is probably pretty good. " She sounded like she was trying to convince herself, Dan noted.

"I really don't want to work somewhere else," Dan said quietly.

"I don't want to leave New York," Casey added, even quieter. Dan felt as if something cold had touched him momentarily, and he had to stop himself from moving closer to Casey, to Casey's body heat.

Dana looked at them both. "Me neither."

After that, there seemed little else to say, so they went to the ten o'clock rundown meeting. The show that night, to everyone's surprise, was good.

After a day or so, Lou DiSaltorno called from L. A. again. Could the three of them come out for a visit? Just a quick trip, separately, together, whatever was convenient. Let's meet each other face to face. See the studio. Lunch at Le Dome. Rooms at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Limo at LAX.

Dana went out first. She flew out for one day and a night in the middle of the week and Natalie took the show. The next afternoon, Dana, looking solemn, walked into their office and shut the door.

"Well?" said Casey. Dan said nothing. He found he could not take his eyes off Casey's right hand, watching him twist a pen nervously through his long fingers.

"Well, it's a serious offer," Dana began. "They want us very badly. We have alot of bargaining power, I think."

"Are they willing to wait? Did they pressure you at all?" That was Casey again. Dan felt as if he had a touch of aphasia.

"No, not at all. But I think you should go out there. I told them I thought we could arrange it--maybe this weekend? You've got that long weekend scheduled. I know you were going to Atlantic City, and since Casey wasn't going to have Charlie anyway, I thought, maybe..." Dana trailed off, then added, "They want to woo you a bit. They'll probably show you a good time."

"No, no, sure. I mean, that's fine. Atlantic City can wait for another time, right, Danny?"

Dan looked at Casey curiously. He noticed the neat curl of Casey's ear, how the top two buttons of his ubiquitous Henley were undone, exposing the pale hollow at the base of his throat. He felt his vision zoom in like a camera lens, and was suddenly aware of the faint line of stubble on Casey's chin, the golden flecks in his irises. His eyes, which were pleading and...something else. For a moment he was caught in Casey's eyes, and their indecipherable message, then he looked away. He realized that Casey was saying something.

"What do you think, Danny? Should we go meet them?"

I'm going to be positive about this, Dan thought. I'm going to take each moment as it comes. "Yeah, I think we should."

They flew first class, taking the redeye on Friday night after the show. Casey sat down in his seat, immediately lowered the seat back, stretched out his long legs, and groaned in relief. A motherly looking flight attendant brought them blankets and pillows, called them by name, and offered them things to eat and drink. If I asked her, she'd probably stroke my hair and tell me a bedtime story, thought Casey blearily.

"Nice, huh?" Dan said.

"Remind me to kiss whoever got us first class tickets when we get there, okay?" Casey muttered.

"Okay." Dan was silent for a moment, then said, "so, what kind of kiss we talkin' here? A peck? or full-on French?"

Casey eyes were closed, but he grinned. "What do you suggest?"

"I dunno, I think first-class might rate a little tongue."

"You're probably right."

"On the other hand, you might want to get a look at this prospective kiss-ee before you rashly commit yourself."

"Also an excellent point. Maybe I should nominate you to do the kissing."

"I'm just sayin'."

Casey yawned hugely.

"Go to sleep, Case." Dan felt keyed up, the way he always did on planes, but Casey could fall asleep while they were taxiing out to the runway, and usually did.

In the air, Dan sipped his beer and considered his immediate future--the next two days. Two days and two nights--there had been no available seats back to New York on Sunday, so they were staying over Sunday night and flying back on Monday morning. The thought that these days and nights might help decide his life's course was just too daunting to face. Take each moment as it comes, remember? So instead, he tried to concentrate on the details--two days of fun in a luxury hotel, at someone else's expense. With Casey. This gave him clammy hands and a dry mouth that made the beer taste like medicine. He felt panicky and alone at thirty thousand feet, and Casey had gone off to sleep and left him there. He turned his head to look at the sleeping man next to him, and as it usually did these days, the sight of Casey made things better. Casey, with his mouth open slightly and his face pushed into the tiny airline pillow, might be one of the sources of Dan's anxiety, but he was also a source of Dan's comfort. He's going to have a ziggurat in his hair when he wakes up, thought Dan.

The other first class flight attendant--not the motherly one, this woman was younger--stopped to ask him if he would like another beer. Her voice was low and pleasant, and her gaze on him was frankly appraising. Dan mustered up a smile and a murmured "no thanks", and tried to remember the last time he had felt a genuine impulse to flirt with an attractive woman. He couldn't. Sometime before Abby, anyway. The work is hard, Abby had reassured him, when he had mentioned that to her. It impacts all parts of your life. And you know, Dan, you're in the process of learning what--and who--it is you really want. He hadn't told her about those strange moments in the office with Sam Donovan. He was pretty sure that Sam would have taken him up if he had pursued it, but those moments hadn't felt much like flirting: more like something frighteningly akin to need. Some instinct for self-preservation had kicked in; Sam was too mercurial to be a safe vehicle for need, however carnal and fleeting.

Dan yawned. The beer was making him sleepy.

Somewhere over the Rockies, Dan felt himself swimming slowly up to consciousness. He was warm, and surprisingly comfortable. His arm was resting across something, and he could feel soft cotton under his fingers. And under his nose, too. He opened his eyes, and realized that this was because his nose was pressed into the back of Casey's shoulder. In the night, Casey had turned on his side, and they had left the dividing seat arm up; Dan was spooned up against him, his arm around Casey's waist. Casey had his hand on Dan's encircling arm. Moving very slowly, so as not to wake him, Dan tried to sit up. Casey's hand tightened slightly.

"S'okay." It was very soft, but sounded awake.

Dan didn't reply, just relaxed again into the warmth and comfort of Casey's long back. He could see out the window over Casey's shoulder. Together they watched the sun come up over the mountains, and by the time the motherly flight attendant came around with coffee, they were sitting up, the seat arm lowered between them.

They were met at LAX by Sarah, one of the show's assistant producers. She was small, blonde and cheerful, and reminded Dan of Natalie, just a bit, althought she had a far more relaxed, undemanding presence. Give her time, thought Dan, and maybe she'll be ordering us around and stealing our pants. This thought brought on a wave of homesickness. Dan stared resolutely out the window, watching the oil pumps scattered across the barren expanse of the Baldwin Hills go by.

Casey too, was looking out the car window. In the last three years, he had gotten used to Manhattan, but Los Angeles still amazed him, every time he came here. Both the thin veneer of semi-tropical vegetation and the underlying desert landscape seemed wildly exotic to his Midwestern eyes. He listened to Sarah recount their itinerary. Check in at the hotel. Tour the station. Lunch. Dinner at some restaurant at the beach he hadn't heard of, but which she assured them was the newest thing. He shifted uneasily, thinking of "fusion" cuisine and fennel salads, and stole a glance at Danny, who was smirking at him in perfect comprehension. He was a far more adventurous diner than Casey; Casey had seen him voluntarily consume things like sweetbreads and stuffed octopus, and he routinely ordered the house dressing for his salad. Casey preferred ranch, the kind that came in a bottle.

"Sounds yummy," Dan said.

Sarah was still talking. Brunch tomorrow at the hotel, and whatever they felt like for Sunday afternoon--they only had to ask. It seemed appropriate that Sarah should utter those land-of-enchantment words just as the car rolled into Beverly Hills, which looked, as usual, like a giant's set of deserted dollhouses. English Tudor made way for Moorish arches, followed by Mediterranean tile and stucco, all with perfect lawns and gardens, all empty of people. The shadows of the ranked palm trees slipped across Dan's face, and even though his eyes were hidden behind his sunglasses, Casey felt comforted by his presence. Comforted even though the passing shadows seemed to be keeping time for a tune that had been playing in his head for the past few days; one that went: charliecharliecharliecharlie. danny. danny. lisa? charliedannycharlie.

Dan knew Casey was nervous--Casey hated job interviews, or any situation where he had to make a good impression on strangers, which went a long way toward explaining his dating antipathy--and perversely, this made him feel better. Shaking off the homesickness, he set himself to charm Sarah, and to judge by her laughter and Casey's faintly sardonic expression, had succeeded by the time they reached the hotel. Sarah promised to be back to pick them up in a couple of hours, and left them to the tender care of the hotel staff.

"Jesus," Casey muttered when they entered their rooms. The Beverly Hills Hotel was perched on a hill above Sunset Boulevard, and their top-floor suite was located on a corner of the building. Some windows looked west down Sunset, and some looked north into the hills and the hotel grounds. The furniture was tasteful and expensive. There was a stocked bar in one corner of the sitting room. There were two bedrooms; the beds in them were only slightly smaller than the tennis courts visible in the distance.

"Oh, yeah," Dan drawled after the bellhop had been tipped and left, "they want us baaaad."

"Danny," said Casey, with a hint of panic, "do I look like a movie star to you? Because this is a movie star's hotel room."

"Relax, Case. Just think of yourself as the debutante, and this is the attempt to impress you with an expensive corsage and a limosine. It doesn't mean you have to put out."

"Oh, that makes me feel so much more comfortable."

"Casey." Dan was earnest. "Just think of it as another assignment, okay? One where we got incredibly lucky with the travel agent, and we know that no one is gonna look at our expense reports." He couldn't quite bring himself to say "take each moment as it comes".

"Okay. But no more debutante analogies."

"Did you have some bad experience at a coming-out dance you've never told me about?"

"Freshman year in college. Mary Ellen Miller."

"What? Did she barf on your tux? She go home with another guy?"

"Both."

Dan swallowed his laughter and nodded solemnly. "My lips are sealed, man." The exchange seemed to dispel the last of the lingering awkwardness that Dan had felt after waking up with his arm around Casey on the plane. They parted to shower and change, and Dan felt comfortable enough to leave the door of his bathroom open so he could shout to Casey as he shaved.

Casey seemed to relax a bit more at the station. It looked like an exceptionally dull warehouse from the outside, but inside it was comfortable and familiar--the usual horde of tv monitors, casually dressed people rushing around, rooms crowded with equipment. Lou DiSaltorno turned out to be from New Haven, and he and Dan found they had some acquaintances in common. He was low-key and friendly, striking exactly the right balance between treating them as visiting professional colleagues and courting them as the most desirable of talent. He promised to meet them for dinner, and handed them over to Sarah for lunch and a little sightseeing. One of the senior producers, a balding, fatherly type named Richard, came along.

Dan gave Sarah credit for perceptiveness; they did not have lunch in the media hothouse of Le Dome after all, but at Musso and Frank's on Hollywood Boulevard. It was not particularly crowded, and the old leather booths, the dark panelling, and the ancient waiters felt as close to the East Coast as Los Angeles got. Casey breathed a sigh of relief at the menu, which had probably seen no changes since 1956; tapioca pudding and Jello figured prominently among the desserts. Their nearest neighbors looked like eccentric regulars, and Richard pointed out a couple of old character actors sitting at the bar. Their lunch conversation was lively and unforced; by the time the check arrived they were having a friendly four way debate about the way sports had been portrayed in movies, and the merits of "Raging Bull", "Rocky" and "Golden Boy" were being energetically discussed.

The discussion continued in the car, with both Dan and Casey eager to disabuse Richard of the notion that "Pride of The Yankees" was a superior baseball movie to "Bull Durham". They were headed west, Dan realized vaguely, but he wasn't paying much attention until Casey fell abruptly silent and the car came to a complete stop in the middle of a block.

"Damn," Sarah muttered. She was at the wheel. "I forgot about the construction on Santa Monica."

Dan looked up and was instantly transported back in time thirteen years. They were in the middle of West Hollywood, and the apartment he'd lived in that summer in college was just up the street and around the corner. That bar that Michael had taken him to was still there, and the place where they used to get coffee was still a coffee shop, although it looked much trendier and more expensive. They were in the beating heart of boys' town, and on this balmy Saturday afternoon, the sidewalks were packed. Men in tight t-shirts, men in tiny shorts and ripped jeans, men with their arms around each other and men holding hands. They sat, and sat as the traffic refused to move, and the silence in the car lengthened. Dan stole a cautious glance at Casey. He knew he had told Casey that he had spent a summer in L. A.--had he told him which neighborhood he had lived in? Casey was looking out the window at the passing pageant on the sidewalk, his face a careful blank. The silence stretched out, until Richard, who seemed blessed with a sunny temperment and an intolerance for a pregnant pause, said, "So, Dan, I understand you're a Dartmouth alum. Do you know..." He launched into an interminable story about some faculty member whom Dan was grateful to be able say he remembered. Eventually, the congestion on the street broke up, and they were able to turn north and head up to Sunset.

Casey felt his lunch churning around in his stomach as he stared out the window of the car. He knew that he wasn't holding up his end of the conversation, but he was literally speechless as he gazed at all that toned male flesh, a voluptuary's dream. He was overcome by a crippling wave of jealousy, jealousy at all these blithe boys strolling by with their arms around their lovers, because they had something he would never know. No matter what happened, he would never be able to walk down the street like that with Danny. Suddenly, the uncertainty of their futures seemed overwhelming, and Casey wished he knew how to pray, because he'd pray for a buyer for the network who would keep everything just the way it was. A treacherous voice in his head murmured something about time being fleeting. Carpe diem, or whatever that damn phrase was. Someone had brought it up at lunch. Seize the fucking day.

Please move, Casey silently begged the cars. Please. After what seemed a small eternity, they did. I'll never complain about Manhattan traffic again, Casey thought.

The restaurant by the beach was beautiful, Casey had to admit. After he successfully located lamb chops in the menu's wilderness of phrases like "artichoke and heirloom tomato concasse" and "reduction of balsamico, baby garlic and beurre noir", he felt able to look around and admire his surroundings. The sun was setting, and his heart stuttered as he looked across the table at Danny, gilded in the light. Danny's face was contempletive as he studied his menu; the loose neck of his casually expensive shirt framed his throat and collarbone. The need to fill his mouth with something was suddenly so intense that Casey had to take a gulp of water. He longed for bread, but there was none on the table. He wanted to bite down hard, to feel the springy resistance of flesh under his teeth, and the softness of skin on his tongue.

The waiter brought their drinks, and they all--Lou and Sarah and Richard, as well--lifted them in a casual toast. "To a happy partnership," Lou said. Then he asked, "So, have either of you spent much time in L.A. before?"

"I had a couple of extended assignments out here with Dana in the late eighties," Casey said. "But we had such a brutal schedule that I never saw much of the town." He was slightly uncomfortable; he usually tried not to think too much about those assignments. Definitely not his finest hour, as Dana had once reminded him.

"Dana mentioned that, I think," Lou replied. "How about you, Dan?" Dan cleared his throat.

"Well, I lived out here for a summer when I was in college." For a moment Casey was surprised, and then he remembered. Danny had never talked much about his L. A. summer, and Casey tended to forget; it was before they had met. "I interned for a summer at KJXY."

"Then you worked for Stan Boudine! What a great guy, huh?," Lou exclaimed, and he and Dan were off again onto a list of mutual acquaintances. Sarah, however, was interested in the non-professional details, and eventually cut in with, "So Dan, where'd you live?"

Dan had prepared himself for this question after their traffic jam that afternoon, and said casually, "Oh, the west side. It was kind of a dump, but it was very convenient." He hoped she wouldn't ask for an address.

Sarah however, had latched onto "convenient", and said, "But KJXY isn't on the west side."

Dan smiled. Although he didn't know it, it was a smile that Casey loved, one that hinted at delightful secrets about to be revealed. "Nope, but it was closer to the ocean."

She lit up at that and asked, "Do you surf?"

Dan laughed. "I did then. If you could call it that. I probably spent way more time under my board than on top of it, but I had alot of fun." Relieved to have avoided the question of exactly where he had lived, he glanced at Casey. Casey was looking at him intently, smiling a little, and Dan was glad he was sitting down, for he got a shuddery sensation in his knees. For a moment, as they looked at one another, it felt like they were alone at the table. Casey had on a dark golden brown shirt, one of his more recent purchases, and Dan always wondered if a saleslady at Barney's had strong-armed him into buying it, or if he actually had a clue how gorgeous he looked in it. Casey always seemed spectacularly clueless when it came to his own appeal. Yeah, Dan thought ruefully, if we walked down Santa Monica with you wearing that shirt, you'd be fighting them off. He remembered Casey's silence in the car that afternoon. I need to tell him. If I ever mentioned I lived in West Hollywood, he's probably wondering a little anyway. It's nothing. It was so long ago. But it meant something to me, and I don't want to keep anything from him, not now. Dan felt touched by that fleeting cold apprehension of the future, but resolutely pushed it away.

Back in their opulent suite, Dan stood at the window looking down in to the carefully tended jungle that was the hotel garden. Casey sprawled on the couch, and looked at Dan's back. Neither of them seemed much inclined to discuss their potential job. Casey remembered Dan smiling at dinner, and said, "So tell me more about your summer out here. Did you really learn to surf?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I really did." Dan turned slightly toward him. "KJXY had a summer internship program, and I needed to get away after my sophomore year. It was still pretty bad at home, after Sam...Sam's death. My advisor was a good guy. He recommended me, and pulled some strings too, I think. It worked out well for me. It was a good summer."

"I can see how this place might help. It's..." Casey stopped, at a loss for words to describe the healing power of Los Angeles.

"It has no history," Dan said. "Out here, it can feel like the world is reborn every day."

Casey was silent for a moment. It was painful to think of Dan at nineteen, needing rebirth so badly that he would cross the continent and live alone in a strange city to try and achieve it. Then he prompted, "And the surfing?"

Casey could hear the smile in Dan's voice. "I met this guy, Michael. He taught me. He taught me a whole lot more than surfing, really. He taught me how to relax again. I had forgotten how. My shift at the station used to start at four in the afternoon. We'd get up almost every morning and go to the beach."

"Sounds nice. Did you keep in touch?"

"No." Dan paused, and then said, "He had a serious boyfriend who was out of the country for a year, and we both knew it was just a summer thing. I tried his old number a couple of years ago, just out of curiousity, but it was someone else's by that time." The silence stretched out, and finally Dan said gently, "Sorry if I sprang that on you, Case. I thought maybe you'd figured it out already."

Casey was vainly trying to hold onto his thoughts, which were careening madly, as he tried to mentally reassess the last ten years, and the next ten minutes, in light of this revelation. "No...no, I didn't. I guess maybe I should've though, huh?"

Dan shrugged. "It's not that big a deal." He turned and looked at Casey, and had a vivid memory of how for the two or three years following that summer, he had been attracted to every man he met, who like Michael, was tall and sandy-haired. Casey had been the last of them, and in a way the most significant. Not just because they had become best friends, but because Casey's true image had eventually superseded the memory of Michael's attractions. Casey no longer reminded Dan of Michael, but he was beautiful to Dan just the same. I have to be careful here, Dan thought. I don't want to make him uncomfortable; I put those feelings to rest along time ago. No matter how good he looks in that shirt.

Casey swallowed, trying to make his next words come out with out squeaking. "And now? I mean, do you see guys these days?" Once the words were out, he felt like a clumsy fool.

"Now?" Dan sounded abstracted. "Well, I guess...not so much, now." He waited for a while, clearly to see if Casey had anything else to say, but Casey was speechless, mainly because the thing he wanted most to say was, "Even so, would you mind kissing me?" Casey held onto himself very tightly. I can't. I can't. Even if he was interested. If the job doesn't work out, I wouldn't be able to stand it. At last, he managed, "I'm glad you told me, Danny."

"Well. Okay, that's, um, good." Then, with the air of someone changing the subject, Dan added, "I'm really beat. I'm gonna take a shower."

In the shower, Dan thought, well, that could have gone better. But what the hell did I expect? Hugs? He felt a small spurt of anger at that thought, wishing Casey hadn't looked so fucking uneasy, but he knew that wasn't really fair. He'd been surprised, after all. Dan soaped his crotch, and cradled his balls comfortingly, for a moment. Comfort was about all it offered; he had seldom felt less sexy. Pretty much the first week they had met, Dan had decided that Casey was off-limits, no matter how appealing he was. He was married and straight, and a colleague. This had kept him from thinking too much about Casey's long legs, or his hands, or how he lit up when he laughed. Now he thought about the days recently past spent gazing covertly at Casey, the desperate relief he had felt when Casey had opened his arms to him in the hall outside the conference room. It seemed like he had finally figured out something about who and what he really wanted.

Casey, for his part, sat on the couch in the dark and listened to the shower, and tried not to picture Dan naked and wet in the next room. Finally, the sounds stopped. Dan stuck his head back in the room and said goodnight and Casey went to bed.

Casey was dreaming. It was a familiar dream, and somewhere in the back of his sleeping mind, he knew he was dreaming it, but that didn't lessen its terror. He was lost in Manhattan, in a part of the city he had never seen before. He was supposed to be picking up Charlie, but he had no address, and there were no street signs, and no one on the street to ask directions of. The buildings loomed around him, tall and dark, blocking out the light. He ran down blocks and turned corners, only to find that the streets dead ended at tall blank walls. His panic grew. He flew down a street which suddenly gave way to an open vista of water and a deserted pier.

I'm at the river, Casey said in his dream. He ran out onto the pier.

There was a ferry just waddling out of its berth, separated from the pier's edge by a few feet of uncrossable space over sinister black water. Charlie was standing on the deck of the ferry, waving to him. "I'm okay, Dad! I'm okay!"

"Charlie! Wait...Charlie!" Casey looked wildly around. The huge stone pier had suddenly shrunk to the size of the dock at the lake where his family had vacationed when he was young. It was the dock; there was the rowboat they had used, tied up at the end. Casey had never really loved that rowboat--he liked a good solid deck between him and deep water--but he ran and jumped into it. He could no longer see the ferry, but he knew, with that dream logic, that if he could row hard enough, he could catch up with it and get to Charlie. He pushed off from the dock.

"Casey!" came a call from the shore. It was Danny, standing at the water's edge.

Thank god, Casey thought. "Danny!" He waved and gestured to the dock, come with me, come here. But instead of walking onto the dock, Danny began to wade into the water, which was still the grim blackness of the Hudson River, and not the friendly greenish blue lake water of Casey's childhood. "Danny, no!"

Dan laughed. "It's okay, Casey. I know how to surf," and then he disappeared under the dark surface of the water.

The rowboat was rocking and pitching wildly, and he was trying to hang on, to lean over and thrust his hand into the dark water and feel for Danny, and...suddenly, he was wide awake, and the rocking sensation was still going on. He was hanging partly off the bed. It was pitch black in the room.

"Danny?" he called out in a panic, before he could stop himself. There was a sound in the darkness and a strong hand grasped his wrist and Danny was saying, "It's okay, Casey. It was an earthquake, but it's over now, see? See? It's over."

It was true, the rocking had stopped. Casey rolled onto his side, away from the edge of the bed. "Why is it so dark?" he asked, and hated the crack in his own voice.

There was a click, and the bedside light came on. "Because it's three in the morning, you goof." Dan was sitting on the side of the bed in his boxers and a t-shirt, smiling at Casey. Then he said gently, "Freaky, isn't it? My first one scared the shit out of me."

"Yeah." Casey felt his clamoring pulse slow down a bit. "Shit. I was dreaming..."

"What?" Dan asked.

Casey looked at Dan, whose hair was in spikes on his head, wearing a t-shirt so faded the words "Baltimore Orioles" were barely discernable. "Nothing really. Just an old nightmare about losing Charlie."

"Sounds bad."

"Yeah." Casey swallowed. "I used to have them all the time right after I moved out, but it's been awhile." It seemed silly to tell Danny about his appearance in the dream, since he was sitting there on the bed, safe and dry and undrowned. This thought was wildly at odds with Casey's nearly overwhelming impulse to clutch Danny's hands, and tug him safely into his arms. He shuddered, and was horrified to feel his eyes fill with tears.

Dan didn't say a word, merely scooted closer and began patting and rubbing his shoulder through the blanket, then moved his hand up to stroke Casey's head comfortingly, firm fingers combing through his hair. Casey breathed deeply, and soon the trembling stopped. They stayed quietly in that position for a moment, then Dan moved his hand back to Casey's shoulder. It was so silent they might have been the only people in the hotel. Looking at Casey, at his slightly tear stained face, and at his short hair rumpled by sleep and Dan's fingers, Dan had a sudden clear vision of Casey at ten years old. He felt the texture of the hard muscle and bone of Casey's shoulder beneath his fingers, and ten year old Casey was strangely superimposed over grown-up Casey, whose long body Dan could see intriguingly outlined beneath the covers of the bed. He wanted to peel the sheet and blanket down and run his hands over the velvety skin of Casey's ribs and belly, stroke his legs down to his feet and back up again, kiss his...he sighed and said, "You okay? Can you go back to sleep?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. I'll be fine."

Dan peered at him, looking unconvinced, but said simply, "goodnight, then," and patted his knee under the covers as he got up. Casey turned out the light, but it was awhile before he slept again. When he did sleep, he had another dream, the one where Dan was pinned beneath Casey on the bed, twisting and panting, while Casey sought to satisfy the throbbing in his cock with friction that was never quite enough.

The next morning, he had first hand experience of Dan's observation about L. A.'s daily rebirth. Almost no one mentioned the earthquake. Sarah, who came to have brunch with them at the hotel, hadn't even woken up, she said. It was a beautiful morning, and they sat in the hotel garden and drank orange juice and champagne. Casey looked at Dan, who was flirting determinedly with Sarah, and felt a knot in his chest tighten and tighten.

It was Sunday afternoon, and because they were distracted and slightly uncomfortable in one another's company, and because the Lakers were on the road, they went to the Clippers game. The station had gotten them the tickets and a rental car. In the car on the way there, Danny turned to him.

"So, a basketball game in L.A. Not from the press box, but from the stands. You know what this means, don't you?"

"We're just common folk after all?"

"Naah, no way. It means..." Danny dropped his voice an octave and affected a crackerbarrel accent. "Swimmin' poools. Movieee staaahs." In a slightly more normal voice he added, "Ce-LEH-brities."

Casey found himself both touched and exasperated that Dan, who clung to his Big Apple sophistication like a debutante her reputation, could be excited by the prospect of seeing an unshaven actor, or an actress with more breasts than brains. Or that he would try to convince Casey he was excited, for the sake of gilding the lily that was Los Angeles. Casey was just looking forward to seeing the game, himself. Being on the air most nights, talking about sports, ironically meant they had limited opportunities to actually attend any live sporting event.

It was late in the season and the Clippers didn't have a snowball's chance in hell at making the playoffs, so they were able to get seats a few rows back at center court. The place was more than half empty. All the fans present seemed to be wearing their sunglasses indoors and were more interested in getting the attention of the beer concession guys, or possibly in hooking up with their seat neighbors, than in the game. Perhaps justifiably, for the game was slow torture. By the end of the second quarter, Casey was rapidly losing his enthusiasm for live sporting events, and Dan was scanning the stands with the care of a dedicated G-man looking for the terrorist with the suitcase bomb or the sniper in a bad wig.

"Man, this is depressing."

"What is?"

"We are at a sporting contest of a major L. A. team, and we are the most famous people in the stands."

"You are correct there, Danny. So...you want to leave?"

Casey did want to leave. He wanted to take Danny out of here, to someplace not so public, although he couldn't imagine what would happen then. But Dan suddenly manifested a stubborn streak of underdog altruism, and insisted that they stay. It would, he postulated, be too embarassing to the Clippers if the only celebrities in the place walked out, and Casey was too weary to argue this theory. Dan was somewhat mollified when Casey was able to point out Dick Van Patten seated across the court, but when Dick departed in the third quarter, Dan's resolve hardened and he vowed to stay to the final horn.

"This is terrible. Where's Esa-Pekka Salonen? Where's Nicholson, for God's sakes?"

"Across town in Malibu, fondling his Lakers' season pass," said Casey drily.

"It's like the nightmare version of 'The Bad News Bears'," Dan muttered. He watched glumly as the Clippers' center missed two free throws. "'The Bad News Bears Go To The NBA'."

"And they don't have Tatum O'Neal to save the day. Or even Shaquille O'Neal."

"On the court, or in the stands." Danny glanced at Casey, happy that even in the midst of whatever was going on between them, Casey still got the joke. And then it happened again, the way it had happened a couple of times recently; he fell into Casey's eyes, and felt himself lean towards Casey, toward Casey's inexorable pull. He had an awful moment when he realized that since Dick Van Patten's departure had severely curtailed the potential celebrity shots for the floor cameras, it was entirely possible that this moment, this Danny and Casey Thing, was being broadcast to the nation. Suddenly that seemed more than likely. God knows there wasn't much happening on the court to occupy the cameramen.

"Danny," said Casey, his voice a little hoarse. His eyes looked big and startled. Dan exerted his will and dragged his gaze back to the court, where the Clippers, he was sorry to note, were now down by fifteen. Over the sound of the blood rushing in his ears, he said--

"Wanna beer, Case?"

There was a moment's silence, a moment in which Dan determinedly kept his eyes on the court, and then--

"Yeah, sure. Yeah, whatever, I...I'll get it, okay? I'll get it. You stay."

Dan nodded, and heard the rustle and squeak as Casey got up. Way to go, you unbelievable moron, he berated himself. Cruise the man in public, no, cruise him on national tv--and incidentally, scare the shit out of him. He kept looking straight ahead, and by the time Casey had returned with two beers and his favorite pretzels, he had his heart rate under control again.

Back at the hotel, they had an almost silent dinner. To Dan, who could take yelling far better than silence, it was torture. I have to fix this, he thought. When the waiter brought the check and Casey signed it, Dan stood up.

"It's a nice night. I'm gonna take a walk."

Casey just looked at him.

"Wanna come along?"

They walked through the hotel garden, catching glimpses of the deep aquamarine of the lit swimming pool through the semi-tropical leaves. It was a landscape so foreign it could have been another planet, and Casey felt slightly panicked. He steered them toward the front of the hotel, and when they got there, pointed to the park across the wide expanse of Sunset Boulevard. It had recognizable trees and flowers, and it looked comfortingly familiar in comparison with the hothouse grounds of the hotel.

"Do you mind if we walk over there?"

Dan shrugged. "Fine with me." Now that they were alone, his inspiration had dried up, and he had no idea what to say. He felt a faint lick of last night's irritation return. Was it really so goddamn traumatic to find out your best friend had slept with a man on occasion? Did it really merit Casey's silence and stricken eyes?

Crossing Sunset was tricky; Dan had a sudden sense memory of his first days out here that long ago summer, when he struggled with the frustration of an Easterner used to walking everywhere, in a town that was not built for walking. They made it safely, and were soon enveloped in the deep shadows under the trees of the park. Dan could vaguely see a statue on a plinth in the distance. It seemed to be of a man, who was beckoning, or gesturing, but whether the gesture was warning or inviting, Dan couldn't say. He suddenly stopped and watched Casey walk on a few steps, realize that he was no longer at Casey's side and then turn back to him. He held his hand up, beseeching, and rushed to get the words out before Casey spoke.

"You have to tell me the truth."

"Danny..."

"No. No. You have to tell me what you're thinking."

Casey had his hands spread out at his waist. It was an action so Casey-like that Dan felt a sudden awful clutch in his chest and throat. Casey said, "I don't know what I'm thinking right now. I'm not sure what to do about the job offer, or CSC, or any of it."

Dan made an impatient motion. "I'm not talking about the job, Casey. I'm talking about the other thing."

"Other thing."

"Yeah, the other thing, the things. Like you holding my hand on the plane, and whatever the hell that dream was that it made you cry, and how come you didn't ask me more questions after I came out to you?" Dan was mildly surprised to find he knew what he wanted to say after all. Shit.

Casey sucked in a breath. "Danny, you told me you had an a summer fling with a guy in college. So you're bi, maybe, but that doesn't put you in drag at the head of the pride parade. It wasn't that big a shock."

Dan felt a wave of righteous fury, and shot over to get in Casey's face. "Don't you fucking lie to me. I saw your face." He stopped and got himself under control with an effort, and said pleadingly, "Don't you see, we may not have a whole lot of time left to have this conversation." It was the first time either of them had spoken the possibility aloud, and Dan instantly wished he could recall the words. They made it too real. But he had started this, and now he needed to finish it, so he continued doggedly, "What happens if this job doesn't work out? What if you're back in Texas and I'm in Timbuctu?"

"What are the hot sports in Timbuctu, anyway?" Casey said, in a strained attempt at levity. Dan plowed on as if he hadn't spoken.

"You know how you are. We talk on the phone about once a week, and maybe you reveal what you had for lunch. 'Cause that's gonna be about the size of it."

Casey's face seemed to crumble at this assessment. "I don't want that. You're my best friend, Danny. I don't want anything to change."

"Well, tough. Because, clearly, something already has."

Casey made a strange sound and turned his back on Dan, looking wildly around into the trees. Dan thought he was about to make a break back to the hotel, and reached out to put a hand on his arm. At his touch, Casey stiffened, turned and grabbed Dan's shoulders in a convulsive, panicky clutch. Feeling guilty at Casey's obvious distress, Dan moved closer and hugged him carefully, murmuring, "it's okay, I'm sorry, we're okay," until Casey silenced him. By awkwardly pressing his mouth to Dan's, in what was unmistakably a kiss. It seemed exactly like a kiss. Unable to quite believe it was a kiss, Dan pulled back a little, saying uncertainly, "Casey?". He felt the park tilt under his feet, just a bit. Casey didn't answer, just chased his mouth down, opening his own lips to breathe into Danny, gently touching his tongue.

It was the gentleness that undid Dan. He began to kiss Casey back. He could taste the unaccustomed Scotch that Casey had drunk at dinner. He could feel Casey's arms trembling, and the rising pressure behind the zipper of Casey's pants. I'm an idiot, Dan thought fleetingly, and then Casey was gasping into the curve of his neck and groping shakily for the front of his jeans. That ended the gentleness; soon, they were both panting and Casey was clutching Dan's head as Dan pushed him back against a tree and bent to bite at his chest through his shirt. At the pressure of Casey's hands on his head, Dan regained a measure of sanity and wrenched away from him.

"What is it you want, Casey? Cause I'm not gonna blow you in a public park."

Casey's eyes looked huge and shocked. "No. No," he gasped. "I want...can we...go back to the room?"

You have to know who you want, Dan heard Abby say in his mind, as desire rushed through him like a tsunami. Yes. Oh, yes.

"Yes," he said.

The walk back to the hotel seemed to take an eternity. They moved through the lobby, keeping a careful three feet of charged, humming air between them. In the elevator, Dan looked at Casey's dazed face and kiss-swollen mouth, and laughed briefly.

"Think we fooled anyone?"

"Not if they were paying attention," Casey agreed solemnly. Then he reached for Dan. "I don't care," he whispered against Dan's ear, and kissed him again, pushing him back against the plush fabric wall of the elevator. Danny seemed to like that, arching his pelvis up into Casey, and making a sound that made Casey's cock throb.

Casey's hotel room was dim and rosy. Casey had turned on a light and then thrown a faded red t-shirt half over the shade.

"I want to see you," he said, and Dan had kissed him fiercely at that, pushing him down onto the bed, and straddling his hips. Soon, Casey was moaning as Dan slowly swept the cleft of his ass over the hard ridge of Casey's erection.

"I want you to fuck me," he declared, and Casey moaned louder. After a scramble to undress and find condoms and lube, they ended up back on the bed. Their hands bumped as they squeezed out some lube and Dan showed Casey how to prepare him. The sensation of Casey's lube coated finger in his ass made him writhe, and then moan. He felt vulnerable and exposed, kneeling on the bed, unable to disguise his need. "Let's lie down," he said.

On their sides, Dan could feel the silky sensation of Casey's chest hair against his back, the pressure of his latex-clad cock against his hole. "Slow," he gasped, as Casey entered him, and in a breath, things went from hurried and slightly awkward to dreamlike.

Dan's nipples and cock were thorns of almost painful sensation as Casey dragged his fingers softly up and down Dan's chest and stomach. He remembered surfing, how the sensation of the wave would move through the board and up his feet, into his whole body. He and Casey were on that wave now, he could feel it rolling up and down as his spine arched and flexed of its own volition. He could feel the slow roll and snap of Casey's hips, mirroring the wave. Casey kissed Danny's neck, nuzzling into the sensitive skin at his hairline, and raked a nipple with his fingernails. Casey's hand dropped lower, and pressed down on Danny's pubic bone, just above the root of his dripping cock, pressing him back harder, harder. He reached back and gripped Casey's hip, bracing his other hand against the nightstand, feeling the wave mount higher. Casey began to trail his fingers up Danny's cock, and he cried out at the touch.

"Danny," Casey gasped against his neck. "Promise me."

"Yes. oh yes. Yes."

"Promise me," ragged now, almost incoherent, "you'll do this to me."

Casey felt Danny go rigid in his arms and then cry out again, almost mournfully. The muscles of his asshole clutched and sucked around Casey in time with the tiny ripples that ran up his cock beneath Casey's fingers, and then Casey was pressing his open mouth to the top of Danny's shoulder and moaning as he came. And probably this wasn't a very good idea, or even right, really, but he had Danny in his arms, and he couldn't make himself not hold on, not kiss Danny again as they gasped for breath and listened to their pounding hearts.

Casey was on his back, his knees open in a wanton, graceful sprawl. "You sure, Case?" Danny had said, afraid he would hurt him, but Casey insisted; face to face, and really, it was what Dan wanted, too. He wanted to see Casey's face, he wanted to know everything, to store it up. He didn't ask himself why, just turned his fingers inside Casey, his mouth opening in a sympathetic reaction as Casey made a strangled sound of pleasure and his eyes went wide and blurry.

"oh, god," he groaned. "Danny. Oh, god." And at that, Danny couldn't wait another second, had to be inside him, had to feel Casey's long thighs beneath his hands as he thrust. Casey wrapped his legs around Danny's waist before Danny came, and that was good, too. He'd always liked that sensation of being enveloped, enfolded in his partner. Feeling like a hungry vampire, he leaned forward to feed his open mouth with Casey's moans, Casey's sweat. He brought Casey off, still hard enough inside him to press against his prostate, thumbing the head of his cock and pinching a nipple. Casey had sensitive nipples, it turned out. He gasped himself breathless--"Danny. so good. Danny."--and gave a strangled yell when he came.

They dozed for a while, then, driven by the sodden sheets, got up to take a shower and sleep in the other bedroom. In the shower, they were monosyllabic and stupid, propping one another up under the spray. As they crossed the sitting room, though, Casey pushed Dan down onto the couch, and knelt between his spread thighs. Dan didn't protest; just the sight of Casey, mouth open over the fork of his crotch, made him achingly hard. Casey was mumbling and licking him; Dan caught syllables that sounded like "cock", "sweet" and "fuck" and the thought of those words from Casey's proper lips made him a little crazy. He had to stop himself from clutching Casey's head.

Casey couldn't help himself; until tonight, he had never been much of a talker during sex, but something goaded him to give form to what was happening, to make it more real with words. Or maybe it was just the way Danny's cock jumped when he pressed his tongue to the slit and muttered sweet obscenities. He found he couldn't go very far down the shaft, but the head fit nicely into his mouth. It filled him up, filled some space that had lain empty for a long time. Better than water, better than bread.

When Dan lay back, spent and groggy, Casey pulled him to his feet and steered him into the bedroom. Dan made pawing motions at Casey's half hard penis, but Casey pushed his hand away and rolled them both into the bed, where the last thing Dan felt before his eyes clamped down in sleep was Casey spooning himself up behind Dan and encircling him firmly around the waist. That's so good, Case, he wanted to say, but he was gone.

At dawn, Dan woke up. They had shifted in the night, their sleep interrupted at intervals when they woke up and kissed one another again, too tired for much else, but unable to relinquish that contact. Now, he was sprawled half over Casey, with his head in Casey's shoulder. Who, Dan could tell, was awake. He closed his eyes tightly, wanting to hold back what he knew was coming.

"Danny," Casey said, his voice coming softly from over Dan's head.

"I know," Dan said. He opened his eyes, but kept them focussed on the expanse of pale skin and dark hair that the milky light from the window revealed on Casey's chest. "Not the smartest thing we've ever done."

"It's just that. Everything's so up in the air right now, Danny."

"Yes."

"Anything could happen. We have no way of knowing."

"Yes."

"I'm sorry, I just. Um, wanted you." Casey's voice sounded a bit throaty.

Dan hadn't know he could feel so many seemingly contradictory things at once: triumph, pain, exasperation, lust. Love. "I know. I wanted you too. But I'm not gonna fall apart."

"yes. I didn't mean. Sorry. I'm not doing this well." Casey had lifted his hand, and was combing his fingers through the hair on the back of Dan's head, a gesture that seemed to be as much for his own reassurance as Dan's.

"S'okay." They were silent for a while, Casey's fingers moving, moving on Dan's head. Finally, Dan spoke.

"Look, Case." Hey, I sound pretty calm, he thought dully. It was easier with his head on Casey's shoulder, not looking him in the eye. "We're going home today. Maybe Isaac will have some news about the sale. Let's just take things as they come, okay?"

Casey's fingers tightened in Dan's hair. "Okay," he said softly. In a little while they got up to shower in their separate luxury bathrooms, and pack for the long flight back.

At the airport, Sarah looked at them with some concern, but merely kissed them both on the cheek and wished them a good flight. They both slept most of the way back to New York, but the dividing arm between the seats stayed down.

The only news Isaac had about the sale was a list of suspected bidders. Time/Warner, Fox, Disney--he didn't mention that any of these potential buyers would be less than ideal. They all had sports networks already firmly established. He didn't have to; Dan and Casey both knew it. They got through the show and went their separate ways home, each stupefied with exhaustion and jet lag.

The next day, after a night's sleep, they were careful with each other. Dan resolutely tried to put the events in L.A. out of his mind. He went through the day feeling like every time he spoke to Casey, he was having two different conversations; one that needed words, and one that was going on underneath the words. Space, gotta give him lots of space, he thought. No pressure, Casey. No strings.

He knew Casey had spoken to Lisa about the job. He overheard enough to guess that they had serious concerns about the disruption the move to Los Angeles could cause Charlie. Dan was always ready to attribute selfish motives to Lisa, but Casey didn't say anything, and he didn't ask. Because he was being No Pressure Dan.

So that night at Anthony's, he made an awkward show of flirting with Kim. He and Casey signed a napkin for a redheaded girl at the bar--she wanted it for her boyfriend, Joe--and Dan, oh-so-casually, joked that his signature would include the phrase, "Joe, I think you should dump this redhead and go out with Casey." See, Case? You can sleep with anyone you want, and I'll be happy, as long as you're still my partner. While discussing the merits of the job offer, he mentioned the charms of the Laker Girls. No pressure. No strings. He felt like a fraud.

None of this was helped by the fact that Casey was wearing a tight shirt of soft, pettable fabric that outlined every muscle in his back and chest. Casey was non-committal, casual, behaving as if they had all the time in the world to make this decision. He smiled at Dan. He even flirted--awkwardly--with Dana. That didn't help either. Dan drank enough bourbon to give himself a headache, and went home to bed. That was Tuesday.

Wednesday night they were back at Anthony's. Dan wanted to yell and throw things, for Casey, it seemed, had decided that Scarlett O'Hara was on to a good thing when she said "I won't think about that now--I'll think about that tomorrow." He had spent the day evading all Dan's attempts to discuss the job, but Dan was determined not to let him off the hook, and was once again on the trail of the Laker Girls.

Casey was sick of the Laker Girls. He was sick of discussing the flowers that Dan had received that day from some mystery admirer, initials "R. W." He was sick of the job offer, and sick of pretending that all he and Dan had done in L.A. was go to a Clippers game. He was deadly sick of sitting next to Danny all day and not touching him. He didn't want to face what was coming, but he couldn't stand to keep having these conversations where they didn't exchange one word about what was really going on. So he did what he knew he would have to do, sooner or later. He brought up Charlie. And then watched as Dan pulled back momentarily and narrowed his eyes. Casey could almost hear his thoughts--"okay, you want to really get down to cases? then, let's go, pal."

"I'd be working six nights a week. It's not like I can get on a plane every time I need to see him."

"I'm saying she gets on a plane. I'm not kidding. She's not tied down to a job. You tell her you're not willing to live that far away from Charlie. You tell her you support this family, and your business just moved, and the family's gotta move too." Dan drew a breath. "You tell her to get her ass on a plane." Danny's antipathy to Lisa was almost as great as his affection for Charlie; he seldom troubled to hide it. It hurt to see Danny fling himself into the fray, so ready to marshal his arguments and fight for their professional partnership, when Casey was so afraid that, short of a miracle, it was doomed. He knew it made no sense, but he couldn't let himself think about the rest of their relationship that way, or he would have to beat his head against the wall. He also knew that being required to get on a plane to see Danny would be just about as awful as being required to do it for Charlie. Casey was relieved when a girl seeking an autograph came up to the table, and put a definite end to their painful, unresolvable debate about Charlie and Lisa.

"My roommate's friend knows a girl you used to date. Rebecca Wells," said the girl. In the split second after the crash of Dan's dropped glass, Casey realized who she meant. Then he knew who had sent those mysterious flowers. Now as Dan stumbled past him towards the door and Casey saw his shocked, pale face, he felt his hackles rise.

"You guys alright over there?" Dana called. Casey felt his facial muscles stretch, almost as if he were smiling, and responded, "Yeah. Yeah, now it's gettin' good." As he headed out the door after Dan, he realized he was ferociously aroused.

Dan stood on the sidewalk outside the bar, breathing in great gulps of the cool night air. He was unprepared for the panic that had washed over him at the sound of Rebecca's name, followed hard by the realisation that she had sent him the flowers. He took a few steps away from the door to lean against the solid brick wall. In a disinterested way, Dan knew that Rebecca had done what she thought was right in leaving him, and he was even grateful, for it had been the last big event in a long line of events that had finally propelled him to seek out Abby and Abby's help. But that didn't mitigate the fact that he felt she had stomped on his heart, and even now, it seemed, had more power over his feelings than he wanted to trust her with. Shit. Why did this have to happen now, he thought. He saw Casey come out the bar door, and look for him. In the light from the street, he could barely see Casey's expression, but it made his insides jump. He waved a little. Casey walked stiffly over and looked him up and down. "Hey," he said. "You okay?"

"No," Dan said frankly.

Casey's face tightened. "She's a bitch, Danny. She shouldn't have done that." He knew he was probably overreacting--it was only flowers, for godssakes--but he had to let a little of this dark rage out before it consumed him. Dan, however, seemed to take his statement at face value.

"A simple note or a phone call might have been better," he agreed. "Flowers seem kind of like a loaded gesture, don't they?"

"I meant," Casey said tightly, "she shouldn't have contacted you at all."

"Oh," Dan said, and then he peered into Casey's face in the dim light. Casey's eyes were big, the pupils dark and spreading. As Dan watched, his tongue flickered out and touched his lip, and then he drew a careful breath. "ooh," said Dan softly. Suddenly he had a hot sensation in his belly, and his mouth was watering. He felt simultaneously incredibly powerful and exactly like a rabbit under the eye of a hungry wolf.

"Let's go," Casey said. Taking Danny's arm, forcing himself to hold it gently, not to bruise or jerk, he stepped to the curb and hailed a passing cab. Some dark, unvoiced triumph sang in his blood as Danny got into the cab with him. Somewhere, he knew he should feel bad about this raw display of possession, but Danny was pushing him into a corner of the cab, and running hot hands up his thighs. And then they were kissing; Casey could hear his own harsh pants when Danny's mouth migrated to his ear, and turned his head demandingly to bite Danny's lower lip and suck his tongue. Several blocks later, Casey regained enough presence of mind to shove Danny away and gasp, "stop. Stop, before we end up on the cover of the Enquirer."

"I can't help it," Danny muttered, and that admission nearly undid Casey's resolve, but they managed to keep at arm's length until the cab pulled up in front of Danny's apartment building. In the elevator on the way upstairs, he did irreparable damage to Danny's shirt. Inside the apartment they didn't make it to the bedroom. Instead he fucked Danny on the couch, holding his arms down in the cushions above his head, and humping brutally into him, while Danny grunted more, more. They were both still wearing half their clothes; Casey's pants were tangled around his shins, and Danny's shirt was rucked up to his armpits. Casey had to release Danny's wrists and prop himself up, holding onto the couch's frame; it felt like he might fly apart otherwise. When Danny came, he twisted up off the cushions like an eel, and set his teeth in the skin beneath Casey's collarbone as he shuddered. Casey's orgasm felt like a two-by-four slammed against his lower back. Afterward, they lay sprawled like debris washed up on a beach after a hurricane.

"I'm sorry," Casey finally croaked. He was horrified at his own behavior.

"Yeah, well I'm tired of you apologizing every time we fuck," Dan said wearily.

"Danny..." Casey started. He had no idea what to say. And he was so dog-tired, he knew whatever he said would come out wrong.

"It's okay, Case. Go home. I'll see you tomorrow." Danny didn't seem angry, just similarly exhausted. Maybe it would be easier to talk tomorrow. Casey pulled his clothes into a semblance of order and left.

Dan dragged himself into the bedroom and tossed his wadded up clothes in a corner. He got into bed without taking a shower, because he didn't want to wash Casey off his skin. Since the night in L. A., he had felt like a junkie in need of a fix. The rush was sweet. It was coming down that was going to be a killer.

The next day at work, Dan and Casey stood staring at one another in their office.

"Casey."

"I know."

"You didn't do anything I didn't want."

"I believe you."

Dan jerked his chin at Casey, who was wearing a crew necked shirt that covered him from the base of his throat to the ends of his wrists. "Are you going to be embarassed taking that off in wardrobe? I think I marked you."

"No. Yes." Casey cleared his throat. "Yeah, I've got some bruises, but it's okay." It didn't matter what Dan said. Casey knew that his actions had been the worst kind of unfair. The trouble was that even though he probably wasn't going to be able to have Dan, he still didn't want Rebecca to have him either. "How about you? Are you...did I. um. Hurt you?"

"I'm okay."

"Okay. Let's get to work, then."

An hour later, when Dan was prowling around the office, loudly declaring his inability to focus on work because Rebecca had sent him flowers, Casey gritted his teeth and took the high road. When Kim called Rebecca a bitch, he swallowed his impulse to say "amen, sister"; instead he merely suggested Dan call her. Finding out that Dan had already tried to do so was not the news he wanted to hear.

Dan surreptitiously adjusted himself in his chair. The fact was, he was kind of sore today, but he wasn't about to tell Casey that. He had no desire to watch Casey's self-flagellation increase. Dan knew sexual jealousy when it grabbed him and hauled him into the back of a cab. He would have welcomed it, if it weren't for the valedictory quality of last night's encounter. In the light of day, it seemed to have all the earmarks of a desperate farewell fuck. His head also ached a bit, where the ladder had hit him.

His physical woes were nothing to his emotional confusion, though. He felt caught between his growing certainty that Casey was going to refuse the L. A. job, and his impulse to take up with Rebecca again and make a project out of her. Turning to a woman when his life was falling apart was an old habit; as Abby had pointed out to him, it was what made him talk to her that first night in the bar. Contemplating a life without Casey certainly made him feel like he was falling apart, but he was no longer sure, as he had been a year ago, that Rebecca was any kind of a cure.

Those surreal moments in the studio hadn't helped the confusion. First, sitting down to unwrap their sandwiches in editing, and glancing up to see Casey looking at him like the thing he really wanted to do was kneel between Dan's spread thighs and unzip his fly. Dan knew his leap to his feet and retreat into the studio was less than graceful. Then Rebecca had jumped out at him and he'd had his close encounter with a ladder. Followed by Rebecca and Casey standing over him and exchanging pleasantries, which seemed, on the surface at least, to be genuinely pleasant, but Dan couldn't shake the feeling of two dogs squaring off over the same bone.

Now Rebecca was sitting in the green room, and Casey was sitting at his desk. Dan felt like a ball that had been bounced too hard, too high, too long. He needed to stop it, stop the bouncing. So he rolled his chair over to Casey's desk and said, "Great job in L.A."

Casey looked up without much surprise at this non-sequitor, and said, "Yeah."

"Let's review." Dan didn't think his summary was going to affect the outcome of this conversation one way or another, but he felt he had to go the distance. He ticked off the selling points on the L. A. job, not forgetting to include the Laker Girls. When Casey said "I can't do it", Dan wasn't really surprised.

"I know," he replied.

"Can't take Charlie out of school."

"I know."

"He does well in school, he's got friends...."

"I know."

"Danny. You gotta go out there yourself."

"Casey...."

"You can do it without me, Dan."

"This is it?" Dan said dully. Flashes of Casey in the hotel room, in the cab, pressing him into the couch and kissing his neck, his ear, his mouth, ran through his mind. Casey arguing with him, defending him, laughing with him. Casey sitting across the anchor desk. This is going to really hurt in a minute, thought Dan.

"You can do it without me," Casey repeated. The fimness in his voice faltered as he added, "You should think about it."

Dan knew that there was no way he could think about it, not now. So he said, "Let's write," but then found he couldn't make himself move, couldn't look away from Casey.

Casey, too, was immobile, looking back at Dan. Finally, he said, "okay," and turned to his computer. Dan kept looking at him, at the back of his head and his quarter profile, and then he, too, turned to his computer. It looked like an artifact of an alien civilization; as he stared at it, he could hear Casey typing behind him. Better get the rest of it over with, Dan thought. Suddenly, he no longer had the slightest doubt about Rebecca's place in his life.

"I'll be right back," Dan said as he left. Casey took his shaking hands off the keyboard, where they were producing nothing but nonsense, and put his head down on the desk. He felt like he had taken the sign from around Dan's neck that said "Property of Casey McCall", and that it was the right thing to do. It just should have felt better than this.

Jeremy appeared in the door of the office, and stood, looking irresolute. Casey glanced up at him miserably. Natalie had come around with the news that MDI had lost the bid for Continental Corp. By a dint of not speaking to, or looking at, one another, he and Dan had finally gotten their script finished. Dan had disappeared into wardrobe. It felt like a preview of things to come.

"Tell Dana our final copy is being put in the Teleprompter as we speak, okay? It stinks, but it's done."

Jeremy shook his head. "No, it's not about that. It's...you may have heard that I'm settling my affairs."

Casey looked closely at him. He wasn't carrying the box he had been dragging around the office earlier. "You've come to give me back that quarter you borrowed for the candy machine?"

Jeremy smiled a little. "With the interest compounded, I now owe you thirty-two cents." He paused. "Which I don't actually have on me, at the moment."

Casey waved a hand. "Consider it settled."

"Thanks, but that's not really what I came in here for. I need to tell you something, because if I don't say it, I'm going to regret it."

Casey swiveled his chair to look at Jeremy head on. "Go on." It sounded serious, and although Casey didn't think he had the werewithal to stand any more emotional shocks, he liked Jeremy too much to say so.

Jeremy took a step into the office and sat in Dan's chair. "My parents' divorce last year made me think about a lot of things, you know? Remember stuff." Casey nodded, at a loss about where Jeremy was going with this. "One of the things I realized was how hard I tried to make my dad happy when I was a kid. I know, I know--every kid wants to please his father. Even so, my dad always seemed like he was missing something, and I wanted to make it up to him." He paused. "But I never could." He smiled a little sadly. "When I found out what he was missing all those years, it was a shock, but when I see him now--he's happy, Casey. And that's good to see, but I can't help thinking it might have been even better for me to see it back then."

Casey was silent for a moment, then said gently, "Why are you telling me this?"

"It's just--" Jeremy shrugged and said, "I think it might be a mistake to think that if you give up your own happiness, you can guarantee it for your child."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

Casey stared off into the distance past Jeremy's head. It should have felt odd to want to confide in Jeremy about this, Jeremy who was young and not a parent, but it didn't. Maybe it was his intelligence, or his empathy, which Casey suspected ran wide and deep. Maybe Jeremy was really a lot older inside than he looked. He swallowed. "The divorce hit him so hard, Jeremy. And it seems like he's finally getting past it now, you know? And I'm afraid of disrupting his life again. I'm afraid." That last statement seemed to ring in the air after Casey was done speaking.

Jeremy was gazing at him, nodding. "I can see that. But you can't really know what's going to happen, can you?"

"What happens might be bad."

"It could be bad. But Charlie might like his new school and his new life. It could be so much better." He got up. "Well. I'd better go." He headed toward the door.

"Jeremy." He turned at the door and looked at Casey. "You're a pretty smart guy."

Jeremy smiled. "Just settling my affairs, that's all."

Casey sat for a while in the office, thinking. He remembered how bad things had gotten toward the end with Lisa, how miserable he had been; there was no doubt that he'd been a better father since he'd left. If there was one thing the past few days had shown him, it was that if he lost Danny, misery would be his close companion for a long time to come. Maybe, thought Casey. Maybe Jeremy has a point.

A little while later, Dana came to tell that she would make the general announcement right before showtime; Continental Corp. was now the property of Quo Vadimus. Their show would most likely be canceled. Casey felt peculiarly detached from the news; he didn't tell Dana that he had already heard it from Natalie, and the pain was being dulled with repetition. The worst had happened. After the show, or maybe tomorrow, he'd call Lisa and talk to her again about moving, and then he'd make a decision.

The whole crew stood jammed into the control room, listening to Dana speak. Dan could feel Casey just behind his shoulder. He suddenly wanted to tell Casey about Rebecca, that she was gone, that he'd torn up her phone number. He wanted to thank Casey for believing he was good enough to be on his own, for he really was on his own now. It was the kind of support a good friend should give you; the fact that he had wanted Casey to say "please don't leave me" was beside the point. Maybe, eventually, he'd find some comfort in Casey's assurance.

When Dana dashed out of the control room like a woman who remembered she had left the water running and the gas on in her apartment, her cry of "Natalie, take the top of the show!" fading as she disappeared, there was a round of puzzled looks. Everyone moved to get in their starting places. Dan felt a hand on his chest, over his heart. It was Casey. Casey held his hand there for a few heartbeats, and then slid past him through the door to the studio. Dan had to stay still for a moment before he could follow. Doing it on his own was going to suck, there was no doubt about it.

He went out to get wired up for the broadcast. The show started, and they all seemed to be swimming in concrete. This one is going to be the worst show ever, Dan thought. It seemed appropriate, somehow.

When Dana's voice came over the headset at the second break with the news that Quo Vadimus was going to keep the network, and the show, Casey felt a surge of gratitude that nothing in his relentlessly secular life had prepared him for.

"Thank-you," he thought. "oh, thank-you." He turned to look at Dan, and saw his own feelings--shock, amazement, joy--chasing across Danny's mobile face. Ten seconds later, they were on the air, giddy with relief, their voices on the verge of cracking as they spoke. And then they were back in the groove, the show doing a one-eighty around them. Even the camera operators looked like they were dancing. The second Dave said, "and we're out" at the show's end, everyone poured into the studio, milling around and hugging one another like people who have survived a narrowly averted plane crash. When he turned to Dan, the chair was empty, and Dan's mike and headset were lying on the desk. Casey's giddiness abruptly evaporated. He stood up and grabbed Natalie as she brought up the tail of Kim's impromptu victory conga line.

"Natalie, did you see where Dan went? Is Rebecca still here?"

Natalie turned her glowing face up to his and flung her arms around his neck. "Casey, we did it, we made it!"

For a moment he buried his face in her hair, and that miraculous gratitude washed over him again. He didn't have to leave these people after all, and it was good, so good. Then he remembered and disentangled her gently. "I really need to..."

"Shh, wait." Isaac was standing under the lights, saying something. Dana was saying something. A cheer went up, and Dana cried, "Everybody to Anthony's!"

Natalie had turned to him again, and was saying, "Rebecca was in the green room before the show, but she left. I don't think she was coming back." Dana had pushed her way over to them and was wrapping him in a fierce, rib-cracking hug.

"We're okay, we're safe," she sniffed into his shirt.

"I know," he said, and gently turned her chin up. "I've got to go find Danny, but I'll be right back."

"Okay. You're coming to Anthony's, right?"

"Dana, I wouldn't miss it for the world," he said seriously, and then he was gone. Dana turned to Natalie.

"What's up with those two?"

Natalie sighed. "Rebecca was here. You think they're ever going to stop obsessing about one another's love lives?"

Dana grinned. "At least Casey's no longer obsessing about mine." Natalie shot her a look.

"So, tell me about this Calvin Trager guy."

Dana countered, "What's up with you and Jeremy tonight?" They looked at one another, slow smiles beginning to form. Then they shrieked, and flung their arms around one another and began to laugh and laugh.

"We're employees of the Holy Roman Empire's one and only airline!" Natalie crowed.

"It's the only way to fly," Dana rejoined, wiping at her tearing eyes, and managing to remove the last of her mascara.

Casey found Dan sitting in their office. He looked up at Casey as he entered. Casey noted, with a qualm, the bruised look around Danny's eyes, the look he hadn't worn for weeks now.

"Hey," he said warily.

"Hey," Dan responded. They were silent for a moment. "So. Everybody going to Anthony's to celebrate?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. Well..." Dan stood up, as though about to leave. Casey walked over to him, close, and laid a hand on his arm.

"Danny, I talked to Jeremy tonight." Dan looked at him with an expression that would have looked, to a casual observer, like polite disinterest. "He said something to me." Casey swallowed. "He said he thought it would be a mistake to give up my happiness to guarantee Charlie's. And he gave me good reason to think he knew what he was talking about." Dan was now looking at him sharply, with narrowed, wary eyes. "I was going to call Lisa in the morning and talk to her again. About moving." Casey paused, aware that he had come to the heart of what he was really afraid of. He hoped he hadn't misread Rebecca's departure. "Because maybe you can do it without me, but I can't do it without you."

Dan was very still. Then he said, "you are such a jerk," and took Casey in his arms. Through his overwhelming relief, Casey could feel the pounding of Dan's heart against his own. Thank-you, he thought again. If this is a dream, don't wake me up. "So," he said against Dan's hair, once he was sure he could speak, "are you going to punish me for this?"

"Repeatedly," Dan replied, and kissed him, and neither of them said anything else, until the sound of voices heralded people pouring out of the studio to head to Anthony's. At that, they pulled apart, and looked at one another, and realized they were both still wearing their on-air suits. "Let's go change and get out of here," Dan said.

They kissed in wardrobe when the doors were closed. They kissed in the elevator on the way down to the lobby. It was so nice, Dan thought fleetingly, to kiss without feeling desperate. Urgent, yes--as Casey slid a hand down Dan's ass and then grasped the back of his thigh, pulling his leg up to hold Dan's crotch closer and grind against it with his own--but not desperate. The elevator dinged, and the door slid open. Fortunately, there was no one in the lobby.

"We need to go to Anthony's," Casey groaned. "I promised Dana."

"Yeah, I think we do," Dan replied. They started walking, side by side, heading out to the street. "This is the moment of triumph. Besides, Natalie would kill us if we didn't show."

"Can I kiss you in Anthony's?"

"I think maybe our compadres have had as much good news as they can stand for one night."

"So this is good news, then?" Casey said it lightly, but he wasn't joking now.

Dan pulled Casey around to face him, uncaring of the fact that they were standing in the middle of the sidewalk. "The best, Casey. It's the best." His face was serious, and happy, too. More than happy. Casey had never seen Danny look quite like that before. Suddenly he didn't mind that he couldn't kiss Danny in the middle of Sixth Avenue, if he could have that expression on Danny's face. He thought about all those guys, strolling down Santa Monica Boulevard with their arms around one another, and that envy seemed a lifetime ago.

"Okay," he said, "me too." And then they walked on down the street, hands in pockets, bumping shoulders occasionally.

the memory of hurts

by sinead