esohpe

Title: Lesson Learnt
Rating: PG-13 (for language and violent scenes and death)
Summary: Four people who tried to teach Danny Messer a lesson, and the one who succeeded. Based on the ‘Five Things’ template.
Notes: About as close to gen as I get, but subtext is always a whole lot of fun.

i.

Sonny Sassone wasn’t the sort who stayed in prison. Danny coulda told anyone that. Knew it as a kid before he even learnt what it really meant to be connected. Knew it as he tried not to embarrass himself in a cold hospital room in front of a brother he loved and hated more than anyone else in the world. Knew it even when Mac told him it was all over and everyone knows Mac never lies.

Guys like Sonny Sassone are worse than the fuckin’ roaches. Cut off the head and the body still scuttles on like it hasn’t even noticed. A few years in jail? What the fuck does that mean to a guy like him. A fuckin’ holiday camp where his connections are already made, his name already known, and a high-priced lawyer that gets him off murder one like a walk in the park.

Mac takes him aside at work, his face all grim like it gets when there’s justice being perverted and things aren’t going his way. Tells him.

“Sonny Sassone just got parole.”

Danny nods, says it’s no big deal, shrugs off the suggestion of some sort of protection ‘cos it’ll be a cold day in hell when the blue begins to concern Sonny.

Six years locked away and it takes them all of five days to catch up with him. Danny knows ‘cos he’s been counting. Five days’ worth of double locking his front door and taking cabs when he’d have rather walked.

They catch him outside of his apartment, just awake, coffee still hot in his gut and the promise of a four am decapitation not improving his mood much in the slightest. He’s slow on his feet, off-guard, surprised stupid as rough hands bundle him into the backseat of a car.

Tires burning on road surface, the car lurching forward, and he’s struggling now, kicking out at a dark face, all tangled limbs and confusion and shadows. A hand grips in his hair, and everything stops when he feels the edge of a blade at his throat.

He stills; swallows. “The fuck d’you want, huh?”

“Keep that mouth ‘a yours shut, kid, and maybe I won’t kill you,” Sonny says from somewhere up front, and Danny sets his jaw and doesn’t let himself regret turning Mac’s offer down. Police protection or no, they woulda got him sometime. He knows that. All he has to do now is wait this out and not think about turning up on a cold slab back at the office.

They stop and drag him out. High walls stretch up on either side of him into darkness, and the alley stinks of piss and vomit and worse things. Danny’s on his feet for the moment, sizing all four of them up but never really taking his eyes off Sonny. He thinks he might recognise a coupla them from years ago, another life.

“I’mma teach you a lesson,” Sonny says, his eyes dark holes in his face. His hairline has receded even further and he’s lost weight over the years inside. “You see your brother anytime soon, Messer, and you do me a favour and pass it on, yeah?”

Danny’s been on the wrong end of a shitkicking a coupla times but he always forgets; it’s hard to fix the exact feel of a boot in your kidneys. He curls into himself, knees up to protect his stomach, head down and cradled in his arms. Broken fingers can be mended, after all. A broken head ain’t nowhere near so easy.

Sonny hocks up and spits on him when they’re done. Danny counts himself lucky he’s alive enough to feel the warm mucus slide off his face. He thinks if it were light enough to see, his vision would be blurred around the edges with blood. Everything throbs with a sharp ache and he musta been yelling ‘cos his throat is gravelly but he can’t remember doing it.

“You better learn that it’ll go best for you if I stay out of jail, kid. Sonny Sassone is not someone who locks up easy. You remember that.”

Danny’s drifting on the verge of unconsciousness as doors slam and the car rumbles away. He lies there for a long minute, counting his heartbeats, then rolls painfully onto his side. Only his thumb and ring finger seem to be working on his left hand and it takes too long, too long, to get his cell out of his pocket, the display cracked, the casing dented.

He calls Mac.

“Sonny,” he slurs, dribbling blood from a cut mouth, and it’s all he needs. “Dunno where I am, alley ‘a some sort. Gonna hafta — track my phone.”

Mac’s voice is loud and hard in his ear, too much, and Danny closes his eyes and ends the call. Trusts Mac better than anyone to find him. Groaning, he rolls onto his back and stares up at the sky. Darkness is closing in, fingers softly wrapping around his skull, and all he can think is: the bastard spit on me.

He’ll have to remember to tell someone that. Puts Sonny at the scene. That, and a NYPD detective’s testimony and the guy will be going away for another few good years at least.

The son of a bitch landed his brother in a coma, after all.

Six years is definitely not enough.

ii.

The day is warm and the fourth grade classroom even warmer. Danny fidgets, wanting outside with the others. He scowls at the piece of paper in front of him.

I must not answer back. I must not answer back. I must not answer back. I must not answer back. I must not answer back. I must not

iii.

“I’d have thought you’d have the smarts to stay off my radar, kid,” Gerrard says. Inspector Gerrard and Danny finds that fuckin’ funny every other day.

“What can I say. I’m a sucker for a pretty face.” Danny leans back in the hard chair, his knee bumping up and down under the table. Glances at the observation mirror and knows there’s no one else behind it. Knows goddamn well that this interview ain’t being recorded either - strictly off the record, and he supposes it’s a brass perk to go along with the badly cut suits.

Gerrard does not look amused. For a moment, Danny wonders whether the guy was born in the city, whether that face is so grey and hard ‘cos it’s soaked in all the grime, all the hate, all the dust, the flat eyes reflecting back the very worst of what the city has to offer.

It makes him even more of an asshole in Danny’s book. The guy should know.

“One ‘a these days, Messer, you’re gonna slip up and it’s gonna stick.”

Danny snorts. “And you’ll be all too happy to lock me up, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. We done now?”

Gerrard’s lip curls. “You got some mouth on you, kid. You and your boss, you’re just the same in some ways. And sooner or later I’m gonna get him. And when I do, you can be sure you’ll be the first out of a job.”

Danny glares at him. Gerrard glares back. Then Danny smiles, slow and wide, sharp teeth on show.

“You know, you want Mac’s attention, I hear he likes his chocolates dark and his flowers roses. He’s not so into all this macho bullshit. Just a friendly head’s up.”

iv.

Flack and him are both drunk, both stumbling. A hard day at the office, three bodies and a suspected fourth and a crime scene that ain’t making much sense at all. Small, battered arms and legs, glassy wide eyes, soft, pale skin. Dead kids are the worst of a bad lot.

He’s beginning to not be able to feel his legs when Flack leans over and says, “Buddy, think we both had enough.”

Fuck that, Danny thinks, and drains his beer only to begin groping for his wallet again. Sure it had been tough for Flack. Sure. Second on scene, having to stand around until Danny and Stella turned up, having to take a statement from the poor bastard who had stumbled on the dump site first and had already lost his stomach contents. Canvassing the place for anyone else who might have heard something, seen anything. Sure, it hadn’t been easy.

But Flack hadn’t had to get trace off the bodies. Flack hadn’t had to take pictures of skinny, bruised wrists and too small, too dirty feet. Flack hadn’t had to go back to the lab and process a set of Transformer pyjamas, sized for age six to eight.

Flack hadn’t had a call from his old man to round the day off in spectacular fashion.

Danny figures he’s owed a couple extra.

“Come on, Messer,” Flack says, and drags him out of his chair.

It takes Danny a moment to figure out what’s going on, and by then they’re out the door, standing in the cold autumn air, car headlights and the rush of traffic making his head spin.

“The fuck, man? I wasn’t done.”

He shrugs away from Flack, pitches towards the brick wall, unsteady and frowning.

“Sure you are, Danny,” Flack says, and Danny’s seen this before, this knack Don has for matching him drink for drink and still not quite losing his mind, always with that cop edge.

“Get outta here,” Danny mutters

“Yeah, maybe I don’t wanna,” Flack says and there’s no warning, nothing, but suddenly he’s up in Danny’s space, leaning into him like he knows it’s intimidating, and Danny’s seen this before too. He bristles.

“Fuck off.”

“No.”

“Flack–”

Then Flack’s hands are on his face, holding him still. It makes Danny’s stomach pitch and roll, and yeah, maybe he has drunk enough for one night.

“You gotta do this alone, huh, Messer? That what this is?”

Danny finds his hands, puts them on Flack’s chest, shoves him back.

“Everyone’s alone,” he snarls.

Flack looks at him. Shakes his head. “When you gonna learn?”

He turns and leaves Danny there, cold brick at his back, the sounds of drunken laughter coming from somewhere inside.

v.

It’s crazy how it can happen. A slow day, a routine scene, an easy arrest. That’s how it starts.

It ends with Lindsay’s blood pulsing out onto his hands.

It’s only later - after the photographs and the processing and the debriefing - that Mac takes him to one side and tells him to go wash up. It’s only later, staring at himself in front of the bathroom mirror, when he realises quite how much blood there is. Soaked through to his skin, cold and sticky and thick. Gravitational drops down his pants. A hand smear of rusty red at his pocket, another wrapped around his phone from when he called the ambulance.

officer down officer down get here get here now she’s dying

“I don’t like you,” James Worthy had said. The gun had been black and shiny in his outstretched hand and Danny can remember wondering how the hell the guy had posted bail so soon, how the hell he had managed to find him in his own home.

Worthy had robbed a place, a small convenience store, and put a bullet in the cashier’s shoulder. It wasn’t the profile of a cold blooded killer and Danny can remember telling himself that as he stared down the muzzle.

“Remember what you said to me?” James Worthy had asked. “Maybe you’re regretting that now, huh?”

The things is, Danny says a lot of things to scumbags in the interrogation room. A lot of things, some mean, some truthful. He couldn’t remember with a gun to his head what he had said to Worthy. He still can’t remember now. The funny thing, the really fuckin’ hilarious thing, he thinks, is that it probably wasn’t anything that bad.

His own gun had been on the kitchen table. Fuckin’ useless. Lindsay had been behind him, staring stock still at the scene, her lips tight, not saying a word.

Worthy had smiled. “I’m gonna let you live,” he had said, before shifting his aim slightly and pumping three rounds into Lindsay’s chest.

Danny stares at his hands as he washes them, carefully soaping up until the lather is brown-red, puts his fingers under the hot faucet and lets the water scald him clean.

He showers. Changes into the spare set of clothes he keeps in his locker. Folds the old clothes into a stiff, bloody pile and sets them aside for evidence, not looking at them.

The locker room is deserted, none of the usual foot traffic, and Danny knows it’s because they all know he’s in there, washing Lindsay off him. He wants to scream, wants to yell, wants to bawl his eyes out.

Instead, he walks out, goes upstairs, knocks at Mac’s office.

Mac looks tired when he glances up from Lindsay’s file, gestures him in.

Danny smiles a little crookedly and unclips his badge, his gun. Puts them on the table.

“Thanks,” he says, and means it.

Mac looks at him, a little stern, a little kind.

“Stella’s waiting for you, Danny. Go sleep this off,” he says. “I’m not accepting any resignation from you just yet.”

Danny shrugs, worn out. “It was my fault, Mac. My fault. She had nothing to do with Worthy, he was my case, I riled him up, got in his face, I -” He stops. “You gotta learn some time or other, right?”

Mac just looks at him.

Danny’s too tired to argue.

[post comment] [read comments]