Entry tags:

! fan fiction, * meme, without a trace, without a trace-martin/danny

[Without A Trace] (Martin/Danny) fury to the kindled flame
Title: fury to the kindled flame
Author: Kjata (makrothumia)
Characters & Pairings: Martin Fitzgerald & Danny Taylor
Fandom: Without A Trace
Rating & Warnings: PG-13, mentions of gore and violence
Disclaimer: Characters, Setting, and Original Content that this fic is based upon belongs to those who own them - Namely, anyone but me.

1. Pick a character, pairing, or fandom you like.
2. Turn on your music player and put it on random/shuffle.
3. Write a drabble related to each song that plays. You only have the time frame of the song to finish the drabble; you start when the song starts, and stop when it's over. No lingering afterwards!
4. Do ten of these then post them.

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01. I Don’t Know What To Do With My Hands (Fans of Kate)
The thing about blood is that if coming from someone still breathing, it gushes like a fountain. It spurts and it geysers and it gets all over you as you press hands on his chest palms down and in and oh my god stay with me the bus is coming the bus is coming.

And then there are the exposed muscles through the bullet wounds, the torn flesh that you cannot help but look at as you try to keep him breathing and alive and with you.

When with you got in there you don’t know, but breathing and alive works just as well.

So the blood gushes and spurts, not slowing down. The sirens get closer, you gasp in fear and pain as you aren’t sure he’s breathing anymore, and his eyes flutter. Just once.

You lean down and say, “Damnit Martin, I won’t let you do this.”

And then choke back a sob under the brilliant flashing lights that pull up with a harsh stomp on the brakes when you realise that you already did.

02. Love Will Tear Us Apart (Joy Division)
What they have here is frantic and consuming, just a little bit brutal, only slightly tinged with care.

The care is what keeps it afloat, long after they should have stopped it. Teeth not biting too hard, because he knows he doesn’t want to explain it to the office next morning. Slowing down the snap of hips, because if he comes in walking funny Jack will ask questions.

So they pull back a little every time they collide, not enough to escape one another but something going towards healing these hurts and getting further under each other’s skin. Instead of burrowing deep and take take take, they crawl in lazily and explore, drifting just under the other man’s skin in a careful cautious way.

And then Martin has to say that he got hit in the mouth with a ball the next morning anyway, though the thought is what counts.

And then Danny has to sit gingerly in his chair, saying that he backed into the sharp corner of a table last night when he was engrossed in the game.

And the closer they get down in there, not vicious, not killing, but just enough to make them scream.

(at each other, at the world, at what is most certainly going to tear them limb from limb in the near future.)

03. Trophy Hunter (Splashdown)
Shoots the target in a circle, counting under his breath.

one two three four score and more

Shakes a little as his finger caresses the trigger each time, feels the weakness in his hip as he forces himself to stand without support. The dull throb of the bullet wounds scream and punch and kick and bite at his insides.

And he pulls it again. And again. And again.

Danny says behind him, “You okay, Fitz?”

He wants to turn around and kill him, just put the muzzle of the gun against his head and squeeze the trigger again and again, blow the bastard’s head off in silent rage directed at him and his damn inability to do anything right. Instead he hazards a glance in his direction, catch guilt and concern and fear in the corner of his eye, and turn back to reload the clip.

He says, “I’m fine.”

04. Survivalism (Nine Inch Nails)
He is stalking a killer who hasn't killed his victim yet, can hear her struggles as she whimpers at him and the thump thump thump of the man's boots, and Martin is two steps behind him doing the exact same thing. Getting to the old house was a blur in his mind, all he knows is that when they got out of the car with all of the other agents getting out of theirs, he took point and led them in. With Martin breathing down his neck the entire time.

That alone tinges the adrenaline with something like giddiness, but ignore that ignore that, not the time right now.

They're closer, quiet as mice, and a shrill ringing pierces the silence. From his coat pocket.

His breath hitches when Martin is even closer, grabbing at his suit jacket to get at the phone with hips angling into him and knees pressed against knees, and he says in a slurred tone "Oh, don't bother, it'll go to message."

A crunch of plastic and the wailing death of a government issue cellular phone is the only reply, and Martin turns away.

05. Maybe I’ll Catch Fire (The Alkaline Trio)
Sometimes he wishes that he smoked just so that he could set him on fire.

Strike a match, because a lighter wouldn’t do for the poetry of the action. Fit the flame to the tip of the cancer stick and inhale once to catch the nicotine and tar ablaze. Drop the still burning match onto his head and then calmly walk away.

Because he’s flirting with her now, his replacement and his enemy, and he could not be more furious. He hides it behind vacant looks that everyone thinks come from the percoset regimen, covers it up with a calm demeanour that he is for once glad he inherited from his father mother grandparents and whole ancestry of Fitzgeralds.

Flirting with her, speaking Spanish to her like they were the best of friends, getting close and using her computer when his own works just fine. It is like he’s fleeing his friend, the one who was mortally wounded in the same car as he was at the same time he got away without a scratch, and seeking solace in the new girl.

He won’t admit that he missed him, misses him, but he won’t do anything about it either.

Except sit and watch them from the corner of his eyes, and imagine lighting a whole book of matches right on top of Danny’s head.

06. A Brief History of Nonsense (Sunscreem)
They stand next to one another in the elevator, silent as death on a cold night. Facing the doors, keeping their own counsel, not moving the slightest except to dart eyes up to the display as the lift moves downwards.

It stops, slides open with a faint ding, they exit.

And go their separate ways, without saying a word.

07. One Day, Robots Will Cry (Cobra Starship)
The solid knock on his door startles him from his programme, some sports show in ESPN that he doesn’t recall changing the channel to, and he slowly approaches to answer.

He opens the door, stares at the wet and sopping and looking angry FBI Agent and nods.

Says, “What’s up, Fitz?”

Gasps and keens and presses close when the answer comes in a body collision with teeth clacking against teeth and fingers threaded through hair.

08. Words That We Couldn’t Say (Yoko Kanno)
They each have their own vices, their own problems that do not enable them to communicate well with other people. With Danny it is his abandonment issues, abusive father and weak-willed mother dying before him and brother dearest wandering off to shoot smack snort blow do whatever the crazy kids were doing those days. With Martin it is his inadequacy issues, never knowing if what he was doing here was the right thing to assert independence but still force his father to stand up and take notice that his son was not a screw-up like previously implied throughout his entire youth.

Somehow, though, they can talk to one another. About opening a shoe store if Jack ever succeeds in ruining their careers with his cowboy antics, and the sinister plot by vampires to hold a monopoly on all of the five plus storey walk-ups by renting out all of the flats on the first two floors to themselves and their ilk. They can sit next to one another in the car and joke about crazy homeless man who squats outside of Danny’s building and tells everyone he is a tree, laugh hysterically over Martin’s next door neighbour who knocks on his door every morning at eight am to tell him that his water is running, whether it is or not.

But there are some things they don’t speak about, not now and not ever. Dornvald. A hailstorm of bullets. The gasped words that tumbled out of a panicked mans mouth and down onto an almost corpse that was still breathing and hearing and feeling pain.

There are no prompts, no desire to start talking about it. No casual mentions to see if those words were true, no repeat offences over coffee just to see what the now almost fully recovered human would say if he wasn’t bleeding all over the pavement.

Instead they just joke and smile and sit back to enjoy life, not saying anything at all except the mindless words that keep real conversation at bay.

09. Smile Like You Mean It (The Killers)
Deputy Director sweeps into the office with the grace of a bovine in a china shop, bellowing for his son to come forth and answer to this, and what the hell was he thinking?

Martin calmly leans back in his chair, raises an eyebrow, and says, “What are you talking about?”

“This, I’m talking about this,” his father cries, shoving a newspaper under his nose and rattling it.

Danny spins his chair around and cranes his neck to see the newsprint shaking up at down, spelling failure for keeping the Fitzgerald name free of scandal, lettering out amusement for those involved.

“It was a mission,” Martin says slowly, eyebrow still arched and posture relaxed.

“Your hand was down his pants!” the Deputy Director yells.

He tilts his head back to look at Danny, and Danny smiles back at him. “I was keeping in character.”

10. In The Heat of the Morning (David Bowie)
He is sure that his life would be a lot easier if he had never ever ever met Martin Fitzgerald.

I mean, yeah there is the whole best friends feature that kind of makes it worthwhile in a perverse hands off sort of way, and there is the smiles that he is certain only he can raise from the man, but his life would still be a lot better.

There wouldn't be sleepless nights where he ruminates over not going to that nightclub to find a warm body to lose himself in that follow the frantic evenings when he gets home too keyed up from a case to do anything but pace the floor and wonder if one night stands were still fashionable. There wouldn't be groggy mornings where he stumbles into the office just slightly off his game one too many times this week and is forced to endure disapproving looks from Jack and amused glances from the women and lilting tones of teasing from Martin as he suggests that he take up jogging with him so he can have some energy without guzzling coffee infused with too much sugar and not enough creamer.

And he wouldn't spend so much mental capacity obsessing too heavy over every little look and sound and touch that Martin gives him day in and day out, judging and weighing and pondering over them to see if maybe he has missed something and he really can lean over him at his desk one evening after everyone has gone home and drop a kiss on the hollow of his throat just because he wants too.

So yes, his life would be a lot better if he had never met Martin Fitzgerald.

It also wouldn't be as interesting.