FIC: Big Shoulders (Studio 60; Matt and Danny)
Title: Big Shoulders
Fandom: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
Author:
dancinbutterfly
Pairing: Matt/Danny
Rating and Warnings: R for language and drug use
Betad by:lordessrenegade and my friend Margo helped me out.
Notes: This is my first Sorkin-verse fanfic. Please let me know what you think.
Summary: "I had eleven years. Now I have eight days."- Danny Tripp, The Pilot. The state of affairs eleven years before the pilot.
1995 was a crappy year. It started badly and it ended badly and Matt would rather not have remembered most of it. So it figured that of course it was the year that stuck out against the rest of the nineties.
When it had started he’d been with an aspiring actress/model/whatever named Alicia, who was gorgeous and had a body that wouldn’t quit but was dumber than a post and a Republican to boot. The sex had been good, good enough that he’d listened to her regale the evils of President Clinton and virtues of the Republican candidate in the upcoming ’96 election, good ol' Senator Dole, but not good enough to distract him from the fact that Danny was self-destructing. Again.
The first time had been a little implosion in 1992 after a severely ugly break up with a girl Danny had been dating since college. Danny had gone away for the weekend and come back looking like he’d been hit by a dump truck. But there was a reason. His ex had done a number on him. Made sense to Matt and it hadn’t lasted too long.
This time it was less of a low level self-destruction in reaction to a bitch with a taste for blood and more of a baseless, Kubrick-esque apocalypse complete with Danny riding the bomb down to Armageddon hooting and hollering, if Danny were the type to hoot or holler, of course.
Matt still remembered the first time cocaine entered the picture. The eighties had just drawn to a messy close, Matt had been out of college all of three months and friends with Danny for all of two. They’d been struggling to keep their heads above water in a crappy apartment they had been sharing since the show where they met went under. At the time, in between steady work, Matt had done some editing work on a few scripts for an NBC prime time drama and they’d landed an invite to a Hollywood party that the cops probably wouldn’t be called to.
Along with canapés and champagne carried by waiters on trays there had also been a woman in barely-there black spandex that had an assortment of what one studio bigwig called “goodies”. She was decidedly not attached to the catering service.
She’d offered, holding out a small silver mirror and a short, cut-off plastic straw and smiled at them both. Matt had said no thanks. Danny had looked around nervously before taking the proffered straw.
And then there they were, half a decade later, and by February of ‘95 what had been a lark at a party was now costing Danny more money than he spent on food or rent. Which was considerably more than he could afford considering that he was merely a production assistant on the sitcom whose writing staff employed Matt as an assistant.
And while the debt was a definite problem, one Matt shared through his abysmal lack of any real budgeting skills, it wasn’t what worried him.
No, what scared him were the shadows under Danny’s eyes like bruises that had been around for the last two years and never really seemed to go away. It was the nearly skeletal thinness that had settled on Danny’s frame sometime in early April.
And then came that time in June when he’d sneezed in reaction to the spices in the Thai take out they were eating on the floor of Danny’s apartment and Matt had watched in horror as blood dripped through the fingers that covered Danny’s face.
By August things were unbearable.
Unbearable being code for a late night phone call that landed Matt sitting in the ER waiting room of Cedars-Sinai with his face in his hands, wondering if they’d managed to get Danny’s heart started again, wondering if he’d have to do this whole career thing by himself.
His mind took some very selfish and morbid directions while he waited to hear if his best friend was ever going to wake up from the overdose he’d worked himself into. He wondered if he’d stop being able to be funny if he had to go in and hear the good doctors tell him that Danny was dead. He wondered if he’d get to keep some of Danny’s stuff or if his mom would come and box everything up and take it all away so it would be like Danny had never even existed in his life.
He wondered if he should have said something. He usually said something. And then Matt remembered that he had said something. He'd said several somethings over the course of several years and Danny had chosen not to listen.
Then maybe he should have done something. Stopped Danny from buying. Stopped him from using it. Just stopped him altogether. But Danny was the logistical brains of the two of them. He had the plans, Matt wrote the scripts.
He hadn’t planned for the story to go this way.
He sat on those crappy plastic chairs for four hours before a doctor told him that Danny was up in surgery, getting treated for the bleed in his brain, courtesy of the cocaine, that had complicated Danny’s already drug elevated blood pressure and made short work of stopping of his heart. Restarting his heart had come first. Making sure the bleed in his brain didn’t render him dead or a vegetable was now the order of the day. Twelve more hours on far more comfortable chairs in the surgical waiting room and the doctor finally had something concrete to tell him.
The surgery had been a success and Danny was not, in fact, dead. He’d be awake and most likely alert in a few hours. Which was good. Because now Matt had the opportunity to kill him for shaving ten good years off his life from fear.
And then he’d marched into the hospital and into the room where Danny was and waited for the son of a bitch to wake up.
Danny’d looked like crap even after he woke up, which was expected considering the near-death experience, the emergency brain surgery, and the considerable amount of coke that had been pushed through his system in the last day.
“Danny.”
“Matt.”
Matt rubbed his eyes, raw and red from tears that he didn’t remember shedding. “Danny, this has to stop.”
Danny inclined his head. “Yeah, the whole defibrillation experience left some burns. And I have a headache.”
“Well, getting your skull cut open will do that.” Matt paused and rubbed his face again. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept. “So. You’re going to get help.” A statement, not a question.
“I’m fine. See?” Danny waved a hand at himself, awake and aware and not irrevocably brain damaged or deceased.
“Yeah, for a dead guy, you look great.”
“I’m not dead, Matt.”
“You’re right. You were only clinically dead for a few minutes. Not quite long enough for your grey matter to start dying but hey, it happened twice and there was all that bleeding so who knows, you might have shaved off a few unnecessary brain cells!”
“Still not dead.”
Matt wanted to hit something. A wall. A door. Danny. Yeah, if he weren’t newly-resuscitated, hooked up to an IV, and recovering from impromptu brain surgery he would totally have hit Danny. A hospital would have been the best place to do it, there’d be doctors on hand to fix his broken nose and everything. But instead he took a deep breath. And promptly lost his cool.
“You were dead, Danny! You died! That crap you snort like it's candy burst a blood vessel in your freaking brain. It made your heart stop beating. Your lungs stopped breathing and you were dead! You fucking died and thanks only to the fact that some guy happened to trip on your dumb ass in a bathroom and wasn’t too drunk to call 911, another guy with a stethoscope and a rectal thermometer was able to restart your stubborn heart. And you’re still not willing to own up to the fact that you have a fucking problem. Well you have a problem, Danny. We have a problem.”
Danny heaved a heavy sigh. “It’s not your problem Matt.”
“I’m sorry, but you killing yourself is very much my problem. And it will continue to be my problem until you decide to stop killing yourself or I decide to not be around you anymore. So, when you’re done pretending to be Pablo Escobar or Tony Montana or whoever the fuck you’re emulating then let me know. But it needs to be soon in the vicinity of now because I’m not going to stick around and watch you die. That’s not what I signed up for.”
“Matt, you know I can’t just-“
“Don’t, okay? Just don’t. Get help, Danny. You’re brilliant and you know I love you but I can’t do this anymore. I won’t.”
And then he’d walked away. He’d seen Danny around production after he’d recovered enough to come to work but they didn’t talk anymore. Matt dialed Danny’s number a couple hundred times to tell him about something stupid someone on the lot had said, how Alicia had called him for one more round of break-up sex, how he was considering doing some volunteer work for the upcoming Clinton campaign, only to hang up because he might mess up a lot of things a lot of the time, but this one mattered more than anything else had before and he couldn’t let it slide. No matter how very, very badly he wanted to.
So things had sucked until right around Halloween when Matt got another four a.m. phone call.
“’Lo?”
“Hello, this is Ana Marquez. I’m a nurse at Cedars-Sinai, is this Matthew Albie?”
He hadn’t been asleep. He’d been in his boxers watching an infomercial, chewing on the tail end of a ballpoint while pretending to write. But at the woman’s soft accented voice the pen fell from between his lips onto his lap.
“God, Danny.”
“Mr. Tripp is in our psychiatric ward, Mr. Albie, and you’re listed as his next of kin. He suffered an overdose.”
“He’s okay right? He didn’t die this time, did he?”
“Um, no.”
“Of course he didn’t.” Matt sighed, “Because if he were planning to die he would have called first. He’s considerate that way.”
He could almost hear the nurse’s confused blink over the phone line before she spoke.
“Mr. Albie, I realize that you’re upset, but-“
“Is he awake?”
“E’scuse me?” A little bit more of an accent slipped into her voice. Which was fine. Meant he had her as frazzled as he felt.
“I asked if he’s awake.”
“No, sir.”
“All right, I’ll be there soon.”
“Yes Mr. Albie.”
He spent part of the early morning chatting up Ana Marquez and taking advantage of the nurses’ station’s phone. He called Bob Thackery, a senior writer on the show with a wife, three kids in grade school and a ten year chip from Narcotics Anonymous. The man wasn’t happy abut a 5 a.m. wake up call but gave him a few places to try, a few people to contact, and told him to call in for some leave. He called the numbers Bob gave him. He called Danny’s agent. By the time he called in sick it was seven in the morning and Ana was tapping him on the shoulder to let him know that she had brought him more coffee.
Danny woke up at eight-oh-six and made a low groaning sound.
“See, that’s why cocaine is not legal, Danny. Because it makes you sick.”
“So do cigarettes.”
“Well, when cigarettes get me a dark night phone call from Ana Marquez, night nurse extraordinaire, that you’re back in the hospital, then we’ll discuss cigarettes.”
“Matt…”
“You don’t get to choose this time. You get to go into rehab where you will decide whether or not you want to get better but you don’t get to choose if you go this time.”
“What are you going to do, get a court order?”
“I’m not gonna need one. See, Ana’s going to have to make sure that the fact that you had a gram in your suit pocket’s going to make its to way to a judge and you’re going to get at least 28 days somewhere even grosser than my apartment if you don’t check yourself in voluntarily. Possession’s not too bad a rap in this town but court’s not as much fun as it looks on Law and Order.”
As he had learned from several traffic violations that had somehow…gotten away from him. And that thing with the prostitutes on his last birthday. And a protest against the Gulf War he got arrested at in ’91. And there was that animal testing facility he’d tried to liberate to get into Amber Morgenstern’s pants junior year of college. And that time he got busted for underage drinking when he was sixteen. But that wasn’t what this was about.
“You can’t manipulate me like this.”
“Why not? Nothing else has worked, Danny. And I have tried everything else. This sort of thing is your deal, not mine. I’m supposed to be the one fucking up, not you. You’re the big shoulders, not me. So when you make me do the responsible thing, you have to expect it to be shaky at best and awful at worst.”
“You’re not a fuck up.”
“Yeah, I kind of am, but if you can stop doing blow I think it’ll be okay. Because you’ll come back and keep me from messing up too big and I’ll keep you from sliding back into this and eventually, we’ll be famous.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah Matt, okay. I’ll do it.”
“You will?”
“I just said I would.”
“Thank God, because I really don’t have the energy to do this on a regular basis. Coffee only takes you so far.”
Danny smiled. “And it’s addictive.”
“Yeah. That too.”
Danny checked into rehab on November 2nd and Matt dropped him off.
“I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Danny, come on. Don’t be a pussy.” Matt chided. It earned him a glare.
“The last time I did a line was this morning off the kitchen table before you picked me up and yet I’m still here. I’m going to try and get better, okay? I’m going to try. So you don’t get to call me a pussy. I’m going. I’m doing. It will be done. I just…don’t know if I can, you know, do.”
They were in public. Danny was coming off the end of what would hopefully be his last ever buzz. So he probably shouldn’t have. It wasn’t a good idea. They weren’t in West Hollywood. But apparently that self-control Matt was waiting for wasn’t in stock yet, so he did something stupid. He put his hands on either side of Danny’s face and kissed him. Just once. To shut him up.
With no tongue. Okay, there was some tongue. All right, a lot of tongue. And roving hands as well but he was only twenty-six and this was Danny and he’d been waiting for five years for this, he just hadn’t known it. And at best he wouldn’t get to again until after Danny got out of rehab. At worst he wouldn’t get to again ever. So he went for the tongue.
“Matt.”
He liked the way Danny said his name. He had from the first time Danny said it when they’d first been introduced at Matt’s first, fresh-out-of-college job where he’d done copy at a really crappy morning talk show and Danny had watched and learned about the bare basics of directing.
“You will do this because I need you to be okay. Okay?”
Danny nodded, his nose brushing against Matt’s, staying close. “Okay.”
Danny had kissed him this time, it had been less rough and more salty and Danny’s hands had brushed over his cheek before he’d pulled away and headed inside.
Danny wasn’t allowed to make phone calls and even when he could he didn’t. So end of year sucked. Thanksgiving at his parents was torture. Hanukkah was lackluster with a few presents from his family and a carton of cold Chinese and old soda over a lonely menorah, and Christmas Day, which he usually shared with Danny, he filled by going to the movies. All day. A quadruple feature that cost him about twenty bucks that he just didn’t have to spare.
New Year’s Eve he went to a party on the lot where everyone avoided him but Bob Thackery. And everyone but Bob Thackery had something to whisper about Danny, his drug addiction, his stay at the Betty Ford or wherever, the speculative comments about why Matt wasn’t with Alicia anymore, because it couldn’t be their polar opposite personalities that drove a wedge between them.
He left at ten ‘til eleven and went home to watch the ball drop with Dick Clark and a bag of microwave popcorn and a cold beer.
T-minus 30 seconds and he raised his bottle to the television to salute the man who was an industry and took a sip to commemorate the passing of time. 1995 was a shitty year. He had been glad it was ending if nothing else.
1996 would be better, he’d consoled himself. It couldn’t be much worse. And hey, if he wasn't too terribly unlucky there might still be a Democrat in the White House this time next year.
“To ‘96,” he mumbled to himself, watching the white ball drop in Times Square 3000 miles away and 1995 finally ended. The cheering from the TV as the morning of January 1, 1996 was ushered in drowned out the sound of the door opening.
“Happy New Year, Matt."
His head snapped so fast it was a wonder he didn’t get whiplash because there was Danny. In his apartment.
“You know, you really should lock your door. Anyone could walk in off the street and kill you in your sleep.”
It was all horribly cliché, a little too When Harry Met Sally, for them to be kissing in the first moments of the new year, Matt’s arms wrapped tight around Danny’s big shoulders with Auld Lang Syne in the background. But as they tripped backwards onto the couch, Danny looking and feeling healthier than he had all last year, Matt decided that he could live with a cliché or two.
Fandom: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
Author:
dancinbutterflyPairing: Matt/Danny
Rating and Warnings: R for language and drug use
Betad by:
lordessrenegade and my friend Margo helped me out. Notes: This is my first Sorkin-verse fanfic. Please let me know what you think.
Summary: "I had eleven years. Now I have eight days."- Danny Tripp, The Pilot. The state of affairs eleven years before the pilot.
1995 was a crappy year. It started badly and it ended badly and Matt would rather not have remembered most of it. So it figured that of course it was the year that stuck out against the rest of the nineties.
When it had started he’d been with an aspiring actress/model/whatever named Alicia, who was gorgeous and had a body that wouldn’t quit but was dumber than a post and a Republican to boot. The sex had been good, good enough that he’d listened to her regale the evils of President Clinton and virtues of the Republican candidate in the upcoming ’96 election, good ol' Senator Dole, but not good enough to distract him from the fact that Danny was self-destructing. Again.
The first time had been a little implosion in 1992 after a severely ugly break up with a girl Danny had been dating since college. Danny had gone away for the weekend and come back looking like he’d been hit by a dump truck. But there was a reason. His ex had done a number on him. Made sense to Matt and it hadn’t lasted too long.
This time it was less of a low level self-destruction in reaction to a bitch with a taste for blood and more of a baseless, Kubrick-esque apocalypse complete with Danny riding the bomb down to Armageddon hooting and hollering, if Danny were the type to hoot or holler, of course.
Matt still remembered the first time cocaine entered the picture. The eighties had just drawn to a messy close, Matt had been out of college all of three months and friends with Danny for all of two. They’d been struggling to keep their heads above water in a crappy apartment they had been sharing since the show where they met went under. At the time, in between steady work, Matt had done some editing work on a few scripts for an NBC prime time drama and they’d landed an invite to a Hollywood party that the cops probably wouldn’t be called to.
Along with canapés and champagne carried by waiters on trays there had also been a woman in barely-there black spandex that had an assortment of what one studio bigwig called “goodies”. She was decidedly not attached to the catering service.
She’d offered, holding out a small silver mirror and a short, cut-off plastic straw and smiled at them both. Matt had said no thanks. Danny had looked around nervously before taking the proffered straw.
And then there they were, half a decade later, and by February of ‘95 what had been a lark at a party was now costing Danny more money than he spent on food or rent. Which was considerably more than he could afford considering that he was merely a production assistant on the sitcom whose writing staff employed Matt as an assistant.
And while the debt was a definite problem, one Matt shared through his abysmal lack of any real budgeting skills, it wasn’t what worried him.
No, what scared him were the shadows under Danny’s eyes like bruises that had been around for the last two years and never really seemed to go away. It was the nearly skeletal thinness that had settled on Danny’s frame sometime in early April.
And then came that time in June when he’d sneezed in reaction to the spices in the Thai take out they were eating on the floor of Danny’s apartment and Matt had watched in horror as blood dripped through the fingers that covered Danny’s face.
By August things were unbearable.
Unbearable being code for a late night phone call that landed Matt sitting in the ER waiting room of Cedars-Sinai with his face in his hands, wondering if they’d managed to get Danny’s heart started again, wondering if he’d have to do this whole career thing by himself.
His mind took some very selfish and morbid directions while he waited to hear if his best friend was ever going to wake up from the overdose he’d worked himself into. He wondered if he’d stop being able to be funny if he had to go in and hear the good doctors tell him that Danny was dead. He wondered if he’d get to keep some of Danny’s stuff or if his mom would come and box everything up and take it all away so it would be like Danny had never even existed in his life.
He wondered if he should have said something. He usually said something. And then Matt remembered that he had said something. He'd said several somethings over the course of several years and Danny had chosen not to listen.
Then maybe he should have done something. Stopped Danny from buying. Stopped him from using it. Just stopped him altogether. But Danny was the logistical brains of the two of them. He had the plans, Matt wrote the scripts.
He hadn’t planned for the story to go this way.
He sat on those crappy plastic chairs for four hours before a doctor told him that Danny was up in surgery, getting treated for the bleed in his brain, courtesy of the cocaine, that had complicated Danny’s already drug elevated blood pressure and made short work of stopping of his heart. Restarting his heart had come first. Making sure the bleed in his brain didn’t render him dead or a vegetable was now the order of the day. Twelve more hours on far more comfortable chairs in the surgical waiting room and the doctor finally had something concrete to tell him.
The surgery had been a success and Danny was not, in fact, dead. He’d be awake and most likely alert in a few hours. Which was good. Because now Matt had the opportunity to kill him for shaving ten good years off his life from fear.
And then he’d marched into the hospital and into the room where Danny was and waited for the son of a bitch to wake up.
Danny’d looked like crap even after he woke up, which was expected considering the near-death experience, the emergency brain surgery, and the considerable amount of coke that had been pushed through his system in the last day.
“Danny.”
“Matt.”
Matt rubbed his eyes, raw and red from tears that he didn’t remember shedding. “Danny, this has to stop.”
Danny inclined his head. “Yeah, the whole defibrillation experience left some burns. And I have a headache.”
“Well, getting your skull cut open will do that.” Matt paused and rubbed his face again. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept. “So. You’re going to get help.” A statement, not a question.
“I’m fine. See?” Danny waved a hand at himself, awake and aware and not irrevocably brain damaged or deceased.
“Yeah, for a dead guy, you look great.”
“I’m not dead, Matt.”
“You’re right. You were only clinically dead for a few minutes. Not quite long enough for your grey matter to start dying but hey, it happened twice and there was all that bleeding so who knows, you might have shaved off a few unnecessary brain cells!”
“Still not dead.”
Matt wanted to hit something. A wall. A door. Danny. Yeah, if he weren’t newly-resuscitated, hooked up to an IV, and recovering from impromptu brain surgery he would totally have hit Danny. A hospital would have been the best place to do it, there’d be doctors on hand to fix his broken nose and everything. But instead he took a deep breath. And promptly lost his cool.
“You were dead, Danny! You died! That crap you snort like it's candy burst a blood vessel in your freaking brain. It made your heart stop beating. Your lungs stopped breathing and you were dead! You fucking died and thanks only to the fact that some guy happened to trip on your dumb ass in a bathroom and wasn’t too drunk to call 911, another guy with a stethoscope and a rectal thermometer was able to restart your stubborn heart. And you’re still not willing to own up to the fact that you have a fucking problem. Well you have a problem, Danny. We have a problem.”
Danny heaved a heavy sigh. “It’s not your problem Matt.”
“I’m sorry, but you killing yourself is very much my problem. And it will continue to be my problem until you decide to stop killing yourself or I decide to not be around you anymore. So, when you’re done pretending to be Pablo Escobar or Tony Montana or whoever the fuck you’re emulating then let me know. But it needs to be soon in the vicinity of now because I’m not going to stick around and watch you die. That’s not what I signed up for.”
“Matt, you know I can’t just-“
“Don’t, okay? Just don’t. Get help, Danny. You’re brilliant and you know I love you but I can’t do this anymore. I won’t.”
And then he’d walked away. He’d seen Danny around production after he’d recovered enough to come to work but they didn’t talk anymore. Matt dialed Danny’s number a couple hundred times to tell him about something stupid someone on the lot had said, how Alicia had called him for one more round of break-up sex, how he was considering doing some volunteer work for the upcoming Clinton campaign, only to hang up because he might mess up a lot of things a lot of the time, but this one mattered more than anything else had before and he couldn’t let it slide. No matter how very, very badly he wanted to.
So things had sucked until right around Halloween when Matt got another four a.m. phone call.
“’Lo?”
“Hello, this is Ana Marquez. I’m a nurse at Cedars-Sinai, is this Matthew Albie?”
He hadn’t been asleep. He’d been in his boxers watching an infomercial, chewing on the tail end of a ballpoint while pretending to write. But at the woman’s soft accented voice the pen fell from between his lips onto his lap.
“God, Danny.”
“Mr. Tripp is in our psychiatric ward, Mr. Albie, and you’re listed as his next of kin. He suffered an overdose.”
“He’s okay right? He didn’t die this time, did he?”
“Um, no.”
“Of course he didn’t.” Matt sighed, “Because if he were planning to die he would have called first. He’s considerate that way.”
He could almost hear the nurse’s confused blink over the phone line before she spoke.
“Mr. Albie, I realize that you’re upset, but-“
“Is he awake?”
“E’scuse me?” A little bit more of an accent slipped into her voice. Which was fine. Meant he had her as frazzled as he felt.
“I asked if he’s awake.”
“No, sir.”
“All right, I’ll be there soon.”
“Yes Mr. Albie.”
He spent part of the early morning chatting up Ana Marquez and taking advantage of the nurses’ station’s phone. He called Bob Thackery, a senior writer on the show with a wife, three kids in grade school and a ten year chip from Narcotics Anonymous. The man wasn’t happy abut a 5 a.m. wake up call but gave him a few places to try, a few people to contact, and told him to call in for some leave. He called the numbers Bob gave him. He called Danny’s agent. By the time he called in sick it was seven in the morning and Ana was tapping him on the shoulder to let him know that she had brought him more coffee.
Danny woke up at eight-oh-six and made a low groaning sound.
“See, that’s why cocaine is not legal, Danny. Because it makes you sick.”
“So do cigarettes.”
“Well, when cigarettes get me a dark night phone call from Ana Marquez, night nurse extraordinaire, that you’re back in the hospital, then we’ll discuss cigarettes.”
“Matt…”
“You don’t get to choose this time. You get to go into rehab where you will decide whether or not you want to get better but you don’t get to choose if you go this time.”
“What are you going to do, get a court order?”
“I’m not gonna need one. See, Ana’s going to have to make sure that the fact that you had a gram in your suit pocket’s going to make its to way to a judge and you’re going to get at least 28 days somewhere even grosser than my apartment if you don’t check yourself in voluntarily. Possession’s not too bad a rap in this town but court’s not as much fun as it looks on Law and Order.”
As he had learned from several traffic violations that had somehow…gotten away from him. And that thing with the prostitutes on his last birthday. And a protest against the Gulf War he got arrested at in ’91. And there was that animal testing facility he’d tried to liberate to get into Amber Morgenstern’s pants junior year of college. And that time he got busted for underage drinking when he was sixteen. But that wasn’t what this was about.
“You can’t manipulate me like this.”
“Why not? Nothing else has worked, Danny. And I have tried everything else. This sort of thing is your deal, not mine. I’m supposed to be the one fucking up, not you. You’re the big shoulders, not me. So when you make me do the responsible thing, you have to expect it to be shaky at best and awful at worst.”
“You’re not a fuck up.”
“Yeah, I kind of am, but if you can stop doing blow I think it’ll be okay. Because you’ll come back and keep me from messing up too big and I’ll keep you from sliding back into this and eventually, we’ll be famous.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah Matt, okay. I’ll do it.”
“You will?”
“I just said I would.”
“Thank God, because I really don’t have the energy to do this on a regular basis. Coffee only takes you so far.”
Danny smiled. “And it’s addictive.”
“Yeah. That too.”
Danny checked into rehab on November 2nd and Matt dropped him off.
“I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Danny, come on. Don’t be a pussy.” Matt chided. It earned him a glare.
“The last time I did a line was this morning off the kitchen table before you picked me up and yet I’m still here. I’m going to try and get better, okay? I’m going to try. So you don’t get to call me a pussy. I’m going. I’m doing. It will be done. I just…don’t know if I can, you know, do.”
They were in public. Danny was coming off the end of what would hopefully be his last ever buzz. So he probably shouldn’t have. It wasn’t a good idea. They weren’t in West Hollywood. But apparently that self-control Matt was waiting for wasn’t in stock yet, so he did something stupid. He put his hands on either side of Danny’s face and kissed him. Just once. To shut him up.
With no tongue. Okay, there was some tongue. All right, a lot of tongue. And roving hands as well but he was only twenty-six and this was Danny and he’d been waiting for five years for this, he just hadn’t known it. And at best he wouldn’t get to again until after Danny got out of rehab. At worst he wouldn’t get to again ever. So he went for the tongue.
“Matt.”
He liked the way Danny said his name. He had from the first time Danny said it when they’d first been introduced at Matt’s first, fresh-out-of-college job where he’d done copy at a really crappy morning talk show and Danny had watched and learned about the bare basics of directing.
“You will do this because I need you to be okay. Okay?”
Danny nodded, his nose brushing against Matt’s, staying close. “Okay.”
Danny had kissed him this time, it had been less rough and more salty and Danny’s hands had brushed over his cheek before he’d pulled away and headed inside.
Danny wasn’t allowed to make phone calls and even when he could he didn’t. So end of year sucked. Thanksgiving at his parents was torture. Hanukkah was lackluster with a few presents from his family and a carton of cold Chinese and old soda over a lonely menorah, and Christmas Day, which he usually shared with Danny, he filled by going to the movies. All day. A quadruple feature that cost him about twenty bucks that he just didn’t have to spare.
New Year’s Eve he went to a party on the lot where everyone avoided him but Bob Thackery. And everyone but Bob Thackery had something to whisper about Danny, his drug addiction, his stay at the Betty Ford or wherever, the speculative comments about why Matt wasn’t with Alicia anymore, because it couldn’t be their polar opposite personalities that drove a wedge between them.
He left at ten ‘til eleven and went home to watch the ball drop with Dick Clark and a bag of microwave popcorn and a cold beer.
T-minus 30 seconds and he raised his bottle to the television to salute the man who was an industry and took a sip to commemorate the passing of time. 1995 was a shitty year. He had been glad it was ending if nothing else.
1996 would be better, he’d consoled himself. It couldn’t be much worse. And hey, if he wasn't too terribly unlucky there might still be a Democrat in the White House this time next year.
“To ‘96,” he mumbled to himself, watching the white ball drop in Times Square 3000 miles away and 1995 finally ended. The cheering from the TV as the morning of January 1, 1996 was ushered in drowned out the sound of the door opening.
“Happy New Year, Matt."
His head snapped so fast it was a wonder he didn’t get whiplash because there was Danny. In his apartment.
“You know, you really should lock your door. Anyone could walk in off the street and kill you in your sleep.”
It was all horribly cliché, a little too When Harry Met Sally, for them to be kissing in the first moments of the new year, Matt’s arms wrapped tight around Danny’s big shoulders with Auld Lang Syne in the background. But as they tripped backwards onto the couch, Danny looking and feeling healthier than he had all last year, Matt decided that he could live with a cliché or two.