E-MAIL: eli @ popullus.net
RATING: PG-13
POSTED: Dec. 7, 2005
SUMMARY: Kissing!fic. Thazzit.
NOTES: This is a direct continuation of Desperate Times for Hardworking Masses. There's no plot or anything -- really, it's just Dana/Sam, Jeremy/Natalie, Dan/Casey kissing (note the commas, please) -- but it won't entirely make sense unless you've read that story first.
DISCLAIMER: Read
~ Dana, Sam ~
He kissed her.
Sam just gave her that boyish bright grin, the one that always made her curl her toes under tight in her shoes in a desperate bid to keep her lips from curling up with an answering smile, because he was far too old to be called cute, but that was exactly what he was when he did that, which he did in that gaping moment before he leaned in and--
Oh.
He was kissing her. She was being kissed for the first time in-- She was being kissed by Sam, the man she'd-- And she was babbling. In her head, that was a comfort, but--
Dana closed her eyes and let her arms to find their own way up and around Sam's neck. They were doing a much better job than her knees at keeping her from being a puddle on the floor of the hallway where Sam was kissing her with all the attention and intention that he talked about the tiniest fraction of a number, and the way...wow...the way that he was holding her face, caressing her cheeks...
Ohmy.
She wasn't thinking much of anything when Sam started easing away and she leaned forward to follow, except, "Keep kissing."
There was a low chuckle. Dana's eyes snapped open. Sam's eyes were crinkling with amusement.
Oh, hell.
"No, I meant--"
"Dana," Sam interrupted, and he was...smiling at her. Smiling -- not grinning, not even smirking, but smiling -- kind of crooked under the mustache, and still awfully cute.
She didn't want to wince at the way his hands were still warm and sure on her face, or how her arms apparently had no intention of taking themselves off his shoulders any time soon. So she asked, "Yeah?" The wince happened, anyway.
There was something like bemusement in his eyes as he lifted one hand away to brush her hair back behind her ear. She didn't tilt her head into the shiver his fingers set off, but she couldn't get herself to shake either of his hands free. How long had it been since she'd last been the focus of such gentleness?
"Dan and Casey are looking a little embarrassed right now," Sam said, and glanced up and over her right shoulder.
Dana froze. "That's not funny."
His eyebrows went up. "Well--"
She glared, and yanked her arms away to cross them and glare a little harder, which worked a whole hell of a lot better once she was several steps away from him. "If you just wanted to stop, well, you started this, not me, and there's no--"
"Um, hi, Dana," she heard Dan's voice say behind her.
Sam quickly turned his small laugh into a cough that wouldn't have fooled a two-day-old chimpanzee.
Dana squeezed her eyes shut and moaned. "Oh, god."
"No, just us," Dan said cautiously. "...Sorry?"
~ Jeremy, Natalie ~
If at all possible, Casey was going to be officially listed as the cause of Jeremy's death. Or, if things progressed that far, it would be Dan. Either way, according to the short nails drumming on the table next to his arm, Jeremy was a dead man if something close to miraculous didn't happen in the next minute.
"We seem to be missing people," Natalie observed, eyes narrowed and locked on the door where the person who had instigated the evacuation to Anthony's was conspicuously not.
"Yep," Kim agreed.
Jeremy swallowed. "They're not missing, per se."
"They're not--" Natalie shot him a look that promised he wasn't anywhere near as smart as he thought he was and shoved him toward the edge of the padded seat with her elbow. "Okay, that's it. I'm going back to the office."
He braced his right foot on the floor just outside their booth and held his ground. "Uh...no."
Across the table, Kim's eyebrows went up and she started grinning an amazed, anticipatory grin that said she couldn't believe his chutzpah but she was sure going to enjoy what came next.
"No?"
"No." Another elbow in the ribs, propelled by Natalie's full body weight and a scowl that time. Jeremy cleared his throat. "I'm sure Dan and Casey are right behind us, and they're just...stuck in traffic."
"The office is across the street," Kim pointed out.
Jeremy gave her a tight smile and tried not to think about how good kicking her under the table might feel. It wouldn't feel at all good when he got one of her pointed shoes back in his calf, he was positive of that. "Thank you."
"No problem," she smirked.
"Jeremy," Natalie said sweetly. When he turned his head back to look at her, though, her teeth were clenched. This could not end well. "You're going to let me out of this booth, and you're going to do it now. Do you understand?"
He took a deep breath. Just like Dan had said, it came down to there being only one thing that he could do.
"I do, but I can't do that," he told her.
Natalie's eyes went wide and her mouth opened. After one more breath -- one last one, maybe -- Jeremy lunged forward and kissed her, quickly running his tongue along the inside of her lip, because past experience suggested that that move was the only thing that had a chance of keeping him alive past the next two seconds.
He dimly heard Kim hooting with laughter. But all he cared about was the way Natalie's infuriated "Mmrph!" didn't turn into a shove that put him on his ass outside the booth. Instead it turned into a hum, and then into a purr as her tongue licked forward and a hot wash of sensation rushed up his spine.
The bar noise faded out, and Jeremy realized that maybe the miracle was that Casey and Dan cancelled each other out sometimes.
~ Dan, Casey ~
Two hours after they finally got to Anthony's, Dan grabbed the skinny end of Casey's seriously loosened tie and started dragging.
"Hey!"
"Shut up and don't trip over your feet, okay?"
Casey immediately stumbled. "What?"
"Casey..."
"Okey-dokey, shutting up. But you'll have to drag a little slower, y'know. If you don't want tripping. See, my feet...they're going places that aren't where I'm telling them to go."
Dan sighed, trying -- and mostly failing -- to not succumb to the frustration that had been steadily building for the last 90 minutes. "I had a feeling that was part of the problem."
"Really?"
Shaking his head at the curiosity in that word, Dan stopped, reeled Casey in until his hand was on Casey's shoulder, and steered them both toward the door.
Not helping at all, Casey turned his head to blink at Dan instead of looking where they were going. "We leaving?"
"Yeah."
"But I didn't say goodbye."
Dan rolled his eyes and pulled the door open. "That's quite all right. I'm pretty sure everyone noticed it's time for you to go home."
That got him silence and cooperation until they made it back across the street and through the incredibly slippery lobby of the CSC building, arriving safely in the elevator down to the parking garage. When Dan tried to lead Casey out of the elevator, though, Casey developed lead feet and a complete lack of power steering.
"Why're you pissed at me?" he asked, squinting at Dan.
Dan looked at him for a full twenty seconds, noticing how he was listing a bit to the left, before admitting that Casey really had no clue. "Maybe because you've been dead set on getting completely tanked since Sam and Dana left? Yes, that might be it."
"Wh--?" Casey's mouth got stuck open halfway through, and after an almost amusingly befuddled moment, he settled for, "Huh?"
The elevator doors sounded a demanding ping-ping-ping, a five-second warning for the painful buzz that would be coming next. Taking a chance on distraction, Dan took a hold of Casey's arm and tugged again. Casey practically fell out of the elevator and the doors slid shut with grateful silence. Looking around, Dan saw nothing but cars. It was as good a place as any.
"You need a diagram?" Dan cocked his head and decided it was finally time to glare as he outlined the timeline of events. "Step 1: We get out from behind the damn plant and go around the corner, and interrupt Dana and Sam in what looked like a scorching good kiss."
Casey straightened, but Dan kept going.
"Step 1A: We somehow don't get our heads torn bloodily off by either of them. Still not sure how that happened, but I'm not one for looking at horses of any kind in any place."
At that, Casey's mouth finally shut; it was settling into a thin line, in fact. Dan plowed on.
"Step 2," he ticked off on another finger, "we get them down to Anthony's in time to catch Natalie trying to drag Jeremy home by his tongue. He too may forgive us at some point, by the way."
"You can stop now," Casey said softly.
Dan paused only long enough to decide, To hell with this. "Stop? Oh no. We're just getting to the good part."
"It's still a little weird, okay?" Casey snapped.
That was it. Casey was snapping at him? Dan threw up his hands. "You helped plot this! Hell, you were bugging me every half hour on the dot to get this to happen! You--"
"And I said it was weird, didn't I?"
Casey's shout echoed dully through the concrete and metal. Dan stared at him. Then he fell back a step, letting out a huff of air and raising a hand to rub at his neck.
"Oh my god."
Casey blinked. "What?"
"You really...you really do still want her," Dan said, a little shocked that that actually came out without a "you dumbass" at the end.
"I--"
The look on Casey's face was so confused that Dan had to laugh and turn away. This wasn't happening. There was no way that this was happening, not after all of the hints and all of the things almost said, the things he thought he understood.
A soft, "Danny..."
Dan held up a finger and, thank heaven and little colored golf balls, Casey shut up.
"Why did we do this, Casey?"
"Do...?"
Dan spun around, both hands cutting wide as he glared. "This. This thing with Dana and Sam. This thing where we -- you and I -- expend all of this effort on getting together two people who, apparently, you don't want together?"
He was shouting by the end of it, leaning forward and expelling all of his frustration into Casey's face because, god, he had to get rid of it somehow. It was almost a relief to see Casey's eyes narrow again, but it was a surprise -- and it hurt -- when Casey stabbed his forefinger into the center of Dan's chest.
"I do want them together," Casey said between gritted teeth. "Hell, I want them to have sex, get married, have babies," another jab, "in whatever order they want," a push, that knocked Dan back a stumbling step, "if that will keep Dana from snapping and taking out the control room every night."
Dan mouth was still open when he came up hard against a pillar, the concrete rough against his palms. Drunk Casey was a pushy Casey, something new to consider, but before Dan could get that truly filed away, Casey's mouth closed over his and Dan was more concerned about not passing out.
He could feel Casey's hands, first warm on his neck, then moving up -- one to hold his jaw, the other to skim his ear and make him shudder before pushing into his hair. Then Casey stepped closer, his chest and then his legs pressing into Dan's, hard and real, and Dan sucked in a breath that came with Casey's tongue into his mouth. Dan felt a noise of happy surprise form in the back of his throat, and Casey tilted his head and went in deeper, like he was specifically going after it, and that was when Dan moved.
There wasn't any room to shift back, so Dan pushed forward. And pushed again, and finally broke Casey away, leaving his own lips cold and suddenly barren, but--
"Holy shit."
Casey was breathing just as hard as Dan, hot and bitter alcohol-breath rushing between them. His fingers were still tangled and clenched in Dan's hair, but he was far enough away now that Dan could also gasp, "What the hell?"
At that, Casey's cheeks went bright red and he backed off faster than if Dan had been a lit firecracker.
"I-- I thought--"
Dan snatched, catching Casey's tie in his fist again before Casey could turn and run, or just drop dead on the spot.
"Oh, no. You aren't going anywhere until you explain just what made you do that."
"You--" Casey frowned, cleared his throat, and straightened to his full height. Dan shook his head and didn't let go of the tie, and Casey pulled in an obviously bracing breath, and then said, "I wanted to."
That surprised a short laugh out of Dan. "Really?"
Casey's frown went crooked and confused again. "No," he said. "I just kiss guys in parking garages. It's a thing. Jesus, Danny."
Thoughts spinning, Dan took a tighter hold on Casey's tie. "Okay. Then I'll repeat: What the hell? What was with all of the drinking? And the more drinking?"
"Well, it's...weird." Casey sighed and brought one hand up to rub his forehead. "Actually seeing them together is weird, and it felt better after the first beer."
"There was a lot more than one beer, Case," Dan reminded him.
"Yeah," Casey said with an uncomfortable shrug. "I don't know that beer could be called Dutch courage, especially if at least two of the glasses are some form of Budweiser, but..." He shrugged again.
Dan felt the joy expand out of his chest and spread across his face. He bit his lip to keep from crowing in triumph. Casey wouldn't look up, though, avoiding Dan's eyes with every terrifyingly well-trained avoidance cell in his body. So Dan yanked on the tie again.
Casey's head jerked up, and he blinked at Dan while Dan grinned at him. After a moment, a little smile started at the corner of Casey's mouth.
"You are a dumbass," Dan told him.
"Hey," Casey protested.
But he also stepped forward again, his smile growing, and Dan leaned back against the pillar.
"Next time? Just say something," he said when Casey was less than an inch away. "And maybe bring along some breath mints."
"You say something," Casey mumbled, but Dan just licked his lips.
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