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It’s never the first thing. Or the third. It’s not even usually the fifth. And the thing is, it’s not even like he keeps track. Because most of the time, almost all of the time, it doesn’t matter how many things there are, he can cope. He’s got two kids, an ex-wife, and a partner who can push all of his buttons simultaneously, so yeah, Danny can cope with so much more than he would have ever thought possible.
But sometimes. And maybe it’s like that proverbial blue moon. Or maybe it’s something in the stars, or in the water, or something to do with tides or global warming. But sometimes, he just can’t cope.
And the thing is. Even in those moments, when coping seems like some fantastical creature related to unicorns and minotaurs. Even in those moments, there are glimpses of coping. Even within his least functional inability to cope, there are threads woven in of his deeper coping nature. Very rarely does he lose it all the way.
So the fact that he’s had, over the past two weeks at least, no fewer than fifteen extended moments of feeling like he’s just got nothing with which to cope. Well, it’s something extraordinary, that’s for damn sure. Honestly, it’s somehow, in some strange way, oddly compelling for him. Part of him—and probably not a very healthy part of him, but certainly a curious one—longs to know just how long he could keep this up. He knows it’s always a lot longer than you think. He’s existed on that knife’s edge of being fairly sure you’re about to just snap for good at any moment... just... any... minute now....
In some ways, he’s settled into it. He’s developed coping mechanisms for his non-coping. Which probably says something pretty awful right there, doesn’t it. But he’s oddly proud of those higher-level coping strategies. Because the thing is, when you’re at that not-coping battleground, the ways you find to get through, sometimes they say a lot about who you are as a person. It’s illuminating in ways your ordinary coping techniques maybe aren’t.
Those, after all, are frequently chosen. Sometimes allotted, planned—staged, almost. They’re close enough to regular life that they’re indicative of something of your sense of your self. Of who you would like to be, of how you prefer to be seen.
Which isn’t to say they’re always pretty.
But they’re maybe somehow less authentic in a rougher, more animalistic sense. While the deeper, more non-coping coping techniques often speak to darker aspects of our shadow selves. Which maybe is why they’re sometimes a whole lot more effective.
Regular level coping modes are the band aids and the ice packs and the aloe creams of the emotional injury world. Chocolate ice cream, extra garlic bread with that special dipping sauce, binging cheesy movies, indulging in fancy flavored coffees.
They work, sometimes remarkably well, when it’s been a rough few days. A good five or six or eight or ten things gone wrong, coffee pots dropped and broken, toes stubbed, papers misfiled, communications gone awry.
But when it’s been a good solid two months of being woken in the middle of the night with some emergency, real or imagined, on top of endless dinners burnt, fenders bent, dishwashers flooded, favorite shirts ruined... and so on and on. When it’s come to be the norm, rather than the aberration, and when it starts to feel as though it will never be normal to not be like this again.... Well. Something different in the way of coping becomes necessary.
And the thing is, he used to fight that. He used to think, no, don’t give in to that, just step up the usual methods, eventually it’ll kick back in and everything will readjust.
And yeah, eventually, that will happen.
But if you stick to those normal coping mechanisms, maybe it really only prolongs the inevitable.
Whereas if you step back, and allow it to really be awful, really give in to the suck of the suckiness.... Well, sometimes, shifting that and abiding with it rather than fighting against it. Sometimes that’s exactly the way to deal with it.
So it’s almost the weekend, and maybe he should hold out hope, but he just can’t. It’s the middle of the night, and it’s only the third thing that day, but it’s the fourteenth in forty eight hours and even that doesn’t really matter because it’s. Just. Too. Much. And it’s been too much for too long. And he gets that warning tingle across his skin. The one that lets him know if he doesn’t find a way to let this out it will make its own way out and you never know how that will go but it’s never anything very good.
So he gets up, out of bed—because bed has become a place where he fights the inability to sleep and that’s just not helping anything right now. He gets up out of bed, and he goes, through his darkened house, to his living room, and he sits. In the mostly dark. And he cries.
And it’s not one of those cries where it makes everything worse, where giving into it leads to being overwhelmed by it, being sucked in by it.
It’s one of those really releasing cries. The kind where it feels like you actually get somewhere from it, actually achieve something, actually make some kind of progress.
And after, he actually feels good. Feels like he’s taken some kind of magic “weight lifted” potion. He feels brighter than he has in days. He feels almost like he could face another ten things gone wrong.
And, miraculously, when he gets up and goes back to bed, he sleeps.
So a couple days later when the cycle repeats, he does it again. And it feels like he gets even more out this time. Feels like he’s somehow, stunningly, in the midst of chaos, actually creating order. And that has to be just about the craziest thought he’s ever had. But maybe that’s what does it, maybe that’s what starts to shift it. Because bit by bit, other things start to look very different as well.
Other taller, snarkier, more idiotic, jerky things.
Things named Steve.
(You got that though, probably.)
It’s not that he doesn’t keep up with his usual string of complaints against said tall jerk. But it sort of starts to feel like he doesn’t mean them as much as he wants to. Or maybe he doesn’t want to mean them as much as he thinks.
Things start to look a little sideways, is his point.
And, honestly, it feels kind of nice.
Like, really nice. And yeah, it’s gotta be down to the whole state of his mind thing. But as long as he’s going with the whole existing in the state of mind and not fighting against it thing, he may as well make the most of it, right?
So, he starts to let it just be a little bit different. See where it might go.
And where it goes, evidently, is to a somewhat fancy new wine bar, on a Tuesday night after an annoying case that—shockingly—pissed Steve off way more than it did Danny. It’s with something of a sense of the backwards nature of things that they settle into a booth in the back, Steve doing the grousing and griping, and Danny aiming to lighten the mood by selecting items from the pages long menu (things that he thinks Steve is most likely to enjoy) and picking the appropriate wines to go with them.
Which explains, probably, why Danny ends up driving Steve home, getting him upstairs and into bed, and then crashing in the guest room, because Steve’s heavier than he looks okay? And it was a grueling day, and if Danny drives home, he’ll only have to come get Steve in the morning anyway.
Besides. If he stays, he can make Steve pancakes and bacon for breakfast, and probably he’s gonna need it.
And if that pattern starts to repeat itself, well maybe it’s just some kind of new normal or something. You know, to go along with the other kind of new normal. Because stuff does kinda stay on the higher level of crap for quite some time.
But Danny just doesn’t seem to mind as much as maybe he should.
It’s only a couple of weeks later that they run out of New, Different places to drink and eat too much in. So Danny does the only thing that makes sense, and he starts stocking his kitchen like it’s the latest New Different hot spot.
And it’s not the kind of cooking he’s used to. But it’s not like he didn’t go through his version of “if I was on that cooking show what would I do with those ingredients” for years, so it’s not a huge stretch for him, and honestly it’s probably helpful in his mental state to stretch the bounds of his culinary creativity, and if he’s truthful about it, he enjoys it more than he’d imagined he would—or would have imagined if he’d thought about it, which he hadn’t really. It just felt like the thing to do.
And okay. It helps that Steve gets into it, seems to really enjoy it. And maybe the fact that he takes it as his due rather than protesting how hard Danny is working on menus that are fresh and fun (not that it feels like “work” to Danny), well maybe that’s something that normal functioning Danny would be upset by. But extra-coping-level Danny actually likes it. Maybe kind of a lot.
And maybe it’s because it gives him this sense of power over Steve. Not that Steve would see it that way, but Danny, who is aware of subtle plays of power and persuasion, knows. He’s slowly wrapping Steve around his proverbial little finger. And damn but he's enjoying it. Enjoying it probably a little too much.
He enjoys the little lift in Steve’s step when Danny mentions he got some new ingredient they’ve been wanting to try, or the twist of his smirk when Danny shoves him in the Camaro at the end of a long day, enjoys the flash of pride in Steve’s eyes when he picks a new wine that impresses Danny. And when Steve stalls, at the finish of the evening, lazing on the sofa, sprawled like a contented feline, and suggests he’ll just close his eyes for a bit before driving home, Danny loves how Steve practically purrs when Danny pretends to humor him but pulls a blanket over him and locks the door, shutting out the light as he stumbles sleepily off to his room.
And probably it’s just the natural turn of events, the inevitable shifting of the tides, that it’s just about become a tradition of theirs, this sleepy contented nearly living together, when things abruptly ease.
It’s almost like the light shifts. The air feels different, the sky seems altered.
Two weeks, it takes, of normal schedules, decent night’s sleeps, completed breakfasts, lunches not skipped, and regular ordinary dinners, before it happens.
Danny’s just caught up with laundry, finally managed a full clean of the house, and even vacuumed out the Camaro, when Steve looks at him, at the almost-end of an ordinary, non-explosive, non-thrilling day, looks at Danny as though he’s forgotten something.
And honestly, Danny’s not even really sure if Steve knows what’s missing, what it is that feels wrong. But Danny’s seen it. He’s seen it in the way Steve lingers in the parking lot at the end of a day, or stands in his doorway a little too long in the morning after they talk through the schedule. Or in the way Steve watches him across the tech table as they discuss upgrades and new gear and finally getting things done they’d been putting off when things had been so crazy.
They’re standing in the hallway. The others have already left. It’s just them. Just the two of them. And it’s quiet. And calm. It’s been a nice week, really. They’ve got a lot done, they’re well-rested, well-fed, they should be contented. And Steve looks absolutely lost.
So Danny grabs him by the elbow, walks him out of the building to the cars. Shoves him into the Camaro, and drives him home.
When they pull up at Danny’s, Steve’s not said anything, he’s taken Danny’s lead, so Danny decides to keep with it. And just like on those too, too hard days, Danny sits Steve down, pours him a glass of wine, makes him some food. And it’s a simple meal. Some pasta and a salad, nothing new or fancy. And they each drink a single glass of wine. But they sit on the sofa together after. And they watch a movie. Just something silly that’s on.
It’s not like those hard nights. But it’s not exactly like their old nights either, only Danny’s not sure he could say precisely why. It just isn’t.
And when Steve starts to yawn, Danny pulls the blanket down over them both, settles more solidly against his partner’s side, and smiles as Steve sighs contentedly and drifts off to sleep.
It becomes a new pattern with them. Every several ordinary days. Like it helps keep the balance or something. Like it restores order even when there’s not chaos. As though somehow through it all, the extraordinary coping became its own necessary thing.
Eventually their need for those nights increases, their need within those nights increases, and somewhere along the way the sleeping together on the sofa becomes sleeping together in bed, and somewhere in there, a kiss happens. It’s sleepy and probably mostly incidental at first. But that too becomes on purpose. And then more necessary. And more.
Then the kissing starts to happen on its own. Apart from just on those sleepy nights. And that starts to shift other stuff, create its own new patterns, behaviors. And none of it ever feels anything other than inevitable, never feels anything other than precisely right, perfectly necessary. So neither of them questions it.
Not until one day, several days in to another of those really hard times. Danny sees it first. But not by much—he’s certain when Steve turns to him, at the end of a really, really rough day, and it’s utterly, utterly clear, they need something more. Something new. Something different. And he’s no idea what that might be, what might help them cope now with this. When their old coping has become something necessary, has become something standard. What then helps them cope now?
Uncertainty flashes through Steve’s eyes, but only for a moment, before he’s falling to his knees, and the words that come from his lips are words Danny’s never known Steve had within him. Never suspected he’d hear. And it’s extraordinary, and they know it. And Danny says so. Says he’s only saying it because they need something to help them cope, and maybe he’ll regret it when things normalize.
And Steve protests, but he relents.
Still, they spend every night during that rough time together. And maybe they do find some new ways of coping. Not all of them involving food.
Of course the rough patch eventually passes, and things go back to being normal, only somehow they keep the being together all the time, like it too has become necessary.
It’s only a few days back into the predictable calm of things, when Danny sees it, sees that same uncertainty in Steve’s eyes. And it’s just an ordinary Thursday. Nothing special, nothing extraordinary. But he makes it extraordinary just the same. Because he asks again. On his knees again. And the words are different but no less intense. No less everything. And this time there’s nowhere for Danny to go, nothing for him to blame it on, nothing for him to hide it behind. Just everything he needs, everything he wants, laid before him like it’s some kind of perfect offering.
And it occurs to him briefly, as he pulls Steve to his feet, as he nods, through his tears, as he kisses his acceptance onto those perfect, perfect lips, that he’s no idea what they’ll come up with now, when they next can’t cope.
But then he gets lost in it, in the perfection of the moment, and he thinks that maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it was all leading to this anyway, and now they have this, they won’t need anything else. Won’t need some new, different thing to cope. Not now that everything they need is finally, finally theirs.