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laniew1Part 3 of my AU Martin/Danny.
Read these first or you might be a little lost:
At First Glance – The Blind Date
At First Glance – Peace Offerings
Feedback is always welcome.
SERIES: At First Glance
TITLE: The Blind Date
RATING: PG (for language)
PAIRING: Danny/Martin
Author: Melanie
DISCLAIMER: I own nothing at all, least of all those contained within.
At First Glance – The Cycle of Dating
If Martin had hoped that having a phone between them would keep him from embarrassing himself he was obviously quite delusional.
Danny’s voice was smooth and warm and Martin felt a little shiver run down his spine. What he wouldn’t give to have Danny actually whispering in his ear instead of talking low on the phone.
“I… uh…” Martin floundered, he hadn’t been this nervous since he’d stood before Kyle shifting nervously on his feet waiting for the inevitable rejection. He certainly hadn’t been this nervous when he’d picked up the phone, carefully punching in the numbers that Jessie had so helpfully written down on a sticky note and affixed to his computer monitor with CALL DANNY!! in big black letters underlined about a million times. He wondered why it seemed Jessie was more interested his love life than in her own.
At least she had waited until after the 15th to leave the note. Any time before that and he would have buried it on his desk under a mountain of paper and not found it until December.
Danny chuckled again and Martin wondered why this was so hard. He knew Jessie had expected him to call and set up a second date and while his entire body, hormones included thought that was a swell idea his brain had different thoughts.
If Danny Taylor worked with Sam that meant that Danny worked for his father and Martin had a slight problem continuing to go out with someone that his father might have possibly hand-picked out for him. Of course how he’d done that from D.C. was beyond him but he had no doubt that his father could figure out a way.
His hormones of course didn’t care how Danny had been brought to his attention, they insisted that it didn’t matter who had picked him out, his father, Jessie, the Pope himself, the sex would be amazing and it had been a long time and Martin was a complete idiot if he gave that up just because of who might have been involved in the setup process.
“Martin?” He started at the sound of the voice, realizing that he’d been staring at the wall and there was a worried note there that said if Danny’d had any idea where Martin lived he’d have been right there checking to make sure he was okay.
His hormones thought that was a fabulous idea and offered to give him the address.
“Sorry… I was…” Martin frowned. “It’s been a really long day,” he finally said, he knew his voice sounded tired.
“Tell me about it,” Danny sighed and Martin noticed for the first time that Danny sounded as tired as he felt, and his voice had the sort of empty-edged despair that he remembered hearing in his fathers’ voice after a case had hit him especially bad.
His mother, when she’d been alive, before his father had transferred and become a big shot something or other had pampered the hell out of him. Making sure all of his favorite comfort foods were within reach, making sure she and Martin and his sister were within reach. She had known, somehow instinctively that his father needed to know that the people he loved were safe and sound, healthy and happy.
He hadn’t understood that when he was a kid, he’d thought his father over-protective and fought against the cage that he’d thought his father had been trying to erect around him to make sure that he was safe. He hadn’t really understood until he was almost an adult.
“I was thinking that maybe we could get together,” Martin winced, because well that wasn’t at all casual and certainly not what he’d planned to say. It sounded absolutely nothing like ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to see each other.’
“What did you have in mind?” Danny was smiling into the phone, Martin could tell just by the sound of his voice.
“A movie, no Sam,” Martin said firmly.
“Sam…” another sigh from Danny and Martin regretted instantly bringing up her name. He should have left well enough alone. “She’s sort of over protective; she thinks I have terrible taste in men.”
“Oh…” Martin licked his suddenly very dry lips. Because if Sam had been there for Danny, than she hadn’t been there for him and that meant that there was a chance that his father hadn’t been involved in the setup.
A slim chance, but a chance still and at this point he’d take what he could get. His father didn’t really fit the image of a Jewish Yenta. Not being Jewish being the least of his problems in that category.
“I couldn’t really think of a way to get rid of her once she sat down,” Danny said and it sounded as if he was rattling bags on the other end of the phone. “I mean, Sam go away is kind of rude.”
“I’ve used that on Jessie before,” Martin confessed softly. “She didn’t talk to me for a whole day.”
“With Jess that was probably a blessing.”
“I think she only started talking to me again because she realized that she was only punishing herself and that I was relishing the silence.”
Danny laughed on the other end of the phone and Martin grinned on his.
“So a movie?” Danny prompted.
“Yeah… I don’t know what’s playing but…” Martin glanced around his apartment; he could probably dig out the newspaper and find out but that seemed like an awful lot of work considering the current state of his apartment.
“I was just going to stay in, watch TV, eat some Chinese, drink to much soda. It’s been a long week,” and there was that tired despair again.
“Oh,” Martin bit his lip. Because here came the inevitable rejection. He should have known. People like Danny didn’t go out with people like him. They went out with people that fell out their clothes without any prompting needed, if they were even wearing them in the first place.
He couldn’t do that, he looked awkward and uncomfortable and then inevitable got the ‘Martin, I think you’re a great guy but I don’t think this is going to work’ speech, otherwise known as speech 4 in the 5 that had been used to dump him in the past.
“Why don’t you come over here, I’ve got enough for both of us.”
Martin grinned widely, ignoring the relief flooding him. “Okay.”
******************************************************************************
Their second date was quiet. Eating Chinese food on the couch in front of the TV (he couldn’t remember doing that since the last time he’d visited his aunt and uncle), some movie that he would be hard pressed to remembered the title of later.
He didn’t think Danny could have said what the movie was either. It was obviously unexciting and Danny had fallen asleep with a soda in his hand about two hours after Martin had arrived.
He’d clenched his hands into tight fists to keep from smoothing the wild hair down, drawn a deep breath then moved the soda carefully from Danny’s hand and into the kitchen.
He’d sealed the leftovers into a plastic container that had obviously seen better days and placed it into the refrigerator. He’d made sure the few dishes they’d used were done, cleaned the counters and table even thought they hadn’t used them.
He’d shut off the TV, moving the remote onto the coffee table, and then he’d laid a blanket found on the back of recliner over Danny, fought once more to keep from assaulting Danny’s hair, scribbled a brief note and left.
That had been the end of their second date. No Sam, no choking on croutons in a restaurant. Of course there had also been no Danny undressing him non-subtly with his eyes but Martin chalked that up to him being so tired.
The real test would be their third date.
******************************************************************************
Their third date, started with Martin being late. He hadn’t mean to, he’d actually set the alarm on his watch and his palm pilot to make sure it wouldn’t happen. But then he’d taken the watch off when he’d washed his hands after lunch and left it in the bathroom and he’d had misplaced his palm pilot somewhere between Connie’s desk and his office.
Then he’d gotten absorbed in some extension paperwork and hadn’t even realized that he was supposed to be with Danny until Danny showed up in his doorway with a semi-bemused expression on his face holding his palm pilot in his hand.
“We missed our reservations,” Danny was touching something on the screen and Martin just stared at him. He was entitled after all because Danny was in jeans. Tight jeans and a tight t-shirt and a brown leather coat that looked really comfortable and where the hell had Danny made reservations for anyway? Most places that he knew that required reservations also required you to be wearing a suit and tie. If not know the owner.
And how had Danny been walking around in public dressed like that without getting assaulted? Were people blind?
Martin wondered if the air conditioner in his office was broken. It had gotten awful warm very quickly.
“Martin?” Danny was staring at him now, a quizzical expression on his face and how the man didn’t know that he bled sex out of his very pores Martin would never figure out. It wasn’t fair to the rest of the population that had to deal with him.
“Are you okay?” Now Danny was looking at him like he’d lost his mind, which Martin wasn’t positive but he was pretty sure he had. Because why weren’t they having sex yet?
“Um… reservations?” Martin managed to get out. At least he hadn’t asked the other question. That would have just been embarrassing. Danny thought him a nice boy, with morals and a chastity belt or something and Martin wasn’t sure how to disabuse him of that notion without coming across as desperate.
At least he was now reasonably sure that Danny wasn’t scared of his father, because while Martin admitted that his dad could be scary on occasion that was no reason to totally give up on sex. Unless Danny was getting it from someone else and Martin was just not going to think about that possibility because it depressed him. Besides the fact that he didn’t think Danny could manage it. This might only be their third date but they’d talked every night but the night before and that was because Danny had been in D.C. on a case.
“Yes Martin,” Danny rolled his eyes and looked at his watch with an exaggerated motion. He was not pleased and there was no way that Martin should find that adorable. “We had reservations for seven; we talked about this on Wednesday.”
“I set my watch,” a glance at his wrist showed his watch missing and his brow furrowed in confusion.
“You also set your palm pilot,” Danny turned the small device so Martin could see. MEET DANNY AT 6:45!! DINNER flashed at him as if the device itself was annoyed that Martin had been ignoring it. At least it wasn’t beeping. “It doesn’t do any good though if it’s in a drawer in Connie’s desk.”
“I didn’t put in Connie’s desk,” Martin said defensively. “It’s a busy time of year for us.”
“Tax season’s done Martin, I’ve been friends with Jess long enough to know that…” Danny sighed and Martin felt that little tremor of fear again. The one that said speech #4 was coming. Or possibly #3 ‘Martin your job is more important than me; I need to come first at least sometimes’. He hadn’t actually ever gotten that one, but he’d heard his mother say a few variations of it over the years to his father
“I’m…”
“Get your coat,” Danny dragged a hand through his hair, tucking Martin’s palm pilot into his coat pocket.
“My coat?”
“We’ve missed the reservations; we’ll just get some takeout and go back to your place.”
“My place?”
“Your place is closer to the Chinese food place,” Danny stared at him with an expression that said he couldn’t possibly be this much of an idiot. And he wasn’t normally, only when Danny was in the same room with him and breathing and wearing jeans like that.
“We don’t have to get Chinese, there’s a Thai place near there to,” Martin offered, because every time he talked to Danny he was eating Chinese food and Martin liked Chinese food but he liked to vary his diet a little bit sometimes.
“Whatever,” Danny shrugged, waiting as Martin shut his computer down. Patting his pockets for his wallet, Danny already had his palm so he didn’t need to worry about that and he had another watch at home until he figured out where he’d put the one he’d actually been wearing that morning. It couldn’t have gone far; they didn’t grow leg after all.
“I’m easy.”
Martin wished.
******************************************************************************
Read these first or you might be a little lost:
At First Glance – The Blind Date
At First Glance – Peace Offerings
Feedback is always welcome.
SERIES: At First Glance
TITLE: The Blind Date
RATING: PG (for language)
PAIRING: Danny/Martin
Author: Melanie
DISCLAIMER: I own nothing at all, least of all those contained within.
At First Glance – The Cycle of Dating
If Martin had hoped that having a phone between them would keep him from embarrassing himself he was obviously quite delusional.
Danny’s voice was smooth and warm and Martin felt a little shiver run down his spine. What he wouldn’t give to have Danny actually whispering in his ear instead of talking low on the phone.
“I… uh…” Martin floundered, he hadn’t been this nervous since he’d stood before Kyle shifting nervously on his feet waiting for the inevitable rejection. He certainly hadn’t been this nervous when he’d picked up the phone, carefully punching in the numbers that Jessie had so helpfully written down on a sticky note and affixed to his computer monitor with CALL DANNY!! in big black letters underlined about a million times. He wondered why it seemed Jessie was more interested his love life than in her own.
At least she had waited until after the 15th to leave the note. Any time before that and he would have buried it on his desk under a mountain of paper and not found it until December.
Danny chuckled again and Martin wondered why this was so hard. He knew Jessie had expected him to call and set up a second date and while his entire body, hormones included thought that was a swell idea his brain had different thoughts.
If Danny Taylor worked with Sam that meant that Danny worked for his father and Martin had a slight problem continuing to go out with someone that his father might have possibly hand-picked out for him. Of course how he’d done that from D.C. was beyond him but he had no doubt that his father could figure out a way.
His hormones of course didn’t care how Danny had been brought to his attention, they insisted that it didn’t matter who had picked him out, his father, Jessie, the Pope himself, the sex would be amazing and it had been a long time and Martin was a complete idiot if he gave that up just because of who might have been involved in the setup process.
“Martin?” He started at the sound of the voice, realizing that he’d been staring at the wall and there was a worried note there that said if Danny’d had any idea where Martin lived he’d have been right there checking to make sure he was okay.
His hormones thought that was a fabulous idea and offered to give him the address.
“Sorry… I was…” Martin frowned. “It’s been a really long day,” he finally said, he knew his voice sounded tired.
“Tell me about it,” Danny sighed and Martin noticed for the first time that Danny sounded as tired as he felt, and his voice had the sort of empty-edged despair that he remembered hearing in his fathers’ voice after a case had hit him especially bad.
His mother, when she’d been alive, before his father had transferred and become a big shot something or other had pampered the hell out of him. Making sure all of his favorite comfort foods were within reach, making sure she and Martin and his sister were within reach. She had known, somehow instinctively that his father needed to know that the people he loved were safe and sound, healthy and happy.
He hadn’t understood that when he was a kid, he’d thought his father over-protective and fought against the cage that he’d thought his father had been trying to erect around him to make sure that he was safe. He hadn’t really understood until he was almost an adult.
“I was thinking that maybe we could get together,” Martin winced, because well that wasn’t at all casual and certainly not what he’d planned to say. It sounded absolutely nothing like ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to see each other.’
“What did you have in mind?” Danny was smiling into the phone, Martin could tell just by the sound of his voice.
“A movie, no Sam,” Martin said firmly.
“Sam…” another sigh from Danny and Martin regretted instantly bringing up her name. He should have left well enough alone. “She’s sort of over protective; she thinks I have terrible taste in men.”
“Oh…” Martin licked his suddenly very dry lips. Because if Sam had been there for Danny, than she hadn’t been there for him and that meant that there was a chance that his father hadn’t been involved in the setup.
A slim chance, but a chance still and at this point he’d take what he could get. His father didn’t really fit the image of a Jewish Yenta. Not being Jewish being the least of his problems in that category.
“I couldn’t really think of a way to get rid of her once she sat down,” Danny said and it sounded as if he was rattling bags on the other end of the phone. “I mean, Sam go away is kind of rude.”
“I’ve used that on Jessie before,” Martin confessed softly. “She didn’t talk to me for a whole day.”
“With Jess that was probably a blessing.”
“I think she only started talking to me again because she realized that she was only punishing herself and that I was relishing the silence.”
Danny laughed on the other end of the phone and Martin grinned on his.
“So a movie?” Danny prompted.
“Yeah… I don’t know what’s playing but…” Martin glanced around his apartment; he could probably dig out the newspaper and find out but that seemed like an awful lot of work considering the current state of his apartment.
“I was just going to stay in, watch TV, eat some Chinese, drink to much soda. It’s been a long week,” and there was that tired despair again.
“Oh,” Martin bit his lip. Because here came the inevitable rejection. He should have known. People like Danny didn’t go out with people like him. They went out with people that fell out their clothes without any prompting needed, if they were even wearing them in the first place.
He couldn’t do that, he looked awkward and uncomfortable and then inevitable got the ‘Martin, I think you’re a great guy but I don’t think this is going to work’ speech, otherwise known as speech 4 in the 5 that had been used to dump him in the past.
“Why don’t you come over here, I’ve got enough for both of us.”
Martin grinned widely, ignoring the relief flooding him. “Okay.”
Their second date was quiet. Eating Chinese food on the couch in front of the TV (he couldn’t remember doing that since the last time he’d visited his aunt and uncle), some movie that he would be hard pressed to remembered the title of later.
He didn’t think Danny could have said what the movie was either. It was obviously unexciting and Danny had fallen asleep with a soda in his hand about two hours after Martin had arrived.
He’d clenched his hands into tight fists to keep from smoothing the wild hair down, drawn a deep breath then moved the soda carefully from Danny’s hand and into the kitchen.
He’d sealed the leftovers into a plastic container that had obviously seen better days and placed it into the refrigerator. He’d made sure the few dishes they’d used were done, cleaned the counters and table even thought they hadn’t used them.
He’d shut off the TV, moving the remote onto the coffee table, and then he’d laid a blanket found on the back of recliner over Danny, fought once more to keep from assaulting Danny’s hair, scribbled a brief note and left.
That had been the end of their second date. No Sam, no choking on croutons in a restaurant. Of course there had also been no Danny undressing him non-subtly with his eyes but Martin chalked that up to him being so tired.
The real test would be their third date.
Their third date, started with Martin being late. He hadn’t mean to, he’d actually set the alarm on his watch and his palm pilot to make sure it wouldn’t happen. But then he’d taken the watch off when he’d washed his hands after lunch and left it in the bathroom and he’d had misplaced his palm pilot somewhere between Connie’s desk and his office.
Then he’d gotten absorbed in some extension paperwork and hadn’t even realized that he was supposed to be with Danny until Danny showed up in his doorway with a semi-bemused expression on his face holding his palm pilot in his hand.
“We missed our reservations,” Danny was touching something on the screen and Martin just stared at him. He was entitled after all because Danny was in jeans. Tight jeans and a tight t-shirt and a brown leather coat that looked really comfortable and where the hell had Danny made reservations for anyway? Most places that he knew that required reservations also required you to be wearing a suit and tie. If not know the owner.
And how had Danny been walking around in public dressed like that without getting assaulted? Were people blind?
Martin wondered if the air conditioner in his office was broken. It had gotten awful warm very quickly.
“Martin?” Danny was staring at him now, a quizzical expression on his face and how the man didn’t know that he bled sex out of his very pores Martin would never figure out. It wasn’t fair to the rest of the population that had to deal with him.
“Are you okay?” Now Danny was looking at him like he’d lost his mind, which Martin wasn’t positive but he was pretty sure he had. Because why weren’t they having sex yet?
“Um… reservations?” Martin managed to get out. At least he hadn’t asked the other question. That would have just been embarrassing. Danny thought him a nice boy, with morals and a chastity belt or something and Martin wasn’t sure how to disabuse him of that notion without coming across as desperate.
At least he was now reasonably sure that Danny wasn’t scared of his father, because while Martin admitted that his dad could be scary on occasion that was no reason to totally give up on sex. Unless Danny was getting it from someone else and Martin was just not going to think about that possibility because it depressed him. Besides the fact that he didn’t think Danny could manage it. This might only be their third date but they’d talked every night but the night before and that was because Danny had been in D.C. on a case.
“Yes Martin,” Danny rolled his eyes and looked at his watch with an exaggerated motion. He was not pleased and there was no way that Martin should find that adorable. “We had reservations for seven; we talked about this on Wednesday.”
“I set my watch,” a glance at his wrist showed his watch missing and his brow furrowed in confusion.
“You also set your palm pilot,” Danny turned the small device so Martin could see. MEET DANNY AT 6:45!! DINNER flashed at him as if the device itself was annoyed that Martin had been ignoring it. At least it wasn’t beeping. “It doesn’t do any good though if it’s in a drawer in Connie’s desk.”
“I didn’t put in Connie’s desk,” Martin said defensively. “It’s a busy time of year for us.”
“Tax season’s done Martin, I’ve been friends with Jess long enough to know that…” Danny sighed and Martin felt that little tremor of fear again. The one that said speech #4 was coming. Or possibly #3 ‘Martin your job is more important than me; I need to come first at least sometimes’. He hadn’t actually ever gotten that one, but he’d heard his mother say a few variations of it over the years to his father
“I’m…”
“Get your coat,” Danny dragged a hand through his hair, tucking Martin’s palm pilot into his coat pocket.
“My coat?”
“We’ve missed the reservations; we’ll just get some takeout and go back to your place.”
“My place?”
“Your place is closer to the Chinese food place,” Danny stared at him with an expression that said he couldn’t possibly be this much of an idiot. And he wasn’t normally, only when Danny was in the same room with him and breathing and wearing jeans like that.
“We don’t have to get Chinese, there’s a Thai place near there to,” Martin offered, because every time he talked to Danny he was eating Chinese food and Martin liked Chinese food but he liked to vary his diet a little bit sometimes.
“Whatever,” Danny shrugged, waiting as Martin shut his computer down. Patting his pockets for his wallet, Danny already had his palm so he didn’t need to worry about that and he had another watch at home until he figured out where he’d put the one he’d actually been wearing that morning. It couldn’t have gone far; they didn’t grow leg after all.
“I’m easy.”
Martin wished.
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Date: 2004-06-07 10:12 pm (UTC)b) Ohhh... yes recs would be nice.
c) Two FDoE stories are currently off to one beta, but I seemed to have lost my other beta and since I only kind of have two... Um... Interested in critiquing? If that's not your think, that's fine. If so... kuriadalmatia @ yahoo . com
Cheers!