Breaking Point
Rating: PG, Angst
Fandom: Without a Trace
Pairing: Danny/OFC
Spoilers:
For episode 2X16, Risen
Feedback: Makes my day
Disclaimer: If it was in the show, it's not mine.
Archive: At my site The Band Gazebo (http://helsinkibaby.ahkay.net) , Fanfiction.net; anywhere else, please ask.
Summary: Danny is drunk.
Notes: For the LiveJournal FirstLines1000 Challenge #18.
Danny is drunk.
Again.
Or should that be still? No matter she decides. Whatever the semantics, the scene is familiar. The apartment, their apartment, looks just like it did when she left for work this morning. There are no dishes in the sink, no clutter around the living room, not a thing out of place. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear that she’d beaten him home.
But his keys are on the hall table, his jacket on the coat-stand. There is a faint but distinct sweet smell in the air that she knows all too well. And there is Danny, apparently asleep on the couch.
Once upon a time, she would have smiled at the sight, because he smiles when he’s sleeping, and between that and the tousled hair, he looks like a little boy. She used to look at him sleeping and imagine what their kids would look like, imagine spending the rest of her life with him.
But he isn’t smiling now.
There are dark shadows under his eyes, a five o’clock shadow on his face. His tie is undone, his shirt unkempt, one hand hanging off the couch, pointing towards the glass on the coffee table and the bottle of amber liquid beside it.
She swallows hard as tears come to her eyes, because she didn’t think she had any more tears to shed over this. She went over every square inch of this apartment yesterday, thought that she’d got every hidden bottle. Either Danny had found some new hidey-holes, or he’d bought this one sometime today.
After promising her, swearing to her, that he would quit.
Again.
She goes over to him, shakes him, says his name, not really expecting a response. His eyes flutter a little, offering her a glimpse of brown, and he mutters something that might be her name, but then he’s out again. She tilts her head back, stares at the ceiling for a long moment and fights the urge to scream. She knows there’s no rousing him tonight, knows that when he does come out of it, he’ll be all apologies and charm and it’ll-never-happen-agains.
She doesn’t want to hear that; not when she’s heard it all before.
Her cheeks burn as anger surges up in her, and she turns sharply on her heel, striding into the bedroom. There is a holdall at the bottom of the wardrobe and she grabs it, stuffing as many of her clothes as she can inside. She’ll come back for anything else she decides, sometime when Danny’s not there, when she’s had time to think about what she’s doing and where she’s going.
She’s not thinking now though, is moving purely on instinct, and every instinct in her body is screaming escape.
She listens to those instincts, pausing only when she re-enters the living room, sees him again. For a moment, she wonders if she’s doing the right thing, wonders if there’s something she can do, something she can say that will make everything all right again, turn him back into the man she fell in love with.
Then her gaze falls on the bottle on the table and she remembers that she’s already said it all.
Shaking herself, she grabs the pen and pad they keep by the phone, scribbling a quick note.
“I’m sorry,” it says. “I can’t do this anymore.”
She leaves it propped up against the bottle, where he’ll see it when he wakes, then slides off her engagement ring, puts it beside it.
Then she walks out of the apartment, closing the door firmly behind her.
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