Work Text:
1989
He invited Danny. It was a big ask for a college student, he knew. New Hampshire to California, all for one night, all for Casey.
“I wish I could, man.” Danny sounded genuinely apologetic. “But with school and everything -”
“I get it,” Casey said.
He swayed back and forth in his chair, eyes on the squint clock above the bullpen. Eleven already. At some point he wanted to read Danny his intro for the Steinbrenner article and get his opinion on it, but Mondays at the Tribune were always slow-going.
“I have a feeling the whole night is going to be sort of horrible, anyway,” he said.
“Based on what?”
“Based on how I feel about most of the people who’ll be there.”
“You mean your friends?”
“It’s just L.A. guys and some cousins I don’t like.”
“Subvert societal expectations. Invite Dana.”
Casey looked over at Dana’s desk. She was frowning out the window, phone to her ear, with her reading glasses pushed up like a headband. “Lisa has dibs on Dana.”
“I didn’t know Lisa was friends with Dana.”
“Lisa was friends with Dana first.”
“I didn’t think Lisa liked Dana.”
Neither did Casey, but that was a conversation he couldn’t get into in the office.
“I find strip clubs depressing,” he said.
Danny laughed outright. “You’re going to a strip club?”
“I’m just assuming. I’m scarily uninvolved in the planning process of this whole thing.”
“I’ve never been to one.”
“They’re depressing.”
“A bachelor party, I mean.”
“They’re depressing, too. It would have been a little less depressing with you there.”
The line rustled. Danny sounded closer. “I’m sorry to miss it, man. Really.”
He’d already sent back his RSVP for the wedding with the box ticked next to Regretfully Declines - it fell on the same day as his first midterm of the semester. Casey had been pretty disappointed about it. Lisa had needed help remembering who Danny was.
Casey ran a hand down his tie. “I knew you’d probably - I just thought I’d ask.”
A piece of balled up yellow paper hit him square in the middle of his forehead. He frowned at Dana over the heads of the two people whose desks separated theirs. She was posed like a dart player, one eye screwed shut, tongue at the corner of her mouth, throwing hand outstretched.
She dropped her arm and called out, “Is that Danny?”
Casey covered the receiver. “Yes.”
She was already out of her chair, on her way over. “Can I speak to him?”
“He’s helping me with the Steinbrenner piece,” Casey said.
“You’re writing a Steinbrenner piece?” Danny asked.
Dana looked down at him unhappily. “My desk faces yours. I haven’t seen you look at the Steinbrenner piece once all day.”
She held out a hand.
“Dana wants to talk to you,” Casey muttered.
He handed the phone over. Dana hopped up to sit on his desk, the phone cord trailing all the way across it, cutting right between Casey and his typewriter. And right when he was considering getting started on work.
“Did you hear that?” She flicked Casey’s ear. “He’s such an only child. Nobody ever taught him how to share a toy.”
-
His bachelor party was arranged by Mark Callahan, a columnist he’d worked with for a brief spell when he first came to LA. In the three years they’d known each other they hadn’t managed a conversation about anything but sports, but Mark had asked Casey to be his best man when he got married a year ago, so Casey had figured the thing to do was ask him back.
Mark wanted to go to a strip club.
“It’s called Crazy Girls,” he told Casey. “Do you know what that means?”
“I think I can work it out,” Casey said, “yeah.”
They’d been in the same flashy bar on Sunset all night. Casey preferred the dive next to the Tribune offices he and Dana would go to with their middle-aged editor after work, which played music he recognised at a volume he could hold a conversation over.
“It’s close,” Mark went on. “It’s, like, five minutes from here.”
Casey glanced around the table. Mark, his cousins from Indianapolis, a few guys from the Tribune, a few he’d met through other jobs or Lisa’s friends. Every one of them had wanted to buy him a drink, two drinks, a shot, another shot. Now their faces were starting to distort under the neon lighting, vividly blue in places, unseeably black in others.
He got up. “I’m going to the bathroom.”
Mark flashed a smile up at him, hair in drunken disarray. “We’ll get going when you’re back.”
“Great,” Casey rasped.
He found his way to the bar. He ordered a water, then, after he’d finished it, another after that.
Hands clapped him on the back.
“The man of the hour,” someone said.
Casey wiped his mouth and turned, expecting to see Mark or some other unpleasantly familiar drunk face from his table.
It was Danny. In L.A., in his Giants cap, standing right in front of him.
“Danny.” Casey grabbed him by the arms. “What the fuck. You’re here.”
Danny grabbed him back. “I am.”
His mouth made a V in the middle when he smiled. Casey wavered on his feet.
Danny kept him upright, gripping his elbows. “You good?”
“Do you have cigarettes?” Casey asked.
“I do. But I promised you I’d never give you one under any circumstances.”
“These circumstances are different.”
“How so?”
“It’s my night,” Casey said, “and I want one.”
“Okay, then,” Danny said.
Outside it was quieter, cooler. Casey felt better for having some distance between himself and his bachelor party.
“I thought you couldn’t make it,” he said.
Danny handed him a cigarette. The one hanging out of his mouth bobbed with every word he said. “What's the harm in missing a few classes?”
“It’s a long way to come.”
“Yeah, well.”
He couldn’t get the lighter to catch until Casey covered it with his hand.
He lit Casey’s cigarette first, nodding his head at the bar. “How’s it going so far?”
“I feel like throwing up my liver.” Casey took a long, savoring drag. He hadn’t smoked since Lisa asked him to quit last summer. “Mark wants to go to a strip club. Crazy Girls.”
“Yeesh.”
“I know. God.” Casey shook his head. Danny seemed like a vodka-induced hallucination next to him. “You have no idea how good it is to see you.”
“You too, man.” Danny sighed a breath, smoke trailing from his mouth. “I miss it here.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. A lot.”
“How’s school?”
“School’s fine.”
Casey always had this clear image of what Danny’s life at Dartmouth looked like all the way from his creaky desk at the Tribune. Every time they spoke Danny would mention girls, parties, classes that Casey, long-graduated, felt an embarrassing amount of curiosity about.
“Just fine?” he said.
“I think the problem is I’m still living a little too close to my parents.” Danny adjusted his cap. “You know?”
Casey knew enough when it came to Danny’s family.
“Come back this summer,” Casey told him.
“That’s not up to me,” Danny said.
It wasn’t up to Casey, either, but he’d told his boss at the Tribune that the internship had to go to Danny again. Had to. Not because they were friends, but because Danny’s work was that promising. He’d been helping Casey fix up pieces since he left last summer - he would listen to Casey go on for paragraph after paragraph over the phone, or read faxed first drafts and fax them back with scribbled edits and suggestions. He could make anything Casey wrote better in some indefinable way. Casey was putting out his best work with his readership in mind.
“You’re gonna get the offer again,” Casey said.
Danny raised his eyebrows. “Yeah?”
Casey raised his back. “Oh, yeah.”
Danny grinned, cigarette between his teeth. “Then I’ll be here.”
Another six months. It wasn’t long away, not really.
“When do you head back?” Casey asked.
“Tomorrow night.”
“Where are you staying?”
Danny shrugged.
Casey frowned at him. “Where will you sleep?”
“I don’t need to sleep.”
“Yes,” Casey said, “you do.”
“I’ll sleep on the plane,” Danny said.
“Stay at my place.” Casey looked him over. “You don’t have a bag or anything?”
Danny showed him the contents of his jacket pockets, the grand total of what he’d brought with him across the country: his passport, his plane ticket, his wallet and four cigarettes. In his wallet he had his fake ID and fifty bucks.
He stuffed it all back into his pockets. “This was a spur of the moment decision.”
“I see that.”
They’d been out there for long enough for it to be rude to everyone else. Casey took one last drag then ashed his cigarette out on a trash can, looking up the street at the cab stand a block away. He turned back to Danny.
“Want to go?” he said.
Danny ashed his out, too. “Sure. Let’s meet these hoosier cousins of yours.”
“No, I mean go go.”
Danny stared at him. “And miss Crazy Girls?”
“We could get something to eat. Go to another bar. Go to my place. Go anywhere else, I don’t know.”
Danny laughed bemusedly. “Casey, it’s your night.”
“Yeah, and I want to leave.”
“Case.”
“I mean it,” Casey said.
Danny looked at him, lips pressed. Then he raised his hands.
“Hey,” he said, “what you say goes.”
He slung an arm around Casey’s shoulders and walked him in the direction of the cab stand.
“You should be my best man,” Casey told him.
“I can't even make it to your wedding, dude.”
“Just for tonight.”
Danny didn’t say anything. He used the hook of his elbow to draw Casey in close, the side of Casey’s head coming to his chest, Casey’s back bowing deeply to accommodate it, then he mussed up Casey’s hair.
-
They rolled into the apartment about seven hours later. Lisa was on the couch eating a bagel, bare-faced and hungover.
“Danny.” She turned to give Casey a look that let him know how happy she was that he’d brought company back to the apartment at 6am. “Danny’s here.”
“Hi, Lisa,” Danny said.
“Casey said you wouldn’t be able to make it.”
“Well,” he shrugged, “I made it.”
The part of Danny that was almost derangedly interested in chatting to everyone he encountered always seemed to shut down around her. He’d made a bad first impression at Dana’s birthday party last summer when he and Casey had one too many beers together - Casey had been hoping he’d gotten over it by now.
He leaned over to kiss Lisa’s forehead. “Danny’s gonna crash here.”
She wrinkled her nose. “You smell like smoke.”
“I was smoking,” Danny said. “Casey was keeping me company.”
Casey blinked. His eyes were painfully dry. “I’ll grab you a blanket, man.”
Lisa followed him into the bedroom. She watched him in the mirror as he picked his contacts out.
“He has nowhere to stay, Lise,” Casey said.
“Of course he doesn’t.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means he’s nineteen, and he acts like it.”
“He’s twenty,” Casey mumbled.
He dropped his left contact, and without the other one in he couldn’t make out where it landed on Lisa’s dressing table. She picked it up for him and held it out between her fingers.
“Thanks.”
She met his eyes in the mirror. “Where were you?”
He frowned. “I was out for my bachelor party.”
“You weren’t at your bachelor party. Annie called when she got home. She said Mark told her you just left.”
Annie was Mark’s wife, and she and Lisa were much better friends than Casey and Mark were. Casey and Mark’s friendship hinged entirely on theirs.
“Danny showed up. We went to get wings.”
“You went to get wings.”
“Then we had some drinks and came back here.”
“Mark said you just disappeared,” Lisa said, “and it was really weird.”
Casey’s headache had been low-level for an hour or so but was getting steadily worse. He sat down on the bed and rubbed the middle of his forehead with his fist. “I don’t think I like that guy.”
“Casey, your cousins came all the way from Indianapolis for this.”
“I don’t like them much, either,” Casey said, and when Lisa replied with silence, “Did Mark say they had a bad time?”
“No. He told Annie they had a great time.”
“So why does it matter?”
“You just went off with Danny and got wings, and that was your bachelor party.”
“Yes.”
“You know what I did? I got drunk with my friends and let an orange man in a thong give me a lap dance. You know why I did that?”
Casey buried his face in his hands. “Lise.”
“Because that's what you do at a bachelorette party,” Lisa finished.
“I don’t even understand what we’re arguing about right now.”
“People are going to talk about it at the wedding.”
“Do you think I’m lying or something?”
“No.”
“Then what’s the issue?”
“It is weird, Casey.”
He lifted his head. Her face was deathly serious. Casey couldn’t even find it funny despite how absurd it all was.
“God forbid I do anything weird,” he said.
He grabbed a blanket from the closet and went back to the living room. Danny was perched on the edge of the couch, hanging the phone up on the hook with a click. He stood when he saw Casey.
“I’m gonna go,” he said.
The walls in the apartment were thin. They could hear Lisa shuffling around the next room over. “Did you hear all of that?”
Danny scratched behind his ear. “Some of it.”
“You don’t have to go.”
“I think I kind of do.”
Casey lowered his voice. “She gets moody when she’s hungover. Stay. It’s fine.”
“Dana said I could head over to her place.”
“Danny, you really don’t have to -“
“It’s okay, man.” Danny shrugged a shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.”
Casey dumped the blanket on the couch and patted himself down for his wallet. “You spent all your money. I’ll give you some cash.”
Danny waved him off. “I’ve got enough for the bus.”
It would be months until he was back at the Tribune, months until Casey might hear a voice pipe up from behind him while he was in the middle of typing up a piece with, “Actually, that’s spelled with a silent P. Common mistake.”
“Thanks for coming,” Casey said.
Danny jammed his hands into his pockets. “What kind of best man would I be if I didn’t?”
1993
Casey had been in the office a grand total of ten minutes when Danny came in, sat down on the empty space on his desk, and asked him, “Want to get a drink after this?”
He looked rough. He hadn’t even done his hair.
“After this, as in eight hours from now?” Casey said.
“Yes.”
Casey looked down at his computer screen. “I’ll be reading Charlie his bedtime story.”
“Fair enough.” Danny fiddled with the zip on his sweatshirt. He cleared his throat. “Amy broke up with me.”
It wasn’t hugely surprising news - Danny went through girls like tissue paper. Casey had never thought they were a good match, anyway.
Still, he reached out and patted Danny’s arm. “What happened?”
“Same thing that always happens.” Danny blew out a breath, his head swinging down. “At some point I stop being fun to be around.”
Casey frowned. “Danny.”
Dana came in. Danny’s head swung up again.
“Dana.” He got to his feet and went over to her, taking her shoulders in his hands. “Sweet Dana. Want to go out for a drink after this?”
Dana scrunched her nose. “I don’t know.”
“Amy dumped me.”
“Oh, Dan.”
She pulled him into a hug. She was physically affectionate with him in a way she wasn’t with Casey, which had been harder for Casey to take when she and Danny were both single and the last dregs of Casey’s college crush on her stirred up again.
She was using a magazine to rub Danny’s back. “You poor thing.”
“I know. It's very sad. Now will you get a drink with me?”
Dana drew back. “Robert says we drink too much.”
Robert was Dana's dentist boyfriend. Casey disagreed with everything he said as a matter of principle.
“I don't think that’s true,” he said.
“I think it probably is.”
“I need to drink tequila and get incredibly fucked up tonight,” Danny said.
“I didn’t know you liked her this much,” Casey said.
“I thought she liked me.”
Dana swatted Danny’s shoulder with the magazine. “Okay, you just lost my sympathy, buster. Casey, have you seen this?”
She held up a copy of THR.
“No,” Casey lied.
“There’s a list of who’s in the running for Late Night.” She flipped through it. “Here - ‘Casey McCall, Fox Sports North’s better-looking answer to Keith Olbermann.’”
“I don’t love that description.”
“Who cares about the description?” Dana smacked the page. “You’re on a shortlist of potential hosts. For the second time! Do you know what this means?”
“I don’t think NBC is going to hire me because of eleven words in The Hollywood Reporter.”
“Well, no. Of course not. But do you know how good this makes you look to the Dallas guys?”
Casey already looked pretty good to the Dallas guys, he knew. They wanted to meet him for a late dinner next week so they could sweet talk him into moving across the country to anchor their new sports program. They were still looking for another anchor, an EP. The plan was to bring Dana and Danny along too so the three of them could be hired as a package deal.
“You could ask them for anything,” Dana went on. “Look. Your name’s right under David Spade’s.”
“Wow,” Casey deadpanned.
“I need a cigarette,” Danny said, and left.
-
After work that night Casey had a late dinner with an NBC suit called David about the Late Night job.
David flipped his tie over his shoulder to eat his steak and looked sort of ridiculous for it. That, and for eating his steak well-done in the first place. He told Casey the network had been talking to other potential candidates, people Casey knew were more established in the industry. Comedians, actors. Names.
Casey McCall wasn’t a name. Even in the upper midwest, where he was starting to pull in decent numbers most shows, he had no fame to speak of. He wasn’t going to get it. He’d known as much since their first conversation on the phone a month ago. Still, the biggest broadcasting network in the country wanted to talk to him over a steak dinner, so he talked.
“I heard you’re giving it to Shandling,” Casey said.
“Shandling passed,” David said through potatoes au gratin.
He chewed his food like an exec, working his jaw with an urgency that made it seem like there was somewhere else he had to be. He kept working it even when he took a drink of wine. A mouthful, not a sip.
“A lot of the names you hear flying around have passed. It’s changed the thinking around the office. Now it isn’t, ‘who can we get?’ It’s, ‘who can we find?’” He gestured his fork at Casey with a chunk of steak speared on it. “You’re a good find, Case.”
Only Danny ever called him that. It made the whole thing even more surreal, hearing it from a stranger. “I appreciate that.”
“We’re not blowing smoke up your ass.” David always referred to himself as ‘we’ and ‘us’, like there were twelve other unseen NBC execs with them at all times, one head connected to a hydra-like corporate body.
“You’re blowing a little smoke up my ass,” Casey said.
“We’re not. We’re saying if you come to New York next week, shake some hands, nail an audition, it’s yours.”
Casey coughed into his water.
“You’re not serious,” he wheezed.
“We’re serious. We like you. We knew you worked on camera, and now we know you work in person.”
“This is - you’re offering it to me.” Casey made a fist in the fabric of his pants under the table. “Late Night.”
“We’re offering it to you. “
The plan for the night had been: go to dinner. Network. Make connections. Let NBC see that he was professional to work with, easy to get along with. Lisa had talked through this plan with him, in the hopes it might one day result in a job that got them out of Minneapolis and into a brownstone in New York.
The idea that he’d be offered the job hadn’t crossed either of their minds. It hadn’t seemed like a realistic thing to plan for.
David stopped chewing and looked up at Casey.
“So?” he said.
-
Lisa was lying in bed when he got home, in the middle of her annual reread of Heartburn. She glanced at him over her reading glasses.
“How was it?” she asked.
Casey stood mutely in the doorway for a moment. He closed the door quietly, mindful of Charlie the next room over.
“They offered it to me,” he told her.
She stared at him over her book. “They offered it to you.”
“Yeah.”
“Late Night.”
“Yes.”
“Casey - oh my god.”
She climbed out of bed to wrap her arms around him. It was the first time they’d hugged in a while - it took him by surprise. She felt small in his arms, in his worn old t-shirt. He let her go quickly.
“I didn’t -” he started, but the way she was looking up at him made him cut off.
He wiped his hands down his face.
"I told them no,” he said.
“What?”
“I told them no.”
A tiny crease appeared between her eyebrows. “Was it a terrible offer?”
It was only a little less than what Fox North was willing to pay him. “No.”
“Then why did you tell them no?”
He sat down on the bed and started unbuttoning his shirt.
“Casey,” she said, firmly now.
He didn’t say anything. She watched him, waiting. She didn’t even seem angry, just stunned.
After a moment she sat on the mattress next to him.
“It’s because of Dallas,” she said. “It’s because of you and Danny and Dana. Isn’t it?”
Casey couldn’t get the last button out. “Lisa, it just wasn’t -“
“I cannot believe you, Casey.”
There it was - she was angry. Casey glanced at the door. “Keep your voice down.”
She shook her head. “Who goes to Charlie’s room to get him back to sleep when he wakes up in the middle of the night? I do, because you sleep through him crying. You come and go from this house like I’m a twenty-four-seven nanny for your kid.”
Casey stopped fumbling to frown at her. “That’s not true.”
“How, how could you make that decision without talking to me first?”
“Lisa, it just -”
“It just what?”
“It didn’t feel right.” His voice was rising, too. “Okay?”
“But this does. Minneapolis feels right. Where you’re on a show that reaches three states, where you’re barely on the desk, where we don’t have any of our friends around -“
“We have friends here.”
“No, you have friends here.”
“What do you want me to say? It didn’t feel right. I didn’t want to do it.”
“I want you to say that you considered, even just for a second, what I wanted.”
Her voice cracked, then her whole face twitched. For one brief, awful second, she looked like she was going to cry. Casey had never seen her cry before.
He froze looking at her. She turned to face the wall.
“I should have talked to you about it,” he said, quietly.
“Yeah.” Her voice was still unsteady. It was easier to hear with her facing away from him. “But you don’t see me as your partner, so you didn’t. Dana and Danny, they’re your partners. I’m your luggage. I just go where you go, and I get no fucking say in it.”
“Lise,” Casey said.
Charlie started crying from the next room over.
Lisa pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes. “You get him.”
He couldn’t move. “Lisa.”
She dropped her hands to her knees and looked at him, eyes wet, turning red right then as he looked at her.
“What?” she said.
He realized he had nothing to say. Next door, Charlie kept on crying.
“Sleep with him or take the couch,” she told him.
Casey slipped out of their room and went into Charlie’s. Charlie was sitting up in his bed, a tiny figure in the dark, his blue night light illuminating one round cheek.
He stopped crying when Casey came in, breathing hard, shaky breaths instead. He was an especially sensitive kid. It was what Casey had always worried he’d be, because he’d been the same.
“Daddy,” Charlie said.
Casey sat down on the bed and wiped Charlie’s wet cheeks with his thumbs. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”
It calmed him down to say it, to hold Charlie’s face in his hands. In Charlie’s bedroom he could make himself into whatever kind of a father he had to be at any given time, and it was easy, because it had to be done. Charlie needed it from him. For a long time he’d been able to do the same thing for Lisa, too.
He pulled Charlie against his chest and rubbed his back in circles.
“You have to go back to sleep, honey,” he said.
“Sleep, honey,” Charlie repeated, rubbing Casey’s back in return.
-
The next day Danny came into the office exhausted and hungover. Casey probably didn’t look much better after only grabbing a few hours of sleep crammed into Charlie’s bed. He brought Danny a cup of coffee at his desk.
“Thanks,” Danny mumbled. He took a sip then put it down, staring blankly at his computer. “I’m blocked.”
Casey leaned over to look at his screen. The line of his cursor blinked on empty white space.
“All of this over Amy?” he said.
Danny looked at him.
“I heard your name come up for the Late Night job before yesterday,” he said.
Casey took a drink. “Yeah. From another stupid article.”
There was an article in Variety a while ago that suggested Casey for the job in a neat little paragraph about the size of his thumb. It was around the time NBC first reached out to him.
“Two publications soft pitching you as a host isn’t nothing. People know your name now.”
“Danny, nobody knows my name,” Casey said.
It felt like an oddly private conversation to be having in the middle of the bullpen. The phone the next desk over was ringing with nobody around to answer it. Dana’s laugh trickled in from the staff room.
“You don’t have to tell me, if they’re talking to you,” Danny said.
He pressed his lips together, watching the cursor flashing in and out of existence on his screen. Casey thought about how badly he’d fucked up with Lisa the night before, all the delicacy he’d lacked, all the things he should have said and hadn’t.
“There are hundreds of people out there better suited to hosting Late Night than I am,” he told Danny.
“You’re the only good suggestion I’ve heard so far.”
It was an immediate response, said with feeling. Casey turned away, head bent.
Lisa had been right: he didn’t want to work without Danny and Dana. He wasn’t sure he could work without them. At dinner he’d been struck by a cold, full-bodied certainty that he wasn’t the man David and NBC seemed to think he was - he was no Carson, no Letterman, not even a Paar. He could do a show about sports. He couldn’t do a show about himself.
“It’s not happening, Danny,” he said. “Can you drop it?”
Danny bent his head.
“I’ll shut up,” he mumbled. “Sorry. I’m being so -”
He cut off, blinking, and got out of his seat.
“I’m gonna get a bagel. You want one?”
He’d become awkward in that way Casey couldn’t stand, shoulders raised, eyes on the floor.
“Sure,” Casey said.
Danny fled.
Casey stayed put. He’d had this idea the past few months of what it would be like in Dallas, him and Danny and their own anchordesk, writing entire shows together in an office, a proper office. The Dallas guys wanted him, and he wanted Danny, and it didn’t scare him at all, the idea of sitting down to dinner with them next week and telling them as much. The few times they’d anchored together at Fox North Casey had been at his best; under the studio lights Danny’s charisma had come out in full-effect. That show, he knew he had in him.
He leaned over. The little clock on Danny’s screen said it was 9:33am. Lisa would be at Toddler Storytime with Charlie. He wondered if she even liked any of the other moms there.
Danny came back a little while later with bagels. He brought Casey a Ho Ho, too.
1997
They grabbed a late dinner at a deli by Battery Park. They were already running late for the nine o’clock rundown when, on the walk back to the office, Danny stopped outside of a closed pawn shop to eye the gaudy jewellery on display.
Casey checked his watch. “I’d say you have about thirty seconds of window shopping before Dana is really pissed with us.”
Danny was so close to the window his nose almost touched the smeared glass. “How did you know what ring to get Lisa?”
Casey took his arm and pulled him back half a step. “She told me what she wanted.”
“I’ve been thinking about it.”
“Lisa’s ring?”
“No, you doof.” Danny tapped the window with his finger, pointing towards a tray of silver bands. “A ring for Laura.”
Danny had been seeing Laura for five months, if you rounded up generously.
Casey stared at him. “To propose with?”
“That’s historically been what engagement rings have been used for, yes.”
Thankfully the conversation ended there. They bumped into Elliott further along the street, also running late for the rundown, and headed back to the office together. Dana greeted them in the boardroom with a stony look and began the meeting by roundly chewing them out one-by-one.
After it ended Natalie hung around while everyone else petered out, leaning back in her desk chair and smiling shit-eatingly at Casey.
“It’s one of the great pleasures of my life, watching Dana yell at you guys when you deserve to get yelled at,” she said.
It was just the two of them left. Casey moved to the empty seat next to her and told her in a low, conspiratorial voice, “Danny wants to ask Laura to marry him.”
Natalie’s face fell. She sat up straight.
“Laura,” she said. “Can’t-get-any-of-our-names-right Laura. Doesn’t-like-sports Laura. Doesn’t-like-Danny Laura.”
“That’s the one.”
“Casey, you cannot let him do that.”
“I was thinking you might be better at talking to him about this kind of thing,” Casey tried.
Natalie laughed like he’d just said the most delightfully stupid thing she’d ever heard. “What, are you kidding? There’s no kind of thing Danny would listen to me about over you. You’re like his - I don’t know. His keeper.”
“His keeper? What the hell does that mean?”
“He quit smoking because you told him to. He got his weird back mole checked because you told him to. He asked for a pay rise because you told him to.” She gave him a look. “He takes advice from you like an order. You know that.”
Casey did know that. It was part of the reason he tended to keep his opinions on Danny’s girlfriends to himself - that, and they rarely lasted long enough for his opinions of them to matter.
“I really don’t like getting involved in Danny’s love life,” he mumbled, rubbing his face.
“Nobody is gonna like it if I have to get involved,” Natalie said.
She made him promise to talk Danny out of it. He had to put his hand on her production binder and swear an oath. As ridiculous as it was, it did feel sort of binding.
It was a conversation he was better off broaching after the show. Any friction between them made itself known when they were on-air - script beats went off, jokes didn’t land, solid shows wobbled.
Danny wasn’t in their office when he went back to it. Casey could see him through the glass, pestering Isaac all the way through the bullpen.
He called Lisa from his desk. “Hey.”
“Hi,” Lisa answered, yawning.
“Charlie go down alright?”
“Yeah. After our thousandth viewing of Beauty and the Beast.”
“Good.” He hesitated, tapping the bottom of his pen on the desk. “Listen, I might be back a little late tonight.”
A few years ago Lisa might have had follow-up questions for that - where are you going? Who with? What is it that’s so important you have to be there instead of here?
“Okay,” she said.
“I might not be.” He looked at Danny through the glass - he was still talking to Isaac, taking sips every so often from Casey’s Peanuts mug, the one he always swiped before Casey could get to it. “I just thought I should give you a heads up, in case.”
“Take the guest room if you’re home after one.”
“Okay.”
“Goodnight.” She hung up before he could say it back.
-
The show that night was great.
A little improvised banter during the first segment got Dana to bark a laugh through their earpieces, and from then they sailed through the rest of the broadcast. After the cameras shut off Isaac gave them a thumbs up through the glass. It was one of those nights where performing together felt so easy it was like the two of them were tapping into the same peculiar mental frequency.
Danny was clearly riding a high afterwards. He sang Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard at full-volume in the office as he changed out of his show clothes.
“Those aren’t the lyrics,” Casey told him.
Danny popped his head out the neck of his sweatshirt, grinning. “I don’t care.”
Casey couldn’t help smiling back. “Great show.”
“Great show,” Danny agreed.
“You want to grab a drink?” Casey asked. Part of him was considering letting the night end on a good note, getting a few celebratory beers tonight, making a run at the Laura conversation tomorrow.
“I’m gonna call Laura,” Danny said. “See if she’s free.”
He kicked a foot up on his desk to tie the laces of a beat-up sneaker. Casey watched him, mouth pressed.
“Did you mean it earlier?” he said.
Danny kicked up his other foot. “What?”
“About Laura.”
He glanced over at Casey. “Yeah. That’s why I said it.”
He finished tying his laces and stood up straight, looking at Casey from across the room. The industrial lighting kept their office headache-inducingly bright even after midnight. Casey could make out the white scar on peeking out under the hem of Danny’s shorts. Years ago, in Dallas, Danny had gone down hard on the asphalt during one of their one-on-one basketball games. The scar it left behind was in disjointed pieces, like islands on a map.
“What?” Danny asked again.
“I just…” Casey exhaled hard. “You really want to marry her?”
Danny’s good mood faded away all at once. “I knew it. I knew you didn’t like her.”
“It’s not that I don’t -”
Danny scoffed. “Come off it, man.”
“Fine!” Casey raised his hands. “Fine. I don’t like her for you. Nobody does. And you’ve only known her for -“
“I like her,” Danny said.
“You like her.”
“Yeah.”
Casey restrained himself from saying what he wanted to say: you like girls who treat you like shit. “Danny, that’s not enough.”
“Why the hell not? She wants to get married. I want to be married. I want kids. You don’t know what -” Danny cut off, scraping a hand down his face. “I’m not going to be thirty and still -“
“Danny,” Casey cut in.
He thought about last year, about Danny and Dana’s brother - Kyle Whitaker, the footballer, who was about Casey’s height and twice as broad as him. Kyle was on his first ever visit to New York. Dana and Danny had taken him around the Diamond District on their day off to help him pick out an engagement ring for his girlfriend, and Casey had met up with them at Anthony’s after work to find them all three sheets to the wind already.
“Casey,” Danny started, and when he blinked his eyes hung shut for longer than they should have, “it’s nuts. You go into these stores and they just ply you with champagne until you spend fifteen grand on a ring.”
“Fourteen,” Kyle corrected.
“Oh, fourteen. You must not like her that much.”
Kyle laughed. Danny grinned at him.
At first Casey had tried to catch up with them, but he’d given up around the third shot. He and Dana made the switch to water and watched from the table as Danny and Kyle threw back another round of tequilas at the bar.
“I don’t want to be the killjoy sister,” Dana said, rubbing her temples, “but god, I’m tired.”
Casey yawned. “We should call it for the night. Danny can’t write worth a damn when he’s hungover.”
But Danny and Kyle weren’t by the bar when they looked over again. There was no sign of them in Anthony’s at all when he and Dana looked, even when Casey checked the men’s room. He went out the back door to have a look in the alley where Danny used to go out for a smoke, between Anthony’s and the dry cleaner next door.
Danny was out there. It took Casey a second to see him, and another to make out Dana’s brother. In the dark Danny’s body moved like a stranger’s, his narrow hips rolling, a full-bodied motion like a wave, Kyle Whitaker’s arms twisting around his back. It was the kind of thing that once Casey saw it, once it was in his head, there was no getting it out again.
He went back inside. Dana found him at the bar slamming a shot of Jaeger he didn’t need.
“Any luck?” she asked.
He looked at her numbly.
“No,” he said.
She nodded. She cut through the crowd, headed for the back door. Casey watched, thought about going after her, but then she was gone.
She didn’t come back in. None of them did.
He thought about getting another shot, something with a real kick to it, then he decided he had to leave. He stumbled through a loud group of smokers by the front doors on his way out.
Danny was sitting on the sidewalk, his head bent.
Casey sat down next to him. “Hey.”
Danny startled. His mouth looked swollen, hair all over the place from being grabbed at by Kyle Whitaker’s huge hands. “Hey.”
He looked down again. Sometimes, when he was low, he’d look sort of vacant, like he was somewhere Casey couldn’t reach. That was how he looked then. Gone.
”You alright?” Casey asked.
“Yeah.”
Danny kept staring down between his feet. Casey thought about touching his back. Sat there and did nothing.
“Can you get me some water?” Danny asked.
It was his way of asking to be alone. “Sure, Danny.”
He touched Danny’s shoulder as he got up. Danny swayed with it, insubstantial feeling.
Casey went into the bodega across the street and grabbed two bottled waters and a pack of cigarettes. He wasn’t sure Danny would still be there when he came back outside, but he was sitting across the street, exactly how Casey had left him. He let a car go before crossing, watching as its headlights struck Danny, turning him bright white before passing him by.
He jogged over. Danny didn’t look up when he approached him or when he sat back down. He took the water Casey offered out, eyes fixed on the asphalt below, and told him quietly, “Thanks.”
He opened it and took a drink. Then, out of nowhere, he laughed.
“Something’s wrong with me, man,” he said.
“Nothing’s wrong with you,” Casey said.
Danny huffed another laugh, took another drink.
“You just need to sleep this off,” Casey told him.
Danny wiped his mouth on his wrist. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
Danny shook his head. “I just am.”
Casey put a hand on his back. Danny lurched up to standing.
“I’m gonna get a cab,” he said. “You’re right. I just - I need it to be tomorrow.”
Casey got up, too. “I’ll get one with you.”
“I feel like shit.” Danny wouldn’t look at him. “I know you just want to help, and I know it’s not your fault, but being around you is just gonna make me feel more like shit.”
“Danny, why don’t we just -“
“You don’t need to look after me, man,” Danny said, already backing away.
I want to, Casey had thought at him. Just let me. He’d watched as Danny headed towards his apartment until he disappeared. He’d gone back to the alley, empty then, and smoked his first cigarette in seven years.
Danny was looking at him now, brow furrowed. In his oversized sweatshirt, with his face flushed from being scrubbed clean after the show, he looked jarringly young, like the nineteen year old kid Casey had met in L.A. almost a decade before. Casey couldn’t imagine him married.
“It’s what people do,” Danny said.
“I know. It’s what I did.” From thirty stories below them, Casey could hear a siren wailing past. “And I’m telling you, don’t do it.”
Danny’s eyes widened. Casey was hit slowly by the gravity of what he’d just said, its weight on his chest pressing heavier and heavier, as if it was reaching him on a delay.
“I didn’t know that you felt like that,” Danny said, quietly.
Casey shrugged his coat on.
“This isn’t about how I feel.” He couldn’t think straight, couldn’t quite arrange his thoughts as he spoke. There was nothing that could undo what he’d just admitted. “It’s about you, it’s - look, I know you have this idea in your head that you’re some kind of fuck-up, but you’re not, and you don’t need to do this just to -“
He looked at Danny.
“You shouldn’t do this,” he said. “Danny, you know that.”
Danny’s eyebrows twitched towards each other. Casey touched his arm lightly on his way out.
-
Lisa was still up when he got home.
She was on the living room phone, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and a hand pressed to her mouth. She talked in a soft voice down the line. Casey approached her slowly.
“It’s fine, honey. It’s going to be fine. I promise.” She glanced up at him as he came closer. “Call me when you get there. Okay?”
She hung up.
“What was that about?” Casey asked.
“That was Annie.”
It took Casey a moment to know who she meant. Annie Callahan from L.A. Mark’s Annie. “Is she okay?”
She was looking straight ahead at the blank TV. “She left Mark.”
He hadn’t spoken to Mark in six years, but it still made his stomach drop to hear. He sat down next to her on the couch gingerly.
“Don’t they have kids?”
Lisa slid a hand down her arm, rattling the bracelet she’d told him she wanted last Christmas. She rubbed her hands together slowly, her fingers catching together and dragging apart in a repetitive motion. The rustling sound it made put him on edge.
“They have two daughters,” she said.
“Jesus. She was that unhappy?”
“She was,” she said. Then her face crumpled, and she started to cry.
2001
“Beautiful night to lose an Emmy,” Danny said, yawning at the sky.
There were no stars above them, just the glow of the Lincoln Center in the dark. A little further along the street someone was smoking. Casey couldn’t help turning towards the smell and breathing in deep.
“You guys lost two, technically,” Dana said.
Casey and Danny had both lost Outstanding Studio Host to Dan Patrick right before the show lost in its category. It was a double whammy the Sports Emmys liked hitting them with on an annual basis.
“Thank you, Dana,” Casey said.
“Beautiful night to lose two Emmys,” Danny corrected, wistfully.
Sam raised his hand to another cab that proceeded to drive past them. “How many losses is that in total? For the show, I mean, not for you two as individual losers.”
Dana squinted. “Six?”
“Eight,” Isaac said. “We were nominated twice before you all came along.”
“I’m sorry we didn’t swing it this year, Isaac,” Danny said, but Isaac just waved him off.
Dana coughed pointedly into her hand, the other spread over her baby bump. “Could we stand around not getting a cab somewhere smoke-free, please?”
They tried their luck a little further along Broadway. Casey and Isaac fell behind, Isaac leaning on his arm as they walked.
“Next year,” Casey told him.
Isaac squeezed his elbow. His cane clicked the sidewalk hard. “This was my last season, son.”
“It was?”
“You’re surprised?”
He was less steady on his feet and bore more of his weight on Casey than he used to. Still, Casey felt blindsided by it. “I guess I never expected the day to actually come.”
“I’ve still got a few months left, but it feels like the right time to go. Want to know why?”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to do it anymore,” Isaac said.
Casey glanced up and caught Danny’s face in profile as he tried to wave down another uninterested cab. “Does Danny know?”
“I told him first.”
“I always knew he was your favorite.”
He was only sort-of joking. It had never bothered him that Isaac looked out for Danny more; it was something he’d always appreciated.
“He took it hard.”
“He’s not good with big departures.” Casey huffed a laugh. “Neither am I.”
“I’m not dying. I won’t be around the corner from your office anymore, but I’ll still be here.”
“An Isaac-less Sports Night,” Casey said, trying to picture it.
“And Dana will be on maternity leave soon, too.” Isaac hummed, shaking his head. “It’ll be a whole new era.”
Sam managed to flag down the next passing cab. Casey helped Isaac into the backseat first.
“You’ll watch out for him,” Isaac said.
Casey was leaning his head and shoulders through the door. The car secluded them from the others a little, the staticky radio louder than their voices. Isaac’s face was serious, soft.
“When haven’t I?” Casey said.
Isaac smiled. He bumped Casey’s cheek gently with his knuckles in goodbye.
Outside Sam leaned on the hood of the car while Dana said her goodbyes. His matter-of-fact look paired nicely with the sequined gold purse he had hanging over his shoulder.
“Six years of failure.” Dana kissed Danny’s cheek, then Casey’s. “Maybe next time we’ll clinch it.”
Sam helped her into the car, offering them a brusque wave over his shoulder. As they watched the cab pull away Casey looked at Danny sidelong, the tight set of his mouth. His bowtie was undone, drooping around the open collar of his shirt. Casey put a hand on his shoulder.
“Isaac told you,” Danny said.
“He did.”
“I’m trying to be mature about it.”
“I’m trying not to think about it at all.”
Danny laughed. His eyes looked shiny in the streetlight. “Then we should be fine, right?”
They started walking again, aimlessly now. Out wandering Manhattan together in their tuxes, on a Saturday night, they were all but asking to be stopped by strangers looking for autographs and photos, maybe even a conversation worthy of a Sports Emmy nomination.
“Want to get a drink?” Danny asked.
“Sure. If you know somewhere drunk Yankees fans won’t bother us.”
Danny held up his hand to another cab coming towards them. “I know a place.”
-
Casey had lived in Danny’s guest room for two months after the divorce. Danny had been pretty patient with him back then, considering what a thankless prick he’d been. Casey had woken up early on the last day of his stay to make breakfast in an effort to make up for what a mean, miserable bastard he’d been in general.
When Danny stumbled into the kitchen that morning he blinked to find Casey already in there.
“What are you doing?” he croaked.
“I’m apologizing,” Casey said. Making pancakes inevitably made him think of Saturday mornings with Charlie, and thinking about that - the dining table they’d wouldn't eat at together anymore, the fact ten blocks away his kid was eating cereal without him - threatened to make him into a mean, miserable bastard again. “I’ve been acting like an asshole.”
Danny took a carton of orange juice out of the fridge. “Yeah.”
“I’m not going to do that anymore.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
Danny poured two glasses and slid one next to Casey.
“Look,” Casey said, nodding. “A perfect pancake.”
In the frying pan the first customary fucked-up blob of batter was starting to turn brown.
“You’re a perfect pancake,” Danny had told him.
That was four years ago. Casey wasn’t sure anyone else had slept in the guest room except him before or since.
When they got into the apartment Danny kicked his dress shoes off gracelessly by the door, leaving his tux pants in a heap next to them, then he wandered into the kitchen. Casey undid the first few buttons of his shirt and dropped onto the couch.
All the champagne from the ceremony was still buzzing pleasantly in his head. He closed his eyes and listened to Danny puttering around the next room away.
Danny came back holding a bottle of whiskey and two glasses, creased shirt hanging low on his thighs, boxers flaring out underneath it. He sat down next to Casey and poured them two generous glasses.
“Shit.” He groaned. “I gotta put sheets on your bed.”
Casey took a drink. “That’s a problem for later.”
He turned the TV on. It was on ESPN - a rerun of SportsCenter was playing.
He shook his head. “Dan Patrick.”
“Dan fucking Patrick,” Danny agreed, shaking his, too.
“I thought you’d get it.”
“Yeah?”
“You’ve had a great year.”
“I thought you’d get it,” Danny said.
“I would have been happy with that, too,” Casey said.
The next drink Danny took made his voice crackle when he spoke. “I was talking to Costas tonight. He said we’re too much of a package deal. That’s why we don’t win.”
“What did you say?”
“I said, ‘well, who the hell asked you, Bob?’”
Casey laughed.
“I really wanted the show to get it this year,” Danny added, quieter. “One last hurrah before Isaac left.”
“Isaac doesn’t care about awards.”
“I know. But it would have been a nice moment to go out on.”
Casey finished his glass. “I can’t believe he’s really leaving.”
It was hard to imagine what the office would look like without Isaac in it, how the show would work without him at the helm of it.
“Me neither.” Danny looked down, rolling his glass between his palms. “Natalie’s talking about going, too. Trying out L.A.”
It made sense. She’d been restless since breaking things off with Jeremy again. “I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah.” Danny was quiet for a moment, then he said, “I haven’t thought about leaving since QV bought us over.”
Casey remembered talking him out of it. The night Quo Vadimus saved the show he’d gone out to Anthony’s with the rest of the Sports Night team for celebratory drinks, where he’d waited all night for Danny to appear. Near closing, after almost everyone had gone home, Danny had slunk in looking unexpectedly dour.
When he told Casey he was still thinking about the L.A. job Casey had flashed back to his dinner with the NBC producer - had felt the same sudden burst of panic in his gut, had wiped the same cold sweat from his hands.
He'd made a fist in his jeans under the table. “I didn’t think you’d still want to go.”
“Everything that happened this year,” Danny had muttered, shaking his head, “draft day and all the -“
“You have to get past that,” Casey cut in, sharply.
Danny rubbed his eyes. “I hate that I did it.”
“Me too. But that's not a good enough reason to go.”
“I don’t want to be Lisa, man,” Danny said. “I don’t want to act like I've known you for so long that I've got a right to be mean. I don’t want us to hang around each other so much that the good thing we have going just turns to shit.”
“That would never happen,” Casey said.
Danny’s mouth flattened into a line.
Casey leaned over the table towards him. “Natalie once told me you take my advice like an order.”
Danny eyed him. “She told me that, too.”
“Can I give you some advice?”
Danny paused. He nodded.
“Stay,” Casey told him.
And Danny had.
On the TV Dan Patrick was talking hockey. Danny turned the volume down low.
“Have you thought about it?” he asked.
Casey blinked. “What?”
“Leaving.”
“No.”
“It’d be okay if you did. I know you get offers.”
“Sure, I get offers. You get offers.”
“You get better offers.”
Casey said, firmly, “I like our show.”
“So do I. It’s a good show.” Danny was holding his glass close to his mouth, looking down into it. “But it would be okay with me, if you wanted -”
“Why are we talking about this?” Casey asked.
“It just seemed worth saying.”
“Do you want to leave?”
“No, man, I’m just -“ Danny wiped his face. He threw back the rest of his drink. “Forget it. Want another one?”
Casey felt oddly bruised. “That’s probably a bad idea.”
“Yeah.” But Danny poured them each another glass, and Casey took his when he handed it over and drank enough to make his throat ache. “You - I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you, Case.”
Casey wiped his mouth with his knuckles. “Yeah, you would.”
“I mean it,” Danny said. “I needed you to get here.”
The hair by his temples was starting to thin. Casey noticed it with the same melancholy he felt finding new lines on his own face. He wondered if he’d be doing this forever - trying, at every turn, to ensure their lives stayed fitted together.
It was quiet. Danny breathed a laugh, loosening again.
“Okay,” he said. “I'll go put the sheets on your bed like a good host.”
He stood. Casey caught him by the wrist before he could go far.
Danny stopped, held in place. His wrist twitched in Casey’s grasp, but he didn’t pull away. Casey dragged his thumb from the jut of Danny’s knuckles to the hair at the back of his wrist in one long caress.
His breathing turned hard - Danny must have been able to hear it. He kept his eyes fixed on the faded white scar on Danny's knee. Having his focus there made Danny seem huge above him somehow, faceless, looming.
He made himself look up. Danny was looking back down at him, mouth parted. There was something vulnerable about his face that time had never managed to harden. When they were alone together, when they’d been drinking especially, Casey could see it so clearly.
It’s not about the show, he thought about saying, willed himself to say. It's about us. It's about you. It’s always been about you.
*
1988
Casey came in late to the office. He hadn’t slept the night before - instead of sleeping he’d been up arguing with Lisa. As a result he had to resort to a breakfast courtesy of the staff room vending machine.
He didn’t even know anyone else was in there until Danny said from behind him, “I don’t get it.”
Casey startled. Danny was on the couch, feet kicked up on the coffee table, hidden behind the last issue of the Tribune.
Casey was about to shove an entire Ho Ho into his mouth and, seeing there was company, took a dignified bite of half of it instead.
“Don’t get what?” he asked.
“Ben Johnson is Canadian.”
Casey chewed slowly.
“Ben Johnson is Canadian,” he agreed.
“Steroids aren’t very Canadian.”
“No. More Eastern Bloc.”
Danny shook his head.
“What is the world coming to?” he said.
“I wrote that piece,” Casey said.
He was about to follow it up with who are you, anyway, then Danny flicked the paper down and revealed that he was disarmingly good-looking.
“It’s a great piece,” Danny told him.
Casey was holding half of a Ho Ho, looking like an unkempt insomniac. “Thank you.”
“You know, it’s a little fucked up to eat one of those before ten in the morning.”
Casey stuck the rest of the Ho Ho in his mouth. He replied, chewing, “Oh, yeah?”
Danny grinned at him.
Dana poked her head in. She pointed at Danny with a ballpoint pen.
“Ready for a tour?” she said.
He folded the paper up. “Let’s do it, boss.”
“I see you’ve already met Casey.” She did a double-take at Casey’s appearance. “He normally looks more professional than this.”
“You're the intern.” Casey had heard his name thrown around the office the last few days. “Danny.”
“That’s right.”
“I thought it was Dan,” Dana said.
Danny shrugged. “Danny works.”
She waved a hand. “Come on. I’ll introduce you to the rest of the team.”
Danny followed her. On his way past Casey he tapped his temple.
“Casey,” he said, like he was committing it to memory. “Who’s a little fucked up.”
Danny, Casey thought, watching him go.