out_there | SN Fic: A Minor Operation

Title: A Minor Operation
Fandom: Sports Night
Pairing: Dan/Casey preslash
Disclaimer: Not Sorkin, no money being made, you know the drill.
Notes: Written for Lomedet for the Sports Night Holiday Challenge. Thanks to

phoebesmum for the emergency (but amazingly swift!) beta.

Summary: "Over there," Casey pointed, arm straight and one finger stabbing at the air, "some surgeon is holding a scalpel and about to cut my son open. My ex-wife is flying back from her romantic break to Hawaii and will probably blame me for interrupting her vacation and for the fact that Charlie is about to be sliced from head to foot. Unreasonable as it is, entertaining you with sparkling conversation isn't my highest priority right now."

Dan wasn't sure if it was the off-white, off-beige walls or the harsh overhead lighting bleaching the colour from Casey's face. Either way, Casey was doing a successful impersonation of a three-day-dead zombie.

Complete with muttered groans in place of conversation.

"So Isaac bought the Knicks and wants to train them as a ballet troupe," Dan said, pretty sure Casey wasn't listening to him.

Staring at the ticking clock high on the wall, Casey made a grunting noise of agreement.

"Have you been listening to a word I've said?" Dan demanded, and Casey's head swung around to stare at him. Then gave a belated nod. "What was I saying?"

"The Knicks. And--" Casey frowned, blinking. "Ballet?"

"In what context?"

Casey smiled sheepishly, like he'd just realised they were on-air and missing page three of the script. (It had happened last Tuesday. They'd covered, but only just; Dana hadn’t needed to remind everyone why Casey wasn't allowed to call games without preparation.) "The Knicks' new coach thinks their chances of winning would be improved if all the players learned ballet?"

"Nowhere near," Dan said, waving off the not-so-illogical guess. "But it proves my point that here I am, sitting beside you and being completely ignored."

"Over there," Casey pointed, arm straight and one finger stabbing at the air, "some surgeon is holding a scalpel and about to cut my son open. My ex-wife is flying back from her romantic break to Hawaii and will probably blame me for interrupting her vacation and for the fact that Charlie is about to be sliced from head to foot. Unreasonable as it is, entertaining you with sparkling conversation isn't my highest priority right now."

"Maybe it should be, Casey. Your conversation could do with a little more sparkle," Dan teased but Casey didn't react. "Also, you're pointing at the reception desk. I'm pretty sure they don't have Charlie laying next to the photocopier."

"Lying," Casey corrected absently, not even annoyed. Dan had been hoping for a reaction.

"Oh, so now you can pay attention to my grammar?"

"I try to ignore it, Danny. I really do." Casey smiled, sharp and fleeting. It wasn't a proper grin, but it was a vast improvement on zombie-land.

Dan leaned over, nudged Casey's shoulder with his. "He'll be okay."

"As much as I appreciate the sentiment, what are you basing it on?"

"Faith," Dan said, because he was. He had faith that Charlie would be okay simply because he was *Charlie*. He was the kid who sometimes visited them at the studio -- charmed the hell out of Natalie and Dana, got Jeremy to help him with his maths and science homework, asking Dan and Isaac about baseball while he waited for his dad -- and he was the boy who made Casey's entire face light up with a sometimes frightening level of paternal pride. If something happened to him during a routine operation...

Well...

It wouldn't happen. Simple as that.

Casey was looking down at his own hands, fingers cupped tightly around each other. "How reliable is that faith?"

"It's pretty good." Dan shrugged. "It's backed up with your celebrity status. You're well-known. You bring your son here and it doesn't go well, that's going to be a lot of bad publicity for the hospital. They're smart people. They'll have figured it out, connected the dots, and they'll have their best surgeon looking after Charlie. Maybe their best surgeons, plural."

"You think?" Casey asked, wide-eyed and believing.

"He'll be fine. Besides, it's a tiny operation. There'll be an inch-long scar, if that. Girls will think it's cool."

"They're cutting him open and removing organs, Danny. That's not a small thing."

"He's having his appendix removed." Dan rolled his eyes. "I had mine removed as a kid and look at me now."

Casey narrowed his eyes. "Is that supposed to reassure me?"

"What's so wrong with how I turned out?"

"This is, ostensibly, your day off," Casey replied, sounding more like his usual self: mocking Dan for the sake of it. "Yet here you are, sitting in a hospital waiting room. There's got to be something wrong there."

"You know what's wrong?" Dan's smile showed through his poker-face but he got it under control quickly. "Being woken by a call from the school saying Charlie'd been sent to the hospital. This is especially wrong considering the kid isn't actually mine, and I'm pretty sure I've never even been to his school."

"Oh," Casey said with an apologetic wince. "About that..."

"You told them to ring me?"

"You're kind of, in a way, sort of listed as an emergency contact."

"Why? No, more importantly, how? We can come back to the 'why' later."

"The school forms had a space for mother and father and, you know, partners."

Dan stared at Casey, who looked as if he'd bitten into something very, very sour. "Partners as in my best friend and co-worker for the last half dozen years? The professional type of partners?"

"Maybe?" Casey shrugged. "I didn't look that closely--"

"What type of partner?" Dan asked slowly.

Casey's face coloured until he looked like one of his grandparents had been a strawberry (or possibly a tomato). "Partners. Like... Significant others."

"Charlie's school thinks we're... You and me?" Dan gestured between them, in case Casey was confused about which 'you and me' he meant. "That we're..."

"Yeah."

Blinking, Dan said the first thing that came to mind. "Lisa must have flipped her lid." She'd always had certain suspicions about Dan, and Dan's attachment to Casey. While she was wrong about the need to be jealous or possessive -- Dan wouldn't have done a thing to break them up -- she was right about the general nature of Dan's slightly ridiculous crush.

But Casey? Casey had always been wonderfully oblivious.

"I'm not sure she knows," Casey said sheepishly. "If she's seen the form, she hasn't mentioned it to me. She hasn't made any snide, passive-aggressive remarks about us spending time together."

Raising both brows, Dan asked, "Really?"

"No more than she usually does." Casey was quiet for a moment, then he added, "It made sense at the time."

"Having me listed on Charlie's school records," Dan said slowly, the surprise of it still making his words sound wooden and unenthused, "made sense at the time?"

"What if I got flown across the country for an interview, and Lisa was out of town, and something happened to Charlie?"

"If you and Lisa were both out of state, Charlie would be with one of you."

"What if Lisa was away, and Charlie and I got caught in a car accident?"

"Then the school wouldn't need to contact me."

"What if--" Casey threw his arms wide. "Look, I don't know, okay? I just thought it would be best for Charlie to have another safety net there, to have another adult he can trust in an emergency, when something really goes wrong. I didn't think you'd mind."

"I don't," Dan said gently, and Casey slumped back against the plastic chair. "I just... It took me by surprise. Also, I've only had four hours' sleep. My reactions might be lagging."

"You didn't have to stay."

"Yeah, I did." Dan leaned across, bumping shoulders once more.

Casey hooked an arm around his shoulders, holding him close, then looked right into Dan's eyes and smiled. "Thank you."

This was why Dan still had the ridiculous crush, even after ten years of watching Casey trip over his own feet and sometimes be the biggest jackass known to man: every so often, there'd be a moment like this. Casey would stand a touch too close, lay a hand on Dan's shoulder or his arm, smile brightly, and mean it. In those moments, Dan could almost feel joy radiating from Casey, like the warmth of his hand.

Those were the moments that made Dan smile back. Made Dan lean forward. Made Dan think about reaching out and kissing Casey: sweet, joyous and free.

One of these days, that urge was going to overcome Dan's self-preservation instinct.

Today, he was saved by a nurse -- big, burly and topped with brunette curls, the type of woman Dan didn't want to meet in a dark alley or, even worse, a barely-lit bar when he was very, very drunk -- who said, "Mr McCall? Your son's out of surgery. He should be waking up soon."

Casey stood up, fumbling with his jacket. "Can I see him?"

"I'll take you to his room," she said, and added as Dan got up to follow, "I'm sorry, but it's family only."

"He is family," Casey said quickly, without a second thought.

As they followed the nurse down the hall, he winked at Dan, grinning widely. Dan nearly laughed. One of these days, he reminded himself.

And that day was getting closer by the hour.