Joy in Mudville
By Nomi

It was time.

Some might have said that it was far beyond time, had I asked them - which I did not - but I had finally decided it was time. My time. I was gonna do it.

I was gonna get up off the bench. I was gonna get out of the dugout. I was gonna step up to the plate. I was gonna...stop using baseball metaphors.

I saw through the glass door of my - Danny's - office that I wasn't going to be alone with just my thoughts for very much longer. I tried to concentrate on the mostly-blank screen in front of me instead of the man heading right toward this - technically his - office.

Danny and I had come to some sort of agreement/non-aggression pact about whose office this really was and decided that we'd both continue to work in this one space. That was over a year ago. An extra desk had been moved in, and Danny'd set up his laptop there, never commenting on the fact that I essentially poached his office, his desk, and his computer. Danny's still never seen the office designated as mine.

Finally I decided that, if I didn't write _something_, I'd be forced to speak extemporaneously in front of the cameras, and I dreaded the thought. Impromptu speaking is one of my biggest fears. So I finally settled down to write, even if what I wrote was going to suck.

While I typed, I thought about what had brought me to this point. Dan and I had been friends for a very long time. He'd been with me through the worst periods - like my breakup with Lisa, like the Dana-Sally-Gordon fiasco - and through some of the best - like the move from Texas to New York. I couldn't picture my life without him in it. Even at our worst times, there had been a bond between us. And now I wanted more.

I'll admit that I haven't been in many same-sex relationships. Hell, Lisa and I married so young, and then I was too raw to date anyone seriously. Sally was a mistake, and then...well, then I didn't really care much about dating or relationships or much of anything, to tell the truth. But I'd done some...experimenting in college and had found it pleasurable. Since then, I'd concentrated on women, but women had been nothing but trouble for me, and I thought maybe - just maybe - it was because I was looking in the wrong place, for the wrong type of partner. And in my mind, "partner" has and always will mean Danny.

It occurred to me that I didn't know if he'd be receptive. For my plan to work, Danny would have to be not only receptive but willing to think about a real relationship, not just a random fling. In the past, Danny's been...well, Danny's had one destructive relationship after another. Danny's relationships are usually surface-level only, especially since Rebecca. And I know that Danny's been with both men and women, but he's been very much involved with women for a very long time.

An even bigger question was whether Danny would be receptive to advances from _me_. We've been friends for a very long time. I was afraid that Danny would take it all as a joke. We've told each other "I love you" many times over the course of our friendship, both seriously and in jest, and I was deathly afraid that if I told Danny that not only did I love him, I thought I was _in_ love with him, he'd laugh or ridicule me.

So before I went out on a limb and told Danny how I really felt, I had to get an idea of how he felt about me.

And suddenly, I felt like I was back in sixth grade, trying to determine if the cute blonde girl across the aisle even knew I existed. I knew Danny knew I existed; the issue was whether or not he cared. No, that was wrong, too. I knew he cared that I existed - the whole push to get me to follow him to LA was proof of that. But did he _care_ care? That was the question.

The sound of a throat clearing jarred me from my thoughts. I looked up into Danny's face. He was staring at me. I hadn't even heard him come into the office, and I had absolutely no idea how long he'd been watching me. I tried to play it casual, though, as if I'd been lost in thought about the piece I was writing.

"Problem, Dan?" I asked.

"Where were you, Case?" he replied.

"Right here," I said.

"Not physically, you dope," Dan said. "You were definitely elsewhere. Where were you?"

I didn't really have a straight answer for that, not one I was ready to give. "I was trying to come up with a word to describe the desperation that drove MJ to re-up with, of all teams, the Wizards," I said instead.

"They're his team. Who else would he re-up with?" Danny asked.

"Point," I said, grateful that I had successfully sidetracked Dan from his question. "And it's 'with whomelse would he re-up,' anyway."

"Pedant," Dan said, grinning.

"Oh, and you've never picked on my grammar," I replied.

"Only when you deserved it," Dan said.

"I've got to get this done or Dana will have my head," I said, determined to focus on my script and not on my feelings for Danny.

He let me work for a couple of minutes, though he remained standing in front of my desk. Then he said, "I've been thinking."

"Uh oh," I said.

"No, Casey, I'm serious. I think I need a change in my life." He was staring at a spot over my shoulder, as if his mind was on something other than this non-conversation we were having.

"What sort of change?" I asked warily.

Dan finally walked toward his own desk and perched on the edge. "I think I need to stop chasing women and settle down."

OK, I could use that as an opening...but I didn't. Call it Strike One, if you're the umpire of the game my life has become. There's something in my psyche that keeps me from pursuing the relationships I really want. Hell, it took Dan to convince me to go after Dana, and look where _that_ ended up. That idiotic dating plan, my "breaking up" with Dana even though we never dated...OK, so maybe my relationships were as screwed up as Danny's had been.

But that was the past. Now I had to concentrate on _this_ relationship. Well, relationship was at the same time both too strong and too weak a word to describe what Danny and I had. He was my best friend, my closest confidant. And at the same time, there were vast acres of things he didn't know about me. One drunken night after the show, we'd talked about past relationships, so both of us knew of the other's dalliances with same-sex partners. But he didn't know - Hell, I hadn't realized for quite a long time - that my feelings for him had intensified, for lack of a better word.

Again Danny's voice pierced my haze. "Uh...Case? You've been sitting there, fingers poised over the home keys, for minutes. Is everything OK?"

"'Home keys?'" I said. "Who says 'home keys' anymore?"

"Well, me for one." Dan sounded indignant.

"There aren't enough hours in the day, my friend, to tell you just how many things were wrong with that last sentence," I said, hoping to distract Danny from trying to figure out what I was woolgathering over.

"Why...you...mrph..." Dan sputtered. He turned back to his own keyboard, and I tried to focus again on mine.

Somehow I managed to eke out a script that was not too stilted and managed to be - at least in my opinion - vaguely humorous. We turned draft copy over to Dana right before the 8:00 rundown, and she promised to have it back in time for us to polish before airtime. Usually it wouldn't bother me if she took a while to get the script back to us, but tonight I was already on edge, and it was an edginess I couldn't explain to others, so I was attempting to stabilize anything in my life that I could. Right now, the focus of that attempt was my script. And not having it in my hands, so I could tweak it over and over, was frustrating me beyond belief.

Half an hour before airtime, my draft came back to me. Dana dropped it on my desk then headed back to the door.

"It's about time," I growled at Dana, though - when I was being rational - I knew I was being unreasonable.

"Sheesh," she said, stopping in the doorway and turning back to face me again. "You're a real headcase today, aren't you?"

I took a deep breath. "Sorry, Dana. Bad day. I don't mean to take it out on you." Ball One, let's call it.

She came back to my desk and perched on the edge. Six months ago, I would've followed the hem of her skirt as it inched up her thigh; today, I wasn't nearly as interested.

"Case...this is me. What's wrong?" she said in her "trust me with all your secrets" voice. I'd learned the hard way not to trust that voice - it just meant that she'd tell Natalie what I said but wouldn't tell anyone else. _That_ she'd leave to the NatalieNews organization. If I told Dana what I felt for Danny, it would be all over the office before airtime, and Danny himself would hear it from someone like Will instead of from me.

So instead, all I said was, "Oh, nothing. Just having one of those days."

Dana nodded as if she understood what I was talking about, even though she clearly had no clue.

"Don't mind me, Dana, really. I'll be fine on-air. I promise. No more screwing up your show." My breakup with Lisa still haunted my relationship with Dana; I didn't want my potential relationship with Danny to do the same.

"Make sure you don't," Dana said, getting down off my desk. "Twenty-five minutes to air." She left the office, leaving me to my last-minute tweaking.

I worked in silence for about five minutes before Danny came breezing into the office. Wardrobe had already had their way with him, so he was already in his on-air clothes. Pity - I'd enjoyed what he'd been wearing earlier.

"Case? What rhymes with 'pathetic'?" he asked, sitting down in front of his computer.

"Diuretic?" I ventured. "Though that might not be something you'd want to use. I guess it depends on the context."

"The Miami Heat," Danny said.

"Hm...in that case, try 'frenetic' or 'kinetic' or 'mimetic'," I suggested.

Dan thought for a minute, typed for another minute, then said, "OK, thanks."

Wardrobe came for me not long after that, and I didn't see Danny again until I got into the studio. Alyson did a last-minute touch-up on Dan's hair, then turned to me, brandishing her comb.

"Keep that implement of the Devil away from me," I said. "Why do you think I got my hair cut so short?"

"He's spoiling your fun, Alyson," Dan said.

"Yeah, uh huh," Alyson said as she packed up her stuff and headed backstage. "Good show, guys."

"Thanks, Alyson," I said as Dave began his countdown.

"3...2..." The guy on Camera 2 pointed to me - one of these days, I'll learn everyone's names - and I was suddenly totally on. There's something about airtime that changes my whole mindset. I once rhapsodized to everyone who would listen - and even some who wouldn't - about how wonderful the words "five minutes to air" are, and I really believe it. I'm a different person on-air from the person I am the rest of the time. And I was hoping that perhaps the person I am on-air might finally have the courage to ask Danny out.

"Those stories plus: the Patriots say 'goodbye' to Foxboro Stadium; Giants Stadium says 'goodbye' to bottled drinks; and John Rocker says 'goodbye' to his second team in two years."

Danny picked up where I left off. "And as we say 'goodbye' to one year and 'hello' to the next, we'll bring you the Play of the Year."

"You're watching 'Sports Night' on CSC, so stick around," I said, finishing our now-standard patter. I waited for Dave's "We're out; 90 seconds back," then turned to Danny.

It was time. It was really time. It was past time. So why couldn't I figure out the right words? There I was, standing at the plate, hands clutched around the bat, eyes on the pitcher, and...

"What?" Danny said to me.

"Huh?" Oh, good going, Mr. Phi Beta Kappa.

"You're staring at me."

Great. So if the incident in the office earlier was Strike One, this was most definitely Strike Two.

Damn. Still stuck with the baseball metaphors.

"Just thinkin', Danny. Just thinkin'."

I was saved from further questioning by Dave's "back in 3...2..." in my ear.

Somehow we managed to get through the show without much further incident. At every C-break, Danny tried to get me to talk, but I didn't think it was any sort of conversation we could have with everyone in the control booth able to hear us. My evasiveness definitely brought the count to 2 and 2.

Finally the show was over, and I couldn't hide any longer. As Dave wound down the show from his end - "animation...go; credits...go...and we're out" - I pulled the earpiece out and disconnected the mike from my tie.

"Danny, you got a sec?" I asked.

"Yeah," he replied. "I'll change and meet you in the office?"

"Works for me," I said. I headed back toward wardrobe as Danny worked out the details of his upcoming interview with Clarence Weatherspoon over at Madison Square Garden. I settled onto the couch in our office and tried to read while awaiting Danny's return. My phobia about impromptu speaking reared its ugly head again, so I started running possible conversations through my head, attempting to anticipate Danny's reactions to my romantic overtures. Everything I thought of saying sounded either idiotic or trite.

I don't know how long he was standing in the doorway, but I looked up when I heard Danny's quiet "Hey."

I smiled back at him. He'd changed back into the jeans he'd been wearing earlier and a Dartmouth sweatshirt that had definitely seen better days.

"So..." Danny said, coming into the office and closing the door against the noise of the typical post-show madness. He pulled a chair right up to the edge of the couch, right by my head.

"So," I said, yet again evading the topic I wanted to broach. Ball Three. Full count. Either I hit this one or I struck out.

I took a deep breath. "Danny, there's something..." I said, still not completely sure what I wanted to say.

"Yes?" Danny asked.

"Y'see, I think...y'know, maybe I..." I paused, then tried again. "We've - you and I, I mean - we've been friends for a very long time." Good - an opening statement. Now what? "I've been thinking," I said.

Danny opened his mouth, as if to make some sort of smart-assed remark in retaliation for mine from earlier, but something in my expression must've stopped him. I hoped he didn't think I was angry at him. I quickly started to talk again, just to reassure him that I wasn't angry.

"Danny, there's something I want you to think about. Just consider. Not give a real, final answer, but just think about." I paused yet again. I couldn't figure out just how to say it...just how to tell my best friend of more than 10 years that I wanted more.

But I was rescued from having to figure it all out when Danny leaned in, took my chin in his hand, and grinned at me. "Something like this?" he asked, then kissed me, fleetingly, on the lips.

"Something just like that," I said as he sat back.

And that's how it started; how _we_ started. I guess some umpires might call it making it to first base on a passed ball.

But there _was_ joy in Mudville - this time, I hadn't struck out.

---END---