A Better Writer For It

- amj

"Why are you smiling?"

"Ah, wait," Dan said, glancing at his watch. Dana glared at him, and he said, "Just wanted to make sure I marked the time for the first snark of the day."

"Shut up."

"What happened to the kinder, gentler Dana?" Dan asked, following her through the newsroom. She looked sort of soft that morning, wearing pink and white with light colored makeup and perfectly curled hair. He wondered - and not for the first time - how many hours she spent getting ready in the morning. He could picture her standing before the mirror, psyching herself up with pretty smiles around slick new tubes of lipstick that she bought with the hope that this one would do it - would make her the woman men wanted, instead of the girl they punched in the arm.

"I will have you know, I am kind and gentle enough for ten women!" she snapped, turning suddenly and facing him.

"Of course," he said amiably, spreading his hands innocently.

"Danny!" she huffed, turning away with the clear expectation that he would follow.

He did, grabbing an apple off of Kim's desk to chew on as they went. Dana pulled her clipboard to her chest and smiled, falsely. "Let's start again," she said brightly.

"Okay," he said, shrugging and pausing before the door to the production booth.

"Danny. You look happy. Did something good happen to you? It's very nice to see."

He nodded. "That was good, Dana."

She rolled her eyes. "I can be kind and gentle with the rest of 'em, just watch," she muttered. Dan followed her through the production booth silently, waiting for her to return to his topic. As they reached the door, she turned. "Wait. So why *are* you so happy?"

"Dan had a date last night," Natalie said, appearing out of nowhere at Dana 's elbow to peer at the papers in her hand.

"I did indeed," he said, ignoring the fact that Dana was ignoring him. "I had a date with Mel-inda." He rolled her name off of his tongue, as he always did with women. Maybe that was why Dana couldn't get a man - her name was awkward. No roll to it. He though of mentioning it, but she wasn't looking at him, anyway, so he swallowed the idea with another bite of the apple.

"That's nice, Danny. Do you really think Roberts belongs in the 30s?" Dana asked Natalie.

"That's where we're putting the rest of the baseball, so."

"Right, but he's not playing baseball any more, is he?"

"He's teaching schoolchildren in Okinawa how to read and write their native language," Dan offered around a mouthful of apple. "None of which has to do with the date I had last night, I might add."

"Right. Leave him in the 20s, then, but -" Dana handed the papers to Natalie. "- it sounds as though we may have to leave some room at the front for a brief update on Dan's love life."

Dan glanced at Natalie for help, but she was already taking the papers in the other direction. He shrugged and faced Dana. "It was headline worthy," he said smugly.

"What was?" Casey asked, ambling by and leaning against the wall near Dan. "Did the Stars trade."

"No," Dana said, glancing briefly at Casey. "Dan had a date last night."

"Ah yes," Casey said, slipping into his announcer voice. "The enchanting Melinda."

Casey could do the roll, too, Dan noted. "She was enchanting," Dan admitted, tossing the half-finished apple toward the trash can. Casey lifted an eyebrow of approval as he made the shot. "And so, might I add, was I. Which is the whole reason I'm smiling this morning, in answer to Dana's inimical question of earlier."

"So basically, this whole conversation has occurred so you can tell me that you're happy because you had a, like, what, a third or fourth -"

"Sixth," Dan corrected.

"Great, a sixth date with a woman I've already met?"

"You asked," Dan said.

Dana glared at him for a moment, then sighed, "Whatever, Danny." She turned long enough for Dan to exchange a Dana glance with Casey before shouting over her shoulder, "Just do me a favor and don't fall in love, okay?"

"Why should I - wait." Dan jogged a few steps ahead to catch Dana. "Why would you - why shouldn't I fall in love with Melinda? She's beautiful, she 's intelligent, charming, educated at Stanford and, quite recently, a little place called the Columbia Journalism school. She's from Massachusetts - a state that I, as, shall we say, a moderate liberal..."

"You're a communist, Danny."

"I think there's some merit to the idea, fine, but that's not my point."

"What is your point, again?" Dana asked, leaning on her office doorframe.

"My point is - why shouldn't I fall in love with Melinda? I mean, the woman is practically perfect! She even hates soccer!"

Dana smiled - a real Dana smile, now, the smiles that were always punctuated by the pet names that made him feel 15 instead of 30, as though Dana were his mother or something. "Sweetie," she said, and he glanced sideways, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. "Every time you fall in love, you suck out there."

"What? Dana, that's hardly -"

"No, Danny, it's true and you know it. Everyone knows it. You fall in love and you lose your ability to write. So Casey ends up writing for you, and then he gets annoyed, and then I get annoyed. And when I'm annoyed..." She shrugged. "It's bad for the show."

"So basically, you're saying that my romantic happiness is bad for the show."

Dana squinted at him for a moment. "Yeah, pretty much."

He huffed as she turned her back to walk into the office. "Well, that's not going to stop me from falling for the beautiful and brilliant Melinda," he called at the door.

"Don't I know it," he heard Dana sigh.

--

By mid-afternoon, Dan was in the middle of transcripts and tapes. When Casey walked into the office, it was through a pile of old script printouts, and he almost tripped over Dan, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor poring over papers while an old show - one where Casey had his spiky haircut - was playing on the TV over him. "I suppose it's too much to hope that you're just looking for the correct pronunciation of Jason Isringhausen's name, right?" Dan heard him say as his feet appeared briefly in his field of vision. "Not that it would be a vain pursuit for you. I think he's probably still irked that you misplaced the accent last time."

"She's right," Dan said softly.

Casey fell into his chair. "I'm pretty sure Jason Isringhausen is going to be a lot more upset if you refer to him with a feminine pronoun on the show than he might have been over the mispronunciation," he remarked. "He's a pretty big guy."

Dan shook his head and flew to his feet. He threw a few sheets of paper in front of Casey. "Look at this," he said, rubbing his hands through his hair.

Casey glanced at it, then shrugged. "No, Case -"

"Dan, it's a script. You'll excuse me if I'm not, you know, wowed, but I've seen a few before."

"It's _our_ script. Or, should I say, your script."

Casey looked at him strangely. "What?"

"It's from the day after Rebecca agreed to go out with me."

"Ah." Casey sifted the pages through his fingers. "You were a little off."

"A little?" Dan huffed. "I was - I - " he sighed and pulled the pages away, looking them over again. He turned, comparing the words to the show on the monitors. He was wearing a dark gray suit, with a dark blue shirt and some bizarre tie, which was a good look for him. He looked normal enough, but Dan knew - knew television, knew Casey, knew their show well enough to see that he wasn't on. His mouth twisted a little around a few words, and there were a few blinks that just shouldn't have been there. "Casey, every word I'm saying came from your pen."

He heard Casey shift behind him to stand. "Dan, you've written for me before."

"You always say that," he said, turning.

"You wrote the whole thing just, like, a week ago."

"Right," Dan said, remembering Casey's blocked day, about two weeks ago. It had been a good night for Dan - he'd penned the whole show, and then, on the writing high, had his first serious date with Melinda - and his first serious overnight. "But I - when was the last time I had to write for you for more than a day?"

"I don't know," Casey said, leaning against his desk. He was telling the truth, Dan could see from his eyes. He really couldn't remember.

"Three years," Dan told him, tapping him on the chest with the rolled up script. "At the divorce."

Casey shrugged. "You did a lot then, though."

"Yeah, but." Dan sighed and looked down a little. "Case, do I - do I suck?"

Casey laughed and patted his shoulder. "You don't suck."

"No, I mean - when I fall in love." He looked up in time to see Casey's face fade from amusement to something more serious. "Dana said - she told me not to fall in love with Melinda, because every time I fall for someone, I suck."

Casey didn't respond immediately, and when he did, he wasn't meeting Dan's eyes. "You - maybe you get distracted for a while, yeah," he said.

"I do?"

Casey shrugged and pushed past him, walking back around to sit behind the desk. Dan stared at him for a moment, then hooked a chair with his free hand and dragged it over, sitting backwards and facing Casey. "Seriously?"

"You - it's not a big deal, Dan."

"Casey."

Casey sighed. "Look, it usually only lasts a day or two, anyway. It's nothing - it's no reason to be concerned. And you're getting better at it."

Dan nodded, feeling less than convinced. "I am?"

"Dan, you're a pro," Casey said, finally meeting his eyes again. "It's not like you can't write when you're in love. It's just that you don't want to, usually. So maybe I pick up the slack. Doesn't make you a bad writer or anything."

Dan frowned. He was a pro. He'd been writing for years - decades, even, if you counted all the scripts he'd penned in his head or on the back of scorecards in high school. Every time he'd done anything athletic, in his mind, he'd been playing the highlights back for his audience. And back then, love hadn't interfered at all. There was no reason, even knowing that Casey was there, that Casey would help, that he should be letting it mess things up now. He was a pro. "Well, not this time," he said, pushing the chair back toward his own desk. "I can definitely be in love and be a good writer at the same time."

"I know," Casey said, barely looking over from his monitor.

Dan smiled at that, turning back to his screen. He felt ready, primed to write, on top of his game. "Danny?"

He looked over at Casey, who was still studying his own screen. "Yeah?"

"Are you in love?"

"With Melinda?"

"Yeah."

Dan shrugged. "It's early in the game."

"Give me a projection," Casey said, still not looking at him.

Dan smiled. "If I were a betting man? I'd take the odds on me falling for Melinda. I might even lay some money on her falling back."

"Okay," Casey said, fingers clacking across the keyboard.

"But I'm still going to write well."

"I'm sure you will," Casey said.

--

A week later, Dan was smitten. "Smitten?"

"Oh yes, oh yes."

"No, I'm just saying - you couldn't think of a better word than smitten?"

"Dana."

"You're coming to me to tell me that your writing and, consequently, my show, won't suffer from your latest cruise on the Love Boat, and you're using the word smitten?" She put on hand on her hip and scratched her forehead with the other. Today she was wearing gray, and looked neither kind nor gentle, he thought. "I have to say, Dan, I'm not sure you've given me reason to believe it."

"You'll believe it," he said smugly, leaning back in his chair. "You just take a look at my script this evening. It will be fresh, it will be funny, it will be -"

"-written by Casey if you don't get back in your office."

"I was going to say witty," Dan said. "And I don't need to get back in the office at this very moment, thanks. I'm quite far ahead on my bit for tonight. You know why?"

Dana stood, gathering her myriad folders. He'd kept her after rundown to discuss this, and she looked mildly annoyed. "Because you've been using 10 cent words like 'smitten?'"

"No, it's because I'm a pro, Dana," he said.

"You're a professional pain in the ass, you know." She turned to walk back to the newsroom, and Dan remained seated. "Danny! Go write!"

"I'm fine right here," he said, folding his arms behind his head.

Dana sighed and leaned on the door. "Is it Casey?"

"Is what Casey?"

"Are you still here because Casey's in your office? I mean, because Casey's in your office and he's annoyed?"

"Casey is in our office, yes, but that has nothing to do with -"

"Dan." She rolled her eyes. "Would you just work on your script? Honestly, the last thing I need tonight is one more mulish Casey rundown."

Dan looked at Dana for a long minute. "Dana, he's not - if Casey's annoyed about something, it certainly has nothing to do with me. He didn't write any part of my script so far today, or even this week, and I daresay he won't need to for quite sometime. Not so long as I have the marvelous Melinda to inspire me."

Dana shrugged. "All I know is, he nearly took Jeremy's head off at the buffet line this afternoon, and you're sitting here while I'm waiting for a script."

Dan watched her walk through the door, confused. To be honest, he had noticed that Casey seemed a little. strained, recently. He'd attributed it to the beginning of summer. Dan knew Casey had spent last Saturday at Lisa's, fighting over calendar dates - with school out and summer camps looming, they'd had to adjust the visitation schedule. In addition, he'd gone on a tirade the day before about his air conditioner being on the fritz. Casey would gladly take freon intravenously if offered, so Dan knew that was probably wearing him down. Still, maybe it was more than weather and his son's impending departure weighing on him. Dan meant to ask, but he'd been out with Mel - who, to his surprise, preferred 'Mel' to 'Mindy,' - doing something almost every night that week. He couldn't remember the last time he and Casey even had a drink after the show.

He stood and walked to the office, leaning on the doorframe and watching his friend. Casey didn't look too distressed. Not well rested, maybe, but that was pretty normal. He was scowling, but that, too, was par for the course at 8 o'clock at night. Still, when he noticed Dan, he snapped, "What?" That was decidedly not normal. At least not for Casey. From Dana, it was standard, but Casey usually picked bigger, more interesting words to greet him.

"You wanna get a drink after the show?" he asked, ambling inside and sitting on the couch.

Casey looked at him for a moment. "Don't you have - aren't you seeing the magnificent Melinda?"

Dan shrugged. "We don't have definite plans." Casey looked puzzled. "Come on, Case. When's the last time we had a drink, even?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Okay."

"Cool." Casey turned back to his computer, but Dan could sense his confusion. So he followed up with the question Casey had to know was coming. "Case? Everything okay?"

Casey shrugged. "Just - summer, you know?"

"Summer in New York."

"It smells like a pig sty, Danny," he said, refreshing a favorite argument.

"It smells like hot dogs, and Yankees games," Dan offered, smiling despite himself.

"It smells like hot dog wrappers and guys throwing up after a few too many brewskies at the Yankees' games," Casey corrected, turning to face him. He was smiling. Dan realized he hadn't seen him smile for a while like that - that open, amused Casey smile that he got almost all the time anymore.

*Almost* all the time. Except when he was in love, and not writing, and Casey was annoyed. Dan grinned back, and knew that he'd keep his head in the game this time, if for no other reason than to make sure that smile came back.

--

The show was pretty good that night, so the drinks were less necessary and more celebratory. Dana and Natalie sat at a table in the back, haranguing Jeremy over something. He was taking it like a man - well, in that he was taking it at all. Dan and Casey had long ago learned to sit at the bar to avoid just exactly those confrontations.

Tonight, Casey was enjoying a cider fest, and Dan was right there with him. "To the fall!" Casey toasted with his third bottle.

"The fall!" Dan agreed, though he was an admitted fan of summertime.

"When the smells are swept away by the autumn breeze and the smoggy skies obscured by the colorful leaves," Casey said, slightly breathless from the long drink he'd taken before. "I could be a poet."

"Could be, nothing," Dan said generously. They were both a little tipsy, but nothing beyond that. It was getting close to 1:30 in the morning, anyway - a good time to be generous. He looked over at Casey kindly. He was no closer to knowing why his friend was annoyed, but Casey was smiling almost naturally now, so it didn't really matter. "You ready to go home?"

Casey made a face. "Yeah, guess so."

"We can stay. You want another beer?"

"Nah, it's just - the damn air conditioner is still out." He sighed and stood, throwing more money than necessary onto the bar. Dan started to pull out his wallet but Casey waved his hand. "I got it. Save your money to buy matching socks or something."

Dan nodded. They traded off on drinks all the time, though Dan had the distinct feeling he stilled owed Casey for the last time. What the hell, he thought, standing. He makes more money, anyway.

He was a little more unsteady on his feet than he would have thought, and Casey put out a hand to steady him. "Y'okay?"

"Yeah." He shook his head. "Probably take a cab, though."

"Good idea." Dan didn't even have to ask him if he wanted to share - they were tuned like this. Casey lived exactly 20 blocks from Dan's apartment - 20 blocks being equal, in New York, to a mile. A few years ago, when Casey was just moving in and had basically none of the things necessary to survive, like beer and soap and toilet paper, they'd had races. They had raced between buildings - walking races, they were supposed to be - to see who could get to whose apartment faster. Dan still held the record, he remembered smugly. He'd made it to Casey's door in just under 11 minutes, carrying a box of Tide detergent.

They'd woven their way out of the bar without Dan even noticing, Casey steering him with one hand at the juncture of his shoulder and neck. "I think I'm drunker than I think," he mumbled as they stepped to the curb.

"This is what you get," Casey said, removing his hand to flag a cab, "for not eating dinner."

Dan remembered that, suddenly. There was only a handful of Ghardetto's party mix between those beers and his bloodstream right then. Maybe that was what made the world seem a little twirly. He looked over at Casey, saw a bead of sweat forming on his temple. "Case," he said slowly, putting his hand on his arm. Casey was searching the road for a cab with his eyes, but Dan knew he was listening, probably trying to judge his sobriety, because that was what they did. They took care of each other. "You should come home with me."

He glanced back at Dan. "Are you that drunk?"

"No," Dan said, puling back and standing up straight. "But you - you don't have air conditioning."

Casey looked back over. "You sure?"

Dan nodded. "Just, you know, don't say anything about the laundry."

Casey smiled, and a cab pulled up to the curb. As Casey swung open the door for him, Dan thought dizzily, So even the cab drivers want to see him smile.

The driver left the windows open on the way to his apartment, and the breeze battering his face made Dan feel nearly sober by the time they arrived. Certainly his reflexes were better - he didn't need Casey's support when they stepped out of the cab, and he was able to fish out his keys and unlock the door all while maintaining a fairly involved conversation with Casey about the midseason baseball projections and the fantasy league effect on game attendance.

"But what I'm saying," Dan said, swinging the door open and walking into his slightly-messy living room, "is that anything that gets more people to pay attention is probably a good thing for these guys. Fantasy baseball isn't taking over the league - people aren't playing it instead of real baseball. They're paying more attention to the real games because of it." He tossed his keys on the table and flopped back on to the couch. "Baseball has always been a thinking game, Case. This just gives the kids without a genetic predisposition to fielding and fastballs a chance to feel involved."

Casey sat on the armchair near the couch - Dan's favorite, brown leather beast of a chair he'd rescued from a fire sale at Birney's Furniture Wholesaler - and smiled. "Now, if you could just write like that all the time." he teased.

Dan knew he didn't mean anything by it, but the tease triggered his concern of earlier. "Case?"

"Yeah?" Casey answered, his head already lolling on the back of the chair.

"Were you annoyed today?"

"About the fantasy segment? Nah, Danny, I just think that we could use the -"

"No, I meant with me."

Casey looked up at him, squinting. "With you? When?"

Dan shrugged. "Just. generally. Anytime."

Casey dipped his head to the side and frowned. "I - no," he answered sincerely.

"Okay." Dan let his head fall to the arm of the couch. He wanted to ask more, but he knew it wasn't necessary. Simply planting the seed - letting Casey know he'd noticed his annoyance - would probably set Casey to thinking about it. Once he was thinking about it, he'd start asking Dan about it, very subtly, almost subconsciously dropping hints that he wanted to talk about it.

Others didn't see this. They heard Casey say he didn't want to talk, and they bought it. Dan knew better. Casey wanted to talk. Left to his own devices, Casey would eventually spill his guts at a bizarre, out-of-the-blue moment to anyone who just happened to be standing nearby. This was how Isaac had learned about Casey sleeping with Sally before anyone else, and how Jeremy's sister, on a recent visit, had been treated to Casey's epiphany that every woman he'd ever slept with had manipulated him into it.

Dan glanced up again and saw that Casey was still watching him. "Case?" he asked, wondering if maybe his friend had had more to drink than he'd thought. Casey, however, had eaten a big sandwich for dinner. Dan remembered his bitching about the provolone. He'd definitely been annoyed then.

Casey shook his head, as thought waking from a trance. "Huh?"

Dan smirked. "You still there?"

"Yeah. Yeah, just, you know, thinking."

"Try not to hurt yourself," Dan said, knowing the joke was old and lame before he even threw it out.

"See, there it is," Casey said. "You fall in love and even your _insults_ start to suck."

Dan smiled into the dark. "I've been thinking about that," he said.

"What'd you come up with, Hemingway?" Casey asked. Dan could hear him settling back into the chair.

"Given that there's obviously proof that my writing suffers when I'm in love, I've been thinking about why."

"You get distracted," Casey said dismissively.

"It's just - it's kinda freaky, Case," he said. "I - writing's always been the thing I can do, you know? Even when I'm completely fucked up, I can write. And the - the thought that somehow my ability to write is tied inversely to my happiness. that's a pretty terrifying thing."

"Dan, it was just."

"No," he said, sitting up a little. "Casey, I looked over the scripts. You know what the best stuff I wrote was? You know when? The night I started seeing Abby. That's a dynamite script. Two weeks of them, in fact. Every year, around - around Sam's birthday, and the day he died, I turn out some fucking awesome copy."

Casey looked at him for a moment. "Danny, it's not that you can't be happy and a good writer at the same time. You're just a guy, that's all. You throw yourself into your work when you don't want to think about life."

Dan met his eyes at that, feeling oddly reassured. "It's what men do," Casey said, his voice getting a little deeper.

Dan nodded, and Casey stood, clapping a hand on Dan's head and squeezing affectionately before disappearing into the kitchen. Dan heard the fridge door squeak, and then Casey returned, standing behind the couch and looking down at him. He took a gulp of the bottled water and offered it to Dan, who took the cold bottle without hesitation. Casey sat on the couch next to him, staring at his own hands.

"The thing is, Dan. someday, you'll find someone to write for. And it won't be a question of being in love distracting you - instead, you'll find that you can only write when they're there, when you can hear their voice in your head. And you'll be a better writer for it."

Dan looked over. "You think so?"

"I know it." Casey smiled frankly, then stood. "Now, get your ass off my bed."

Dan took the hand he offered to get off the couch, and for a minute he was close in Casey's personal space, smelling the cider and the lingering stage-makeup smell of him. "Thanks, Casey," he said impulsively, hugging him with one arm.

"Anytime," Casey said, giving him a gentle squeeze in return.

Dan backed away and stretched, then ambled back to the bathroom. When he was finished, he called to let Casey know, then stumbled into his bedroom. He fell heavily into the bed, letting Casey's reassurances blanket him and ease him to a quick and deep sleep.