SN Fic: Special Powers (Metamorphosis)
Title: Special Powers (Metamorphosis)
Fandom: Sports Night
Pairing: Dan/Casey
Disclaimer: Still not mine.
Summary: If 'Special Powers' had ended this way, S2 would have been very different.

Notes: Written for oxoniensis's Metamorphosis Challenge. Thanks to both oxoniensis and phoebesmum for betas and encouragement. (Those two British babes rock.)

***

Special Powers (Metamorphosis)

When Casey was smiling that smile -- that smug, self-satisfied, the-world-is-my-oyster-for-I-am-Casey-McCall smile -- Dan knew something was up. And it wasn't a little something. It was a big something. Something that deserved its own capital, even.

Something had happened. Between the baseball highlights and the hockey round-up, something big had happened. While Nieuwendyk tried to strike out his twentieth batter, Casey had been away from the desk and Something -- capital and all -- had happened.

And come hell or high water, Casey was going to share.

"So," Dan said, the second after they wrapped up the show and went off-air, "what happened?"

Casey started to shake his head, that irrepressible smile still in place. "Danny, not now."

Dan pulled off the earpiece and started tugging his tie loose. It had been bothering him all night, for no discernible reason. Then again, there was no discernible reason for wearing a silk noose around his neck but wardrobe still insisted on it. "You said later, my friend."

"Probably." Casey nodded, pulling the small battery pack off his belt and fumbling with the earpiece wires. He untangled himself and placed it on the anchor desk, stepping away with a sheepish grin. "It sounds like something I would say."

"Because you did. You said you would tell me later. And now is later," Dan pointed out cheerfully as he led Casey out the back of the set, past the wooden backdrops and thick, colored wires, through the bullpen and back towards the direction of their office and their own clothes. "So tell me."

Casey paused for a moment behind him, just a momentary lag in his step, but Dan noticed. When he glanced over his shoulder, Casey grinned at him. "It was time."

"It was time?"

"It was time." Casey nodded, his mild brown eyes twinkling in the bullpen's harsh overhead lighting. "It was time for me to get into the game."

"It was?" Dan asked, managing to disguise his disappointment under false enthusiasm. "The time has come?"

"The time has. It is time for me to stop avoiding things, to stop waiting and hoping and praying. It is time for me to take action."

"Ah." Dan started walking again, keeping his back to Casey until his smile felt more real. Not that he wasn't pleased for Casey... Casey was his best friend, and he had nothing but the best wishes for the guy. When they said it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, they were talking about Casey.

But for a while -- and ninety days was almost too short a while -- it had been nice to feel like *he* was the closest person to Casey. It had been nice to be two single guys, going out until the wee hours of the morning, even if the talk always somehow revolved around Dana.

Dan took a few sharp steps towards their office before he cleared his throat. "So, things with Dana went well?"

"Actually, no." For the first time that night, Casey's smile looked more sheepish than self-satisfied. It was a more familiar look on Casey's clean-shaven face. "It was more of a crash and burn type situation."

"Crash and burn?" Dan asked, raising an eyebrow and then making the crash-and-burn screech loudly. He threw his hands wide at the explosion sound. "That type of crash and burn?"

"Well, yeah." Casey stepped inside their office and took a moment to close the glass door. "Not a pretty sight."

He wasn't happy about it, Dan told himself. Not really. He was relieved and concerned and a good friend, and--

Screw it. Dan hadn't been happier since he'd landed the interview with Holly McPeak and Lisa Arce. It didn't mean he was going to gloat over it, though. That would just be cruel. "Was it bad?"

Casey winced, just a little. "It was embarrassing."

"Did she laugh?" Dan asked with genuine concern.

"No. But you know how there's all this build-up," Casey said, holding his hands up, gesturing with each second word, "there's all this flirting, and the charged atmosphere, and these almosts, these hopes? These wishes, and daydreams and possible plans for your future?"

Casey stopped for a breath and Dan was a little relieved. "Okay."

"There's this huge build-up and then you kiss -- you finally *kiss* -- and it's all..." Casey shrugged, hands outstretched as if he could pluck the right words out of the air.

"It's a bit of a let-down?" Dan guessed cautiously.

Casey's arms jumped up emphatically. "It's an anti-climax. You build up your hopes and dreams, for ninety days, and then it's just a kiss. A not particularly good kiss."

The thought suddenly occurred to Dan that Casey and Dana hadn't kissed before. They'd flirted. They'd spent years not-quite-flirting before they'd officially flirted, but they hadn't actually kissed. For some reason, he'd never thought a mediocre kiss would be the end of Casey's eternal crush. He'd always assumed Casey's cowardly nature would ruin it. "So the kiss wasn't great?"

"It was not." Casey sat down on their couch, stretching long legs out in front of him. For some reason, the happy-go-lucky smile was back in place. "I spent ninety days thinking about it, Danny."

"You spent a lot longer than that."

"It was a let-down. Not the worst kiss ever, but still. It's not something that either of us will want to repeat any time soon."

Dan sat down beside Casey on the couch, eyeing Casey's smile warily. This wasn't the type of thing that Casey should be smiling about. "You don't seem as upset about that as you should."

Casey tilted his head to the side, eyes crinkling at the corners. "How upset should I be?"

"I seem to remember a lot of fear about this." Dan leaned back into the couch. "You've spent the last three months fretting and dithering, and now that it's fallen apart, you're suddenly Captain Cool, Calm and Confident? What happened to feeling sad and ashamed for a long time?"

"She didn't say no," Casey said with a shrug, "and she didn't laugh at me."

"And that fills you with joy?"

Casey bobbed his head from side to side and then scrunched his nose a little. "It gave me certainty."

"Certainty?" Swiveling around to face Casey, Dan gripped Casey's shoulders and tried to make sense of this strange mood. "You talk with Dana, you share a bad kiss, and then you come back on-air grinning like the Cheshire Cat. What is going on, Casey?"

"I have certainty." Casey's smile softened and he leaned closer, as if to whisper a secret in Dan's ear. "It's time, Danny."

"For what?" Dan asked stupidly.

"For me to take action," Casey said softly, his breath shimmering against Dan's cheek. "For me to get in the game."

Then Casey kissed him. Not passionately, not demanding. Just reassuringly there and solid, the way that Casey had been in his life for years; solid arms, firm mouth, dependable shoulders under Dan's hands. Casey kissed him slowly, surely -- with more style and confidence than Dan would have credited to Casey -- curling a hand around Dan's hip as his tongue explored the roof of Dan's mouth.

"You know," Dan said shakily when Casey pulled back, "I didn't see that coming."

Casey stretched his arms across the back of the couch, relaxed and just a little smug. "No?"

"All these months of encouragement, and I didn't see that coming. At all." Dan took a moment to gather his wits. He was still a little too shocked for it to sink in, but it would. And when it did, he'd probably end up wearing an irrepressible smile of his own. "If I had, I wouldn't have told you the statute of limitations was ninety days."

"Dana says it's sixty days," Casey said casually.

"I know."

Casey's brows beetled. "You knew it was sixty?"

"Casey," Dan replied, already feeling his smile start to form, "everyone knows it's sixty."

"Everyone but me, apparently." Casey shook his head a little, reminding Dan of a small terrier. "If you knew it was sixty, why did you tell me ninety?"

Dan shrugged, wondering if there was any possible lie that would excuse him. After a moment, he settled for telling the truth. "Having you to myself for an extra thirty days seemed worth it."

The End