enough to make better people give up by lordessrenegade (PG-13)

[phoebesmum.livejournal.com]

Fandom: SPORTS NIGHT
Pairing: Casey/Dan
Author on LJ: lordessrenegade
Author Website: LordessRenegade's Fan Fiction
Why this must be read:

lordessrenegade is the Great [insert PC-sensitive adjective of choice] Hope of Sports Night fan writing. Her LJ only dates from August of this year, and she's already built up a body of work that would be the envy of, well, just about anyone. Certainly me. And she's signed up to write Dan/Casey for fanfic100, which means that, if all goes well, we have another 90-odd stories from her still to come. (Which will increase the canon almost 100%. And that, too, can only be a good thing.)

This, she tells us, is "… just a little ficlet I jotted down on the back of a kids' menu at work". Her jottings, as you will see, are equivalent to another person's several weeks' hard, concentrated, sweat-drenched labour. It's a short, poignant piece featuring a post-Sports Night Casey and Dan, who've both moved on, who have new lives and new responsibilities and yet are unable to give one another up; it's exquisitely crafted, perfectly characterised and utterly, utterly heartbreaking.

enough to make better people give up: Their past is in those silences, all the topics that are on the list of Things Dan And Casey Don’t Talk About. They never had to decide what was on that list, because they both knew in the beginning, right from the first morning.