The First Move, by Sinead

[hyperfocused.livejournal.com]

The First Move
Fandom: Sports Night
Pairing: Dan/Casey
Author on LJ :smallbeer
Author Website:Author's Website

Why this must be read: There are old musicals, girls who just don't get it, and a contemplative Casey who does. If you aren't singing to yourself by the time this fic is over, I'll be surprised.

"They were standing shirtless in wardrobe after coming off the air. Skin smooth and pale and fine-grained as ivory, Dan had almost no hair on his chest. A few days in the sun would turn him a light biscuity shade, but in New York in the dead of winter, he was the color of newly risen cream. The sun would probably gild the few fine dark hairs curled around his nipples, too. A narrow silky shadow descended from the valley of his navel into the open fly of his jeans. Casey felt his mouth dry up, and when Dan glanced over at him, he had to thrust his head into the locker where he kept his street clothes and pretend to look for his watch, unable to stop the blush that seemed to rise from his crotch. Thank god I had my back turned when he took off his pants, he thought. "

Comments

Mmm, love this

[(Anonymous)]

This is one of my favourite SN Dan/Casey fics, I've read it that many times. This bit in particular always gets me...


"Casey sat on the couch in his apartment at three am, feeling the two horns of his dilemma poking him in the ass. The first horn was that Dan was still seeing Paige, and Casey was mortally sure that she was going to screw him over. But since this bone-deep certainty was based on the flimsiest of overheard evidence and the observations he had made on only two brief occasions, he couldn't bring himself to tell anyone. Certainly not Dan. Casey wanted to think that this antipathy to Paige sprang only from a selfless desire for Dan's happiness, but he had an awful feeling that altruism was not in the cards here.

For the second horn, the really painful and confusing horn, the horn that prodded his sleep and embarrassed him at work and positively skewered him in the shower was this--Paige's careless remark had made him perpetually aware of his best friend in a new and disturbing way. Casey was used to objectively evaluating people's looks, beginning with his own. He was in television, after all, and he never kidded himself that he had gotten an anchor position on the strength of his journalistic abilities alone. Before all this started, he would have said he had long ago learned everything there was to know about the way Dan Rydell looked. He knew which was Dan's good profile, for instance, and that Dan photographed well in dark shirts. And now he was realizing that he didn't know anything at all. He didn't know shit. Dan wasn't attractive, or telegenic, or nice-looking, or even easy on the eye. Danny was fucking beautiful, and it was astonishing that it had taken him ten years to notice that fact. And goddammit, that wasn't all.

Okay, Danny was beautiful. But Casey had seen beautiful men before, and he was pretty sure he had never wanted to put his tongue in their mouths or his hand down their pants, and he wanted to do both those things to Danny. His libido, which had quietly rolled over and taken a nap after the whole Sally and Dana fiasco, was now wide awake and roaring like a hungry lion at the bars of its cage, and the tasty meal it was contemplating was Danny. When he had said he was feeling selective about women, he had been more honest than he knew. Casey rolled onto his side and buried his face in the couch cushions, trying with little success to stifle his insistant hard-on. He was elated and terrified. He had never felt desire like this in his life. "

A fantastic recommendation. And her other stories The Memory of Hurts and In Which Dan Has a Bad Day are also must-reads.