Title: Middle of a Cold, Dark, Night
Fandom: Sports Night
Pairing: Dan Rydell/Casey McCall
Rating: PG
Length: 333 words
Content Notes: allusion to off-screen character death, sort of
Author's Notes: written for Fan_Flashworks Apology challenge. If you've seen the show, you'll know why. If you haven't seen the show, what are you waiting for?



Today would have been Sam's 30th birthday, if it hadn't been for his, and Danny's mistakes. It's only very recently that Dan doesn't place all the blame on himself.

He has Casey to thank for that. He has Casey to thank for a lot of things, of course. This one stemmed from a conversation they had after he was forced into that wrenching on air apology.

"Sam was sixteen, right?"

"You know he was." Dan wasn't sure where Casey was going with this.

"Which means that he was considered mature enough to operate a potentially deadly weapon."

"I guess you could put it that way."

"Plus, he was a genius. Legitimately, not just in a testing situation."

"He was, yeah. But I'm not sure how that..."

"He was well equipped to think before doing something so stupid and reckless." Dan nodded to himself, but he couldn't stand to look up at Casey's face. Casey gave him a rueful smile when he finally did.

"You know if he'd pulled that stunt, and come out unscathed, your parents would have raised holy hell. He'd be grounded until he was 40. Even worse, they'd probably make him use Windows."

"The horror!" Dan laughed, a little, because he was feeling marginally better, and Casey was reason number one, why.

"I can't picture him 30, Casey. He'll always be 15 to me. Or maybe 8, taking apart Dad's old transistor radio. God, the asshole was so mad at Sammy. He sang a different tune when the kid put it back together without the annoying buzz it used to have."

"Pretty amazing kid. Wish I'd known him," Casey says, squeezing Dan's shoulder. "Pretty amazing big brother, he got, too."

"You would have loved him." Dan says he's having a little bit of an allergy problem with his eyes, but Casey doesn't call him on it.

"I love his brother. How do you think he'd have felt about that?"

"Happy for me, definitely." Dan is sure about this.

"See, genius!"