Can i tell you how happy I am to have finished "In the City" before the thread ended?

You can tell us. We'd understand. Feel tempted to inauguerate with something, but have nothing ready.

Well done, Victor.

Was that one of your goals?

(Because I hadn't realized we were so close to the end.)

Was that one of your goals?

Sort of-my big goal was to finish the beast before I left for California, but I also wanted it all in one thread, so I could more-easily go back and pick up parts of it.

Holy cow! I didn't even realize this was the new thread. Maybe I can keep up this time.

OK, so this is part of one of my behemoths, yeah? Homicide/Wire, but this moment? Kind of a stand-alone, and the closest I get to "sweet" and "heartwarming"...mark your calendars.

Bunk and Munch drove through the city, the breathing room in the Cavalier only slightly enhanced by absence of Bolander.At least, Moreland didn’t fiddle with the radio to find Elvis. John Munch still found that the minefields of the oldies station extended past “Hound Dog” as “Dedicated To The One I Love” played, the Shirelles sweet harmonies calling on him to remember a much softer time in his life.

Damn it, some nihilist. How could he still believe we were all food for worms if he wondered if Helen were sending him a message every time he heard this?Even in Muzak. Fucking Muzak, opiate of the consumer senses, and he gets all squishy. Might as well be Bayliss.

“Could we not?”

“Really? Bad memory?”

“Yes. No. She’s...dead.”

“You didn’t kill her, did you?”

“Of course not. They got the guy.” Not going to talk about working my dream girl’s homicide. Not. Not. Not. Maybe it could be like the reverse of that Indian crap and if he didn’t talk about it, it would disappear.”

Only with kindness,” he imagines Tim saying. So he doesn’t. He wonders when he’ll stop thinking they’d both have been happy if he’d taken her to the prom, that maybe everything that went wrong in the life of John Munch dates to his first time of being “let down easy”

“Dang.” Bunk said.

Munch made a face. “No, no, it’s good that her case was closed. But your confession would be like Viagra for my clearance rate, know what I’m saying?”

“I know what you mean, Detective Moreland. I’ve looked at enough veins this week I feel like I’ve made my mother happy, uh, I mean marginally less miserable and become a surgeon.”

Moreland fiddled with the radio and the Chi-lites “Oh, Girl” filled the Cavalier.” Now, that’s a *song*. Damn, Nadine was fine then. That girl-group shit was a little before my time. Classic, though,” He finished awkwardly.” Was she pretty?”

Not the last time I saw her. Selfishly, he would have preferred Helen to stay forever young, like Marilyn. “Helen was a goddess.” A part of him said “Goddess? What kind of crap is that?”

“Drink her bathwater, huh?” Bunk said. “ I still feel that way about Nadine. Not that that keeps me from creeping, sometime.”

Munch knew. He could teach a course.

Now I'm goign to be speaking in Belzer-voice for the rest of the night. Thanks a bunch.

I like it.

Like that's all my fault. Give me a personal break, babe. Don't lay your advertising enhanced jones for mimicry off on me, ok?I'm not Montel Williams!) (Um, I mean, that never happens to me and I don't know what you're talking about.Babe.) And this is a problem because... Happy to help. :)

Hey there, lovely people! Dana already gave me some pointers for this, but could I possibly trouble y'all to have a quick shufty at the following before I post it over to the Yuletide Treasures (New Year's Resolutions) archive? It's Sandman fic, Daniel/Desire:

Where Angels Fear To Tread

Desire is standing perfectly still in the precise centre of the heart of the Threshold, poised and patient, when the summons comes. Desire has been waiting for it.

“Sister-brother?” The voice is Dream’s, unmistakeable, and yet the intonation is as unlike Dream’s as it could possibly be. Tentative. Entreating, almost. Something that is not quite a smile – something almost a grimace – stretches Desire’s mouth for a moment.

“Brother?”

“I am holding your sigil in my hand, sister-brother, and I stand in my gallery. May we speak?” It’s there again in the voice – not weakness, exactly, but something yielding – an openness that the previous aspect of Dream had never displayed around Desire. It is almost – innocence.

Desire finds it unexpectedly maddening.

“Desire?”

“Oh, very well,” Desire says, in a tone almost convincingly casual, mildly irritated, unconcerned. No hint in that rough-warm voice that Desire knows the newest incarnation of the Endless has been visiting his siblings, or that Desire has been all impatience, waiting for this call. No hint that Desire has been burning to see this new Dream again ever since leaving the Dreaming: the white shock of hair like a dandelion clock, the new mouth tender with lack of living – head to toe he is glorious, uncomfortable proof of Desire’s final victory over the King of Dreams. “In the Dreaming, or the Threshold? Or somewhere in between?”

“The Threshold, if you will.” And that, too, is different; Morpheus was acutely aware of the dangers of facing an enemy on their home ground. For preference he would always have chosen his own territory, or at least somewhere neutral, rather than hand over the advantage. Desire is trembling at the offer of advantage freely given.

Dream shivers into solidity while Desire is still considering the ways in which the game has changed, now that this new piece has been placed on the board. Desire is taken aback once more at how like – and unlike – Morpheus this creature is. The features are the same - strong, pale and angular – but the expression is not the same at all. There is a pause, and Desire’s chin comes up in challenge while Dream’s unreadable eyes seem to take in every inch of his sister-brother. Today Desire’s hair is slicked back, emphasising the stark beauty of the androgynous face quite bereft of makeup. The full-skirted dressing gown Desire wears is of embroidered crimson silk, open to the navel, belted at the waist. It falls to the floor and pools like blood around bare white feet. Desire is conscious of the effect and shifts slightly, feeling Dream’s attention snagged by the glimpse of one pale crescent slice of nipple fleetingly exposed. Desire smiles mockingly up at Dream through artfully tangled eyelashes.

Dream’s answering smile is unexpectedly open. “You really are the most astonishingly beautiful thing I have ever seen,” he says simply, almost absent-mindedly, as if commenting upon the weather. Desire freezes. “I wonder – could we talk?”

“You’re here, aren’t you?” snaps Desire, wrong-footed and irritable. Dream has always been (or claimed to be) impervious to the beauty of Desire – but things change.

Dream nods, unruffled. “My thanks,” he says, only then glancing around at the moist flexing walls of the heart. He seems fascinated, ignoring the banks of screens, the plush chairs and soft cushions, the things that make this into a living space. He is staring straight at the naked meat beyond.

Desire itches to slap him.