I started writing this in honor of Rinne's birthday for the first challenge of the Don/Hurt list on LJ (Don/park/fireworks). Then my Mom died suddenly and unexpectedly this month, so once again, everything I am working on is running late. All will be rectified in time. Barring fire, flood and pestilence, which I half-expect at this point anyway.

This is just a little story. It focuses on Nikki and Don, because I've never taken Nikki out for a spin and I like her. Other than that, it's fairly light of plot, written just for fun and to keep the wheels greased, in a kind of short burst, serial drama format. I also experimented with writing completely in present tense as an exercise and to keep the tension. It's surprisingly hard, so it may be a little rough in spots.

Prologue

"BOSS!"

She's yelling before she can stop herself, knowing it's futile, knowing it's lethal, because even in the star-pricked darkness, that is not helping, not helping at all, giving her position away. But she can't help it – she's frozen with fear, neck stretched taut to see, a sitting duck to anyone who can pick her out of the shadows. Don would be furious with her. Would be. But Don is inscribing a graceful arc in the air, the hollow metallic boom of the blow still echoing around them over the eerie, cheerful music of the recorded calliope, the seats of the amusement park ride a blur as they twirl faster and faster, higher and higher.

She opens her mouth to call out again, eyes wide to try and track his trajectory in the darkness, but something rings sharply off the steel wall of the ticket booth just above her head and she crouches instinctively deeper into the shadows instead. She needs to move. She needs to find Sinclair and Granger and better cover - this being divided is leaving them vulnerable. She needs to find help for Don, even though she knows no one could have survived such a blow, certainly not coupled with the flight and fall…she presses the heels of her hands against her forehead, willing herself to focus, asking herself what Don would tell her to do.

He would tell her to save her own ass, to abandon useless battles for ones she might actually win. He would yell it, actually, lecture, remind her that there were dangerous felons at large and that her first responsibility was to subdue them, to protect the public whose safety they were sworn to guard. He would point out that he knew the risks of his job - accepted the potential outcomes. And he would be one hundred percent correct.

She's nodding internal agreement even as she plots a course ahead, runs in a crouch to the next available cover, thighs roaring with strain; mentally calculating the most likely area where Don would have landed and the best way to look for him, here in the darkened, shadowy fairgrounds surrounded by who-knew-how-many perps.

Because she also knows - head knows and gut knows - with absolute certainty, that, for all that Don would say, he would never - never - the hell walk away and leave her behind.

Ever.

Don't do like me. Be better than me. She can hear his voice in her head as she scans the darkness for the perpetrators, gauging the best course to her next scrap of cover.

Well, screw that, boss, she answers the voice in her head silently. Because being like you is just dandy with me.

TBC