“It was amazing -” Tony Profaci began, but before he could finish, Mike cut him off.

“What the hell does that even mean?”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” Mike kicked back his scotch. “Ahhh-MAAHHH-zing – so you were amazed? You were stunned? You couldn’t move? Jesus, I’m sick of that word.”
( You get crankier every year, Logan, )

Tags: tm, tm 258

I'm great at scaring people. That's my assigned role - I'm the looming wall of doom that gets in your face when you've done the wrong thing. I can't be reasoned with, I can't be escaped, and I'm just not going to go away. I'm the end of the line.

I get to lay out the options for you - tell you how you can say it went down, maybe save yourself that way, maybe make it not so bad, but it's still bad. I tell you what the lawyers are going to do, what a jury's going to think, maybe what those animals down in holding or - god forbid - upstate are going to to when I throw you in with them. Maybe I bring up the needle; if you're in line for the hot shot out of this world, I'll make sure you know it.

The scariest thing about me, though, is that the entire time you're sweating out your sphincter-clenching panic, your mind scrabbling for hope like a trapped rat, the whole damn time from the moment you see my face and you know it's over - you know I love my job.

Tags: 255, tm

Let’s get the standard things out of the way. I’ve tripped going down the subway stairs, going up the subway stairs, split my pants, dropped a hotdog on my tie, spit when I’ve talked, and of course, gotten shot down for using a bad come-on-line. There’ve been farts, sneezes, and I’ve shot every drink known to man out of my nose at one time or another (yeah. It’s a huge nose. It happens.) High school? I recall it as the days of whines and boners – my voice broke a LOT and even though I wasn’t happy to be there, it sure LOOKED that way a lot.
( More )

Oh, wait. I did use poison ivy as toilet paper the one and only time I ever went camping. That, I can laugh about – HEY! I didn’t say you could!


Mike Logan
Law & Order franchise
Word count: 391

Tags: tm

Your Personality Is Like Cocaine

You're dynamic, brilliant, and alluring to those who don't know you. Hyper and full of energy, you're usually the last one to leave a party. Sometimes your sharp mind gets the better of you... you're a bit paranoid! At your best: You're confident, euphoric, and feel like you're on top of the world. What people like about being around you: You're intense and overpowering. What people dislike about being around you: You can be arrogant... and a bit of a jerk. How addicted people get to you: You're incredibly addictive. And hanging around with you isn't cheap!

Look, I don't like feds, spooks or any other type of operative. That cloak and dagger business seems to attract the worst type of dickhead - even worse than the IAB, I swear.

Besides that, though, I'm no good at undercover work. I look like a cop, sound like a cop and move like a cop - some guys can do it, some can't, and I'm one of the ones who can't. I had one undercover assignment, and that did NOT go well, not at all.

I don't even try to do playacting anymore like some people on the job. The last time fell really flat - I lasted three lines before I gave up and pulled out the badge.


You know, that's the thing about this job. It's not just what I do, it's what I am. Somehow, even though I never wanted it, that's what ended up happening to me.

Tags: tm 248

Mike Logan doesn't believe in happy endings. Ending? Yeah, he believes in those, but he's starting to think "happy" is a figment of other people's imaginations. He's seen too much on the job, too much in his own life.

Right now, though, as he stands in a hospital hallway, dialing an unfamiliar number, he's hoping that this can be an exception, that just this once, for a while, things can work out for the best. He's still hoping when he hangs up.

A little under an hour later, he hears a sound at the door and looks up to see an older woman. She stands there, tentatively, as if wondering if her daughter, the younger woman lying in the bed, will send her away, the same way she'd dismissed her months before. At first, her daughter looks away, jaw set, face tense. But then, her lip trembles, and as the first tear escapes, she holds out her hand for her mother's.

Mike knows it's time to leave. It's not really a happy ending, per se, and it's not really a new beginning, either. It's a moment of peace and reprieve, though, and a promise that things can continue, can get better, and that's happy enough.

Tags: tm 244

Okay, so I've answered this question before - after all, it's one of the top ten barguments of all time. When I've got a beer in my hand, the answer's simple; the single luge. Seriously, it's just sledding! Yes, it's weird sledding, but the bobsled has too many guys crammed into a small space for me.
Curling is too much like bowling, and as for hockey, hey, I like boxing as much as the next guy, but add skates and sticks and it gets too gladiatorial.
Skiing? Yeah, strap two boards onto my feet and fall down a hill while dodging trees? NO THANKS. I was told the secret was to go downhill very fast, and if something got in your way, move, but fuck that noise.
I am far too straight to ice-skate.

Anyhow, the single-man luge seems like it'd be a plus to be a big guy, and possibly drunk, too. I've done stupider stunts while plastered- that sled looks like it takes bumps a lot better than your average trashcan lid. So, yeah, luge it is, until the Summer Olympics allows either the 500 yard perp-chase, the skel-drop, or a competitive cannonball event.

Anyhow, I don't need the Olympics - I've got a gold medal in holding this barstool down. Yeah, We Are The Champions, my friends.

Tags: tm, tm 243

I hate my birthday. I know that's not original, but that's how it is. I usually go out, have a few drinks, have a few more, then...well, you see how that goes.

I think the worst one might have been my thirteenth. Yeah. Not thirty, thirty-five, forty or even this last one. Because every one of those, at least, were spent where I wanted to go, when,and how, even it was semi-miserable.

My thirteenth?
I went to Grand Central Station, and I sat there. Hours went by, the crowds came and went, and I sat there. I had a duffel bag with some clothes, all the cash I had in the world, and one of the blunt kitchen knives I'd boosted just in case. I stared at the departure boards until I realized I wasn't going to do it; I didn't have anywhere to go, and I couldn't manage to go anyway.

I went back to the subway and rode that, back and forth, through the boroughs almost all night. It was the same loop I was stuck in, out, around, and back to where I started.


It was nearly light again when I let myself back into the house. I wasn't worried about waking up my parents - I half-expected them to be out of their minds, my mother livid about me worrying her, my dad enraged at me for the same reason. If I'd gone, she'd have had one more nail for her cross, and that was one thing that made me glad I'd come back.

But instead of walking into the Passion Play of Lily Logan, I opened the door into darkness. Nothing. Nobody. Some snores from their bedroom and a few empty bottles meant business as usual at our house. They hadn't even noticed I was gone. Happy freaking birthday.

If I could celebrate my birthday doing anything, anything at all? I'd go back to that day, back to Grand Central and tell that kid, "Run. It doesn't matter where or for how long, as long as you're gone. Just go. Do that one thing for yourself." Because that's the one thing it took me too long to figure out - now, when I pick up that first glass of scotch on that particular day, it's because I'm alone, where I wanted to be.

Tags: prompt#237, tm, tm237

I moved to Manhattan when I was seventeen. Back then – nevermind what year it was, okay? – the Village wasn’t nice, safe clean and all full of chain stores. The building I ended up in was full of junkies, a fair amount of what we called “sexual deviants” when we were feeling charitable, struggling artistes, a range of kids trying to choose between being any or all of those, and other social misfits of persuasions too numerous to list. Now? If it hadn’t gone co-op right at the moment I was able to sell my parent’s house, I wouldn’t be able to afford my wannabe walkup (the elevators in this place are and always have been mainly for show – they only work on federal holidays on alternate years.)

Back then, the big excitement was you might see Dee Dee Ramone scoring junk somewhere in the back of a club. Now? You can’t spit without seeing a “somebody” around here; it’s gentrification gone nuts. With the a-b-c and d- listers trying to maintain their lifestyles comes a raft of upscale joints where they can buy the food, clothes and accessories with the brand names they crave, driving up the price of real estate rental, making it hard for the thrift shops, porn stores and greasy spoons we no-listers frequent to stay open.

Sometimes, though, especially later at night, when the tourists clear out, and the nice upper-upper-middle class people clear out, the bones of the neighborhood show. It’s still New York, it’s still the Village, it’s still gritty, gross and real. It’s still home.

Tags: tm

Mike leaned next to the snack machines, staring off into the Major Case squad room as he drank his morning coffee. Funny how even Major Case NYPD coffee tastes like crap, he thought. Ah, the NYPD special blend.

Goren was back. There he was, at his desk, a little grayer, a little chunkier, and looking stunned. More stunned than usual, actually. Not that Mike knew how the Great Genius of One Police Plaza normally composed himself - he rolled his eyes involuntarily - but the big guy looked wrecked.

Listening to a dull burr of conversation behind him, Mike wondered whether the last few months had sunk Goren. He knew what the bottom looked like - been there a few times himself, and you never got used to that.

Suddenly, the words "rat" and a few unpleasant laughs broke through his thoughts. He turned to the small knot of guys, some of them, he realized with shock, the same ones who'd been so sympathetic to him when he'd shot that poor kid.

For a second, his mouth just hung slightly open, then he narrowed his eyes. The conversation died out under his glare, the other detectives realizing Mike wasn't in on the joke. "Hey, Logan," someone began weakly, before Mike turned and lumbered back to his own desk.

Royally pissed, he started his computer, even glaring at his own reflection. He wasn't sure he was going to make it the rest of the day without taking a swing at someone. Now he felt like shit, too.

He hunched forward, calling out to the figure a few desks away. "Goren. Hey - "