Title: Making Family
Fandom: Baccano!/Ocean's 11
Characters: Claire, Danny
Rating: PG
Warnings: Written for
no true pair. Oh my god, crossover genfic! There's slash. But only if you sort of turn your head sideways and squint.
Summary: Danny doesn't want to have kids; Claire would kill to have some. It doesn't take too long before Danny realises, maybe this kid isn't so bad after all --
1528 words and really bad recruiting skills. I HAVE NO EXCUSE.
It was a bad habit that he'd picked up from Saul. They did that, every once in a while - big jobs took time, and they all moved around the same circles. It couldn't be avoided, really. Sometimes you had to hunker down for two months in the middle of, say, Utah, and then the choice between taking Saul up on going to the racecourses and sitting around the safe house with the twins didn't really become much of a choice at all. At the very least, Danny rationalised, it was just betting. He did that as a job. It could've been anything else: Rusty's eating thing. Frank's obsession with his nails. Betting was a fortunate pick-up.
'And there we go,' Danny said, resigned, as he watched his greyhound stumble back into third place. It was a married man's luck. It was pretty sucky, for one. Sighing, he sat back. He had sixty down for number four in the next run, and the way things were going, he might as well have written the cash off to begin with. Danny crumpled the ticket up and tossed it aside. Brushing off the knees of his pants, he stood, and almost knocked right into a young redhead.
'You dropped this,' the redhead said, holding up the crushed ticket.
'You can keep it,' Danny offered. 'Considering how things have been turning out for me, karma may turn that one into a win.'
The redhead smoothed out the paper. 'Number four, huh?' he read out.
Danny held up his hands. 'Hasn't been my week.'
'Problems?' the redhead asked, making himself comfortable in the empty seat by the one Danny just vacated.
'My wife,' Danny admitted, wry. He sat down again. The kid - and he really was quite a kid, wasn't he, twenty-something and young - reminded him of Rusty; same kind of talk, same kind of walk, same kind of fashion sense, too, looking at that black turtleneck and trench outfit he was wearing in the heavy summer weather.
Trouble, Danny's sixth sense warned. This wasn't the right time to be chatting up strangers and - and this was the truly horrifying part - thinking like an old man. Danny wasn't old. He was mature. Refined.
'Women,' the kid (redhead) commiserated. He stuck both his hands into his pockets instead of extending either one when he said, 'My name's Claire. Or you could call me Felix, I guess, if Claire's too girlish. Or you could call me anything.' He grinned.
Danny wanted to tell him to stick to one name; you could have as many as you liked, but first impressions mattered, and most people you talked to wanted a point of reference, not a series of personalities. Instead, he said, 'Danny Ocean,' and put his right hand out.
Claire looked surprised, but embarrassment didn't seem to be in his makeup - he just dug out his own right and shook. It was a firm shake, a good shake. The kind you that made you trust the guy who was doing the shaking whether you wanted to or not.
Danny seated himself and crossed his legs. 'You're having problems of your own?'
'Ah,' Claire sighed, stretching his back and scratching the crown of his head. 'Well. It's something like that - my wife, who is the most beautiful and wonderful wife there is, she says - well, she doesn't say, but you get the point - she says that she doesn't think it's the right time for us to have kids. But I want kids - I really do, I don't think I'll be a horrible father. It'll turn out all right. But she shakes her head and shrugs - "no" to a girl, "no" to a boy, "no" to adoption.' He laughed. 'She thinks I'm too irresponsible right now.'
'I've heard that before,' Danny replied, bemused. Tess said - 'My wife says the same thing to me. But it's the other way around, for us. She thinks having children will help me settle down.'
Settle down. The two words crawled up the back of Danny's spine like a bad nightmare.
'Settle down? Do you keep changing jobs, Danny?'
No Mr Ocean from this one. 'No, I -' steal things '- am retired, technically.'
Claire turned in his seat and stared Danny up and down. He had quick eyes, even if they were a bit too bright and made him seem bushy-tailed and over-eager. Rusty'd been like that, when they first stumbled into each other way back when. Admittedly Rusty knew basic etiquette and when to stop talking at that age, but still.
God, what was he thinking?
'You don't look too old, Danny,' Claire pronounced a moment later. Props to this one. 'What did you work as before?'
Mr Diaz was a high school basketball coach. 'I stole things,' Danny shrugged.
'What kind of things?' Claire smiled, all honesty, and Danny had the vague impression that he was - what was Virgil's term for it? "Screwed?"
'Once upon a time I stole Incan matrimonial head masks,' Danny said, feeling all the pieces kind of fit together and his shoulders settling and the edges of his mouth quirking upwards. 'Then marriage bit me in the ass, and I stuck to banks. Hotels. Rich people. Irritating people. Irritatingly rich people.'
'Sounds like a lot of fun,' Claire grinned, leaning forward over the armrest that separated their seats. Danny leaned back, so that they weren't kissing. 'My brothers do something like that. I tried it for a little while, but then it got boring; Keith never tried anything spectacular, and then I wanted to travel, and then I found Chane, so.'
'Keith?' Danny inquired, politely. Your family wouldn't happen to be based in Manhattan, would they?' Lots of people named Keith in the world, but not many of them looked like they'd grown up with a permanent trouble-maker. The Keith that Danny knew looked like he'd sucked lemons for the better part of his life. Two and two made four.
'Oh, yes, they're still there. Been there forever, didn't even think of moving when the old man bit it. Don't know how they stand New York.'
'You're related to the Gandor family?' Danny pried, truly interested now. A stranger to the game was one thing, but if Claire was in the loop, everything got a bit easier.
Not there was anything to make easier, because Danny wasn't doing this, because if Danny did do it Rusty would have a fucking field day and he'd have to come up with a heist big enough to crush Ryan's ego before they'd be able to do a night out together again.
'That's them,' Claire nodded. He hadn't moved back yet. Danny wondered if he should inform the kid that he had nice teeth even when viewed from a distance of five inches. 'They agree with Chane, if you could believe it. Berga says I'll grow demons.'
'They're family, they're biased,' Danny consoled, conveniently saying nothing at all in the process.
'And they tell me that I need a more stable occupation,' Claire sighed, his head dipping. 'Just because they do.'
'What do you do, Mr Gandor?'
'Stanfield, please,' Claire corrected, looking right back up again. The man had moods like the tide. 'They're my brothers, but not really. And I kill people. Only when they deserve it, though.'
Right, Danny decided. 'How old are you this year?'
'Now?' Claire pondered, biting his lip and bringing his hands up and ticking the years off his fingers. 'Twenty-eight, since Luck's probably half a century old now, yeah.'
'Why don't you come over to my place and have a drink?' Danny offered. 'Tess'll love to have you, and you can ask her all the kid questions you want. Then you and I can talk about "settling down".' Twenty-eight was a little old, but kids like Claire learned fast. Danny did.
'Really?' Claire beamed. He patted Danny on the back. 'That'd be brilliant! I can go home and bring Chane along?'
Most people bring home dogs, or cats, Danny thought, distantly. 'We'd be honoured,' he said aloud. And if they adopt, they adopt one year olds out of an orphanage.
'Ah, now I'm really excited,' Claire babbled, pulling back and standing and raising his arms in the air like the invitation was a one-way ticket to impending fatherhood and agreeable wives. That he managed not to make it look totally stupid was a mark of his charisma, or so Danny wanted to believe.
'If you get going now, you might be in time for dinner,' Danny suggested, steering the kid out of the box and towards the stairs. 'Tess makes an excellent meatloaf.' And then I can call Rusty, and then he can get over here and stop me from doing anything too stupid.
Somewhere behind them, the crowd roared. Danny looked up at the results screen - number four, huh?
Smiling, Mr. Daniel (Danny) Ocean ripped his ticket in half, and tried to think of a good way of breaking the news to Tess. Or Rusty. The both of them, really.
(Honey, I think I've found us a kid.)