Ocean's 11 fic: Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you cheat (Danny/Rusty, PG-13)
So I've decided to do yuletide this year, but in order to qualify I needed to write a fic for one of the unfilled challenges from last year. Conveniently, musesfool had a challenge listed, and she has a birthday coming up. Which leads us to:
Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you cheat
by marinarusalka
Pairing: Danny/Rusty
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Danny and Rusty have a really bad day, but then it gets better
Thanks to yahtzee63 for the short-notice beta read.
"Ow," said Rusty. "Watch it, man. I bruise easily."
"Yes, we've certainly established that," Danny grumbled. "Hold still, I'm going to do that cut behind your ear now."
Rusty grimaced. "I think I need another drink first."
Rusty had his right hand wrist-deep in the ice bucket to keep the swelling down, and the left one holding the ice pack to his jaw, so Danny grabbed a plastic cup from the shelf over the sink, poured some of the Smirnoff's into it, and held it to Rusty's mouth. Rusty took a swig, then yelped and jerked his head back as some of the vodka dribbled over the scrape on his chin.
"Sorry," Danny grabbed for a towel. "Let me clean that up."
"Stop that." Rusty sounded more irritated than pained. "When did you turn into my mother, anyway? It's no big deal."
Rusty had spent most of the day insisting it was no big deal, and every time he said it, Danny felt like a slightly lower species of pond scum.
They were crowded into the bathroom of what had to be the shittiest motel room in all of New Jersey, off Route 78 near the Pennsylvania border. Rusty sat on the edge of the tub with Danny leaning over him, the first-aid kit and the vodka bottle on the floor between them. The clerk at the front desk had given them a long, dubious look when they'd staggered in, and Danny still wasn't one hundred percent sure that the guy wouldn't call the cops, but at this point, he thought that getting arrested might actually be kind of restful.
Saul had warned them, a couple of years before. Saul had thought they were due for a fall. "You think I've never been young?" he'd said. "You think I don't remember? You think because you're twenty-one and look good in a custom-made suit, it makes you indestructible? Think again."
Danny had folded his arms across his chest (carefully, so as not to mess up the lapels on the custom-made suit) and said, "I'm twenty-two." Rusty had just sucked on his Tootsie Pop and laughed.
Saul probably remembered that conversation. Saul was never going to let them live it down.
It was supposed to be an easy con. Passing off a fake Matisse as a real one, stolen from a private collection in France -- they've done that sort of thing so many times, Danny had lost count two or three years back. And for a week it had all gone down smooth as twenty-year-old Macallan, until this morning when Lipinsky's new limo driver, of all people, had recognized them from a job they'd pulled in New Orleans eighteen months before.
All things considered, they were probably getting off easy. Guys have turned up floating in the Hudson for less. But Lipinsky had apparently been feeling generous.
"I hear you boys are friends of Saul's," he'd said, "so I suppose I can go easy on you this one time." He'd taken a silver dollar from his pocket and tossed it to Danny. "Flip it." And then, when all Danny could do was stand there and stare at him, "What's the matter, you don't speak English? You're gambling men, aren't you? Flip it."
Danny had won the coin toss, which is why Rusty was the one sitting there with his hand in the ice bucket.
He took some gauze pads and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide from the first aid kit and cleaned the cut behind Rusty's ear, and the scrape on Rusty's chin.
"How are the ribs?" he asked, not for the first time. Rusty scowled, not for the first time.
"They're fine. They're not broken. Stop trying to get me to take my shirt off, you silver-tongued devil, you."
"I still think we should go to the ER."
"Uh-huh." Rusty rolled his eyes. "Let's drive our stolen car to the nearest hospital, where the nice receptionist won't care at all that we don't have any identification, and the nice doctors won't find my injuries in the least bit suspicious. That's the way to keep a low profile."
"We've already checked into a motel with no luggage and you looking like you've gone extra rounds with King Kong. I think it's a little too late to worry about our profile."
"It's never too late to worry about our profile. And I hate hospitals. They make you wear those little paper jammies that don't cover your ass, and the food sucks. Stop fussing. It's no big deal."
Danny wondered if pond scum was as low as a guy could go, or if there was something lower and slimier out there.
After they got done stomping on Rusty, Lipinsky's goons had relieved them of wallets, jewelry, and every other half-way valuable item in their posession, right down to Rusty's sunglasses and Danny's gold-plated cigarette lighter. Then they'd put them in a back of an Eldorado and drove west for two hours before kicking them out on the shoulder three miles from the nearest exit. By then it was nearly eleven at night, and the two of them had ended up having to walk to civilization, if a strip mall could be considered civilization, which Danny had his doubts about. All the stores were closed by then, but there had been a bar, and Danny had left Rusty to lurk in the parking lot while he'd gone inside to lift the wallets off the first two guys he'd bumped into, then gone back out to hotwire a car. The next two strip malls down the road had yielded a Duane Reade and a 24-hour supermarket where the bubble-gum-chewing kid at the register either hadn't known or hadn't cared that he wasn't supposed to be selling liquor that late at night.
By the time they found the motel it was nearly one o'clock and Rusty, for all his "it's no big deal" bullshit, had been hanging off Danny's arm like a dead weight.
"We can call Saul," Danny said. "He knows people everywhere. I bet he knows doctors in New Jersey, too."
"Christ, Danny, you really have turned into my mother. Either cut it out or go get me some food, I'm starving."
The only food source in the motel was the vending machine in the lobby. The suspicious guy at the front desk had been replaced by a brassy middle-aged blonde in a fuzzy pink sweater who simpered in response to Danny's smile as she gave him a stack of singles in exchange for a twenty. He stole the twenty back, more from habit than anything else, then went and bought one of everything in the machine. The resulting pile was too unwieldy to carry in his arms, so he took off his jacket and used it to make a bundle as he trudged back up the hallway to their room.
He had never felt less like a suave gentleman-thief in his entire life.
He came back to find Rusty sprawled bonelessly on the less lumpy one of the two beds. The orange and yellow zigzags on the bedspread clashed hideously with the glossy indigo and silver stripes of Rusty's shirt. Just looking at it gave Danny a headache.
"Just for the record," he said, "the reason I keep trying to get you to take your shirt off is so that I can burn it. Are you sure you're not color blind?"
Rusty gave him the finger with his good hand.
"Don't be rude to the room service." Danny shoved the lamp and the alarm clock aside and dumped all the food on top of the nightstand before sitting down on the other bed. "Here, that should hold you for the next ten minutes or so."
"Mmm." Rusty sat up and snatched a Three Musketeers bar from the pile. He started to tear at the wrapper with his teeth, then stopped, winced, and pressed the back of his hand against his jaw. "Ow."
"Here, I'll get that." Danny took the bar from Rusty's hand, unwrapped it and handed it back.
"Thanks, mom." Rusty took a small, cautious bite, then a bigger, more enthusiastic one. "Okay, you're forgiven," he mumbled with his mouth full.
Danny's stomach gave an unpleasant flip. "For what?"
"For acting like my mother and insulting my shirt." Rusty's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Why, what did you think you needed to be forgiven for?"
"I don't know, that's why asked."
"Right." Rusty took another bite of the candy, chewed slowly and swallowed, never taking his eyes off Danny's face the whole time. "Out with it. What's going on?"
"Nothing."
Rusty drummed his fingers on the bedspread. "You're a lousy liar, Danny."
"Am not!" Danny drew himself up, genuinely indignant. "I'm an excellent liar! I do it professionally!"
"You couldn't prove it by me. What's going on?"
"Nothing!"
"Uh-huh." Rusty finished the candy bar and dropped the wrapper on the floor. Took a bag of Fritos off the pile and held it out for Danny to open. Ate a handful. Rustled the packet. Ate another one.
"I cheated on the coin toss," Danny blurted out.
Rusty blinked. Put down the Fritos bag. Blinked again. "Say what?"
"I cheated." Danny jumped up and paced the narrow strip of floor between the beds, hands in pockets to keep them from fidgeting. "I swear, I didn't know what he wanted it for. I should've known what he wanted it for, but I was kind of distracted by the gun to my head. It was habit, I was just--"
"Let me get this straight," Rusty said. "We had just completely and totally fucked up a kindergarden-level con. Victor Lipinsky was mad at us. You were standing there with the barrel of a .45 stuck in your ear. And you cheated on a coin toss."
"I didn't kn--" Danny started to say again, but he had to stop because Rusty was laughing. Laughing and wincing and holding his hand against his side in a way that suggested that maybe laughing wasn't such a hot idea, but he seemed to have trouble stopping.
"Christ, Danny! Is that what had your panties in such a bunch all day?"
"I didn't--"
"Let me fetch you some ice, Rusty. Let me clean that cut, Rusty. Let me wipe your ass for you, Rusty. You were totally pathetic, I hope you know that."
"Fuck you." Danny could feel his ears burning. He made himself stop pacing and sat down on the edge of Rusty's bed. "Have you looked in the mirror lately?"
"It's no--"
"If you say it's no big deal one more time, I'm going to kill you."
"No you won't. And it's not. I've had a lot worse."
"Not when I was around, you haven't."
"So? What are you, my bodyguard?"
"I'm your goddamn partner!" Danny snapped. "We're supposed to watch each other's backs. And I--"
"And you cheated," Rusty said, "which is exactly what I would've done if Lipinsky had asked me to do the toss. When someone gives us an opportunity to cheat, we cheat. It's a matter of principle."
"I should've said something. When I realized what they were going to do."
"Oh, please. Lipinsky was already looking as if letting us live was the worst idea ever. The last thing we needed was to give him an excuse to change his mind."
"Yeah, well." Danny rubbed the back of his neck. "You know I wouldn't have cheated it if I'd known, right?"
"I would've."
"Liar."
Rusty just grinned and kept on eating. Danny found himself grinning too. He was feeling good -- amazingly good, really, considering how most of the day had gone. Rusty was right, he should've known better. Should've figured without being told that Rusty wasn't going to cut up rough about the stupid coin toss. Most guys would've. Most guys in the business talked a good game about partnership and loyalty and honor among thieves, but what they really meant was, "I'll stab your back the moment it's turned, but you'd better do right by me or else." Rusty didn't pull that shit. You knew what to expect from Rusty, and you knew what he expected from you, and you knew that the two sides would always balance out. It occurred to Danny -- not really for the first time, but the first time he'd actually put it in words -- that Rusty was the only person on the entire goddamn planet about whom he could say that.
Rusty finished his Fritos and fished a packet of Oreos from the remaining pile. He looked thoroughly content with life, despite the lump on his jaw and the fact that his right hand was turning colors that were normally found only in his shirts. There was a smear of chocolate on his lower lip, just above the edge of the Band-Aid on his chin. Danny reached out and wiped it off with his thumb.
Rusty drew in a quick, sharp breath and held it. His eyes went wide.
Danny froze. He hadn't really thought about it when he moved, but now he could see the whole tableau in his mind, as if he was observing it from the outside: Rusty sitting propped up against the headboard, himself leaning forward with one hand braced on the edge of the mattress and the other cupped against Rusty's face, his thumb pressed against Rusty's mouth. This was his cue to pull back, say something casual to break the tension and go on as if nothing had happened. Problem was, the signal wasn't making it from his brain to his muscles.
The moment stretched and stretched. Danny wasn't sure how much time passed, exactly, but he was pretty sure it had gone past the point where acting like nothing happened was going to work. Then Rusty let out the breath he was holding, turned his head a little, and brushed his lips against the inside of Danny's wrist. The contact was so light it was barely there, but it felt like a jolt. Danny jerked his hand back, and immediately wished he hadn't.
"Well," said Rusty.
"Uhm…" Danny licked his lips. "Yeah. Well. This is… new."
"No, it's not," Rusty said.
The back of Danny's neck felt warm. "It's not?"
"Not from this side."
"Oh."
Rusty was holding very still. He hadn't looked in the least bit scared when Lipinsky's thugs were pointing guns at them, but he looked kind of scared now. It seemed all wrong that Rusty should look like that when it was just the two of them in a room, so Danny bent down and kissed him.
Rusty tasted of chocolate and corn chips, not exactly Danny's favorite combination, but he kissed really well. He rested one hand against Danny's back, lightly at first, then clenched into a fist around a fold of Danny's shirt. Danny just kept kissing, until Rusty was the one to pull away first.
"All right, what brought that on?" Rusty sounded a little breathless, but calmer on the whole than Danny himself felt. "Do the bruises make me look hot or something?"
"Nah," Danny said. "Actually, you look like shit."
"Good," Rusty said. "I'd hate to think I was wanted only for my boyish good looks."
"Heaven forbid."
"What, then?"
"I'm not going to tell you," Danny said. "I find it's better to leave an element of mystery in a relationship."
"Right." Rusty nodded. "Mystery. I like mystery."
"The real question is," Danny went on, "what are we going to do about it now?"
"You're asking me?"
"You're the detail man."
"Hmm." Rusty leaned his head back against the headboard and gazed pensively at the ceiling. "I can think of a number of things. But they're all going to have to wait."
"Why? It's the ribs, isn't it?"
"That, too. But mostly, I don't think you should be re-evaluating your sexual orientation in a Ramada Limited. That's just tacky, man."
"What, you think there should be flowers and candlelight or something?"
"I think there should be a king-sized bed. And a mini-bar. And a bedspread that doesn't look like somebody puked on it."
"You know," said Danny, "I should've been tipped off by the way you always go on about the interior decorating. But your lousy taste in shirts threw me off."
"I like to keep people guessing."
"Sure you do." Danny considered kissing Rusty again, but decided that if he did, not even the bedspread was going to put them off, so he went to sit on the other bed instead. Rusty recovered his Oreos -- he'd dropped the packet on the floor at some point -- and went back to eating.
"I know a guy in Philly," he said after a while, "who can get us new IDs. And take the car off our hands, too."
"That's good." Danny thought it over. "You ever stay at the Ritz-Carlton in Philly?"
"Yeah."
"In the presidential suite?"
"No. Does it have a really good mini-bar?"
"It has a full wet bar."
"Whoa." Rusty contemplated that for a moment. "How are you going to get us into the presidential suite at the Ritz-Carlton?"
Danny grinned. "Trust me."
The End
You can also read it at the yuletide archive here.
Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you cheat
by marinarusalka
Pairing: Danny/Rusty
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Danny and Rusty have a really bad day, but then it gets better
Thanks to yahtzee63 for the short-notice beta read.
"Ow," said Rusty. "Watch it, man. I bruise easily."
"Yes, we've certainly established that," Danny grumbled. "Hold still, I'm going to do that cut behind your ear now."
Rusty grimaced. "I think I need another drink first."
Rusty had his right hand wrist-deep in the ice bucket to keep the swelling down, and the left one holding the ice pack to his jaw, so Danny grabbed a plastic cup from the shelf over the sink, poured some of the Smirnoff's into it, and held it to Rusty's mouth. Rusty took a swig, then yelped and jerked his head back as some of the vodka dribbled over the scrape on his chin.
"Sorry," Danny grabbed for a towel. "Let me clean that up."
"Stop that." Rusty sounded more irritated than pained. "When did you turn into my mother, anyway? It's no big deal."
Rusty had spent most of the day insisting it was no big deal, and every time he said it, Danny felt like a slightly lower species of pond scum.
They were crowded into the bathroom of what had to be the shittiest motel room in all of New Jersey, off Route 78 near the Pennsylvania border. Rusty sat on the edge of the tub with Danny leaning over him, the first-aid kit and the vodka bottle on the floor between them. The clerk at the front desk had given them a long, dubious look when they'd staggered in, and Danny still wasn't one hundred percent sure that the guy wouldn't call the cops, but at this point, he thought that getting arrested might actually be kind of restful.
Saul had warned them, a couple of years before. Saul had thought they were due for a fall. "You think I've never been young?" he'd said. "You think I don't remember? You think because you're twenty-one and look good in a custom-made suit, it makes you indestructible? Think again."
Danny had folded his arms across his chest (carefully, so as not to mess up the lapels on the custom-made suit) and said, "I'm twenty-two." Rusty had just sucked on his Tootsie Pop and laughed.
Saul probably remembered that conversation. Saul was never going to let them live it down.
It was supposed to be an easy con. Passing off a fake Matisse as a real one, stolen from a private collection in France -- they've done that sort of thing so many times, Danny had lost count two or three years back. And for a week it had all gone down smooth as twenty-year-old Macallan, until this morning when Lipinsky's new limo driver, of all people, had recognized them from a job they'd pulled in New Orleans eighteen months before.
All things considered, they were probably getting off easy. Guys have turned up floating in the Hudson for less. But Lipinsky had apparently been feeling generous.
"I hear you boys are friends of Saul's," he'd said, "so I suppose I can go easy on you this one time." He'd taken a silver dollar from his pocket and tossed it to Danny. "Flip it." And then, when all Danny could do was stand there and stare at him, "What's the matter, you don't speak English? You're gambling men, aren't you? Flip it."
Danny had won the coin toss, which is why Rusty was the one sitting there with his hand in the ice bucket.
He took some gauze pads and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide from the first aid kit and cleaned the cut behind Rusty's ear, and the scrape on Rusty's chin.
"How are the ribs?" he asked, not for the first time. Rusty scowled, not for the first time.
"They're fine. They're not broken. Stop trying to get me to take my shirt off, you silver-tongued devil, you."
"I still think we should go to the ER."
"Uh-huh." Rusty rolled his eyes. "Let's drive our stolen car to the nearest hospital, where the nice receptionist won't care at all that we don't have any identification, and the nice doctors won't find my injuries in the least bit suspicious. That's the way to keep a low profile."
"We've already checked into a motel with no luggage and you looking like you've gone extra rounds with King Kong. I think it's a little too late to worry about our profile."
"It's never too late to worry about our profile. And I hate hospitals. They make you wear those little paper jammies that don't cover your ass, and the food sucks. Stop fussing. It's no big deal."
Danny wondered if pond scum was as low as a guy could go, or if there was something lower and slimier out there.
After they got done stomping on Rusty, Lipinsky's goons had relieved them of wallets, jewelry, and every other half-way valuable item in their posession, right down to Rusty's sunglasses and Danny's gold-plated cigarette lighter. Then they'd put them in a back of an Eldorado and drove west for two hours before kicking them out on the shoulder three miles from the nearest exit. By then it was nearly eleven at night, and the two of them had ended up having to walk to civilization, if a strip mall could be considered civilization, which Danny had his doubts about. All the stores were closed by then, but there had been a bar, and Danny had left Rusty to lurk in the parking lot while he'd gone inside to lift the wallets off the first two guys he'd bumped into, then gone back out to hotwire a car. The next two strip malls down the road had yielded a Duane Reade and a 24-hour supermarket where the bubble-gum-chewing kid at the register either hadn't known or hadn't cared that he wasn't supposed to be selling liquor that late at night.
By the time they found the motel it was nearly one o'clock and Rusty, for all his "it's no big deal" bullshit, had been hanging off Danny's arm like a dead weight.
"We can call Saul," Danny said. "He knows people everywhere. I bet he knows doctors in New Jersey, too."
"Christ, Danny, you really have turned into my mother. Either cut it out or go get me some food, I'm starving."
The only food source in the motel was the vending machine in the lobby. The suspicious guy at the front desk had been replaced by a brassy middle-aged blonde in a fuzzy pink sweater who simpered in response to Danny's smile as she gave him a stack of singles in exchange for a twenty. He stole the twenty back, more from habit than anything else, then went and bought one of everything in the machine. The resulting pile was too unwieldy to carry in his arms, so he took off his jacket and used it to make a bundle as he trudged back up the hallway to their room.
He had never felt less like a suave gentleman-thief in his entire life.
He came back to find Rusty sprawled bonelessly on the less lumpy one of the two beds. The orange and yellow zigzags on the bedspread clashed hideously with the glossy indigo and silver stripes of Rusty's shirt. Just looking at it gave Danny a headache.
"Just for the record," he said, "the reason I keep trying to get you to take your shirt off is so that I can burn it. Are you sure you're not color blind?"
Rusty gave him the finger with his good hand.
"Don't be rude to the room service." Danny shoved the lamp and the alarm clock aside and dumped all the food on top of the nightstand before sitting down on the other bed. "Here, that should hold you for the next ten minutes or so."
"Mmm." Rusty sat up and snatched a Three Musketeers bar from the pile. He started to tear at the wrapper with his teeth, then stopped, winced, and pressed the back of his hand against his jaw. "Ow."
"Here, I'll get that." Danny took the bar from Rusty's hand, unwrapped it and handed it back.
"Thanks, mom." Rusty took a small, cautious bite, then a bigger, more enthusiastic one. "Okay, you're forgiven," he mumbled with his mouth full.
Danny's stomach gave an unpleasant flip. "For what?"
"For acting like my mother and insulting my shirt." Rusty's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Why, what did you think you needed to be forgiven for?"
"I don't know, that's why asked."
"Right." Rusty took another bite of the candy, chewed slowly and swallowed, never taking his eyes off Danny's face the whole time. "Out with it. What's going on?"
"Nothing."
Rusty drummed his fingers on the bedspread. "You're a lousy liar, Danny."
"Am not!" Danny drew himself up, genuinely indignant. "I'm an excellent liar! I do it professionally!"
"You couldn't prove it by me. What's going on?"
"Nothing!"
"Uh-huh." Rusty finished the candy bar and dropped the wrapper on the floor. Took a bag of Fritos off the pile and held it out for Danny to open. Ate a handful. Rustled the packet. Ate another one.
"I cheated on the coin toss," Danny blurted out.
Rusty blinked. Put down the Fritos bag. Blinked again. "Say what?"
"I cheated." Danny jumped up and paced the narrow strip of floor between the beds, hands in pockets to keep them from fidgeting. "I swear, I didn't know what he wanted it for. I should've known what he wanted it for, but I was kind of distracted by the gun to my head. It was habit, I was just--"
"Let me get this straight," Rusty said. "We had just completely and totally fucked up a kindergarden-level con. Victor Lipinsky was mad at us. You were standing there with the barrel of a .45 stuck in your ear. And you cheated on a coin toss."
"I didn't kn--" Danny started to say again, but he had to stop because Rusty was laughing. Laughing and wincing and holding his hand against his side in a way that suggested that maybe laughing wasn't such a hot idea, but he seemed to have trouble stopping.
"Christ, Danny! Is that what had your panties in such a bunch all day?"
"I didn't--"
"Let me fetch you some ice, Rusty. Let me clean that cut, Rusty. Let me wipe your ass for you, Rusty. You were totally pathetic, I hope you know that."
"Fuck you." Danny could feel his ears burning. He made himself stop pacing and sat down on the edge of Rusty's bed. "Have you looked in the mirror lately?"
"It's no--"
"If you say it's no big deal one more time, I'm going to kill you."
"No you won't. And it's not. I've had a lot worse."
"Not when I was around, you haven't."
"So? What are you, my bodyguard?"
"I'm your goddamn partner!" Danny snapped. "We're supposed to watch each other's backs. And I--"
"And you cheated," Rusty said, "which is exactly what I would've done if Lipinsky had asked me to do the toss. When someone gives us an opportunity to cheat, we cheat. It's a matter of principle."
"I should've said something. When I realized what they were going to do."
"Oh, please. Lipinsky was already looking as if letting us live was the worst idea ever. The last thing we needed was to give him an excuse to change his mind."
"Yeah, well." Danny rubbed the back of his neck. "You know I wouldn't have cheated it if I'd known, right?"
"I would've."
"Liar."
Rusty just grinned and kept on eating. Danny found himself grinning too. He was feeling good -- amazingly good, really, considering how most of the day had gone. Rusty was right, he should've known better. Should've figured without being told that Rusty wasn't going to cut up rough about the stupid coin toss. Most guys would've. Most guys in the business talked a good game about partnership and loyalty and honor among thieves, but what they really meant was, "I'll stab your back the moment it's turned, but you'd better do right by me or else." Rusty didn't pull that shit. You knew what to expect from Rusty, and you knew what he expected from you, and you knew that the two sides would always balance out. It occurred to Danny -- not really for the first time, but the first time he'd actually put it in words -- that Rusty was the only person on the entire goddamn planet about whom he could say that.
Rusty finished his Fritos and fished a packet of Oreos from the remaining pile. He looked thoroughly content with life, despite the lump on his jaw and the fact that his right hand was turning colors that were normally found only in his shirts. There was a smear of chocolate on his lower lip, just above the edge of the Band-Aid on his chin. Danny reached out and wiped it off with his thumb.
Rusty drew in a quick, sharp breath and held it. His eyes went wide.
Danny froze. He hadn't really thought about it when he moved, but now he could see the whole tableau in his mind, as if he was observing it from the outside: Rusty sitting propped up against the headboard, himself leaning forward with one hand braced on the edge of the mattress and the other cupped against Rusty's face, his thumb pressed against Rusty's mouth. This was his cue to pull back, say something casual to break the tension and go on as if nothing had happened. Problem was, the signal wasn't making it from his brain to his muscles.
The moment stretched and stretched. Danny wasn't sure how much time passed, exactly, but he was pretty sure it had gone past the point where acting like nothing happened was going to work. Then Rusty let out the breath he was holding, turned his head a little, and brushed his lips against the inside of Danny's wrist. The contact was so light it was barely there, but it felt like a jolt. Danny jerked his hand back, and immediately wished he hadn't.
"Well," said Rusty.
"Uhm…" Danny licked his lips. "Yeah. Well. This is… new."
"No, it's not," Rusty said.
The back of Danny's neck felt warm. "It's not?"
"Not from this side."
"Oh."
Rusty was holding very still. He hadn't looked in the least bit scared when Lipinsky's thugs were pointing guns at them, but he looked kind of scared now. It seemed all wrong that Rusty should look like that when it was just the two of them in a room, so Danny bent down and kissed him.
Rusty tasted of chocolate and corn chips, not exactly Danny's favorite combination, but he kissed really well. He rested one hand against Danny's back, lightly at first, then clenched into a fist around a fold of Danny's shirt. Danny just kept kissing, until Rusty was the one to pull away first.
"All right, what brought that on?" Rusty sounded a little breathless, but calmer on the whole than Danny himself felt. "Do the bruises make me look hot or something?"
"Nah," Danny said. "Actually, you look like shit."
"Good," Rusty said. "I'd hate to think I was wanted only for my boyish good looks."
"Heaven forbid."
"What, then?"
"I'm not going to tell you," Danny said. "I find it's better to leave an element of mystery in a relationship."
"Right." Rusty nodded. "Mystery. I like mystery."
"The real question is," Danny went on, "what are we going to do about it now?"
"You're asking me?"
"You're the detail man."
"Hmm." Rusty leaned his head back against the headboard and gazed pensively at the ceiling. "I can think of a number of things. But they're all going to have to wait."
"Why? It's the ribs, isn't it?"
"That, too. But mostly, I don't think you should be re-evaluating your sexual orientation in a Ramada Limited. That's just tacky, man."
"What, you think there should be flowers and candlelight or something?"
"I think there should be a king-sized bed. And a mini-bar. And a bedspread that doesn't look like somebody puked on it."
"You know," said Danny, "I should've been tipped off by the way you always go on about the interior decorating. But your lousy taste in shirts threw me off."
"I like to keep people guessing."
"Sure you do." Danny considered kissing Rusty again, but decided that if he did, not even the bedspread was going to put them off, so he went to sit on the other bed instead. Rusty recovered his Oreos -- he'd dropped the packet on the floor at some point -- and went back to eating.
"I know a guy in Philly," he said after a while, "who can get us new IDs. And take the car off our hands, too."
"That's good." Danny thought it over. "You ever stay at the Ritz-Carlton in Philly?"
"Yeah."
"In the presidential suite?"
"No. Does it have a really good mini-bar?"
"It has a full wet bar."
"Whoa." Rusty contemplated that for a moment. "How are you going to get us into the presidential suite at the Ritz-Carlton?"
Danny grinned. "Trust me."
The End
You can also read it at the yuletide archive here.