qe2
in
midsummer2009
Recombinant, for lamentables
For: lamentables
Title: Recombinant
Fandoms: ReGenesis crossover with DaVinci's Inquest
Rating: NC-17
Length: @5800 words
Notes: David Sandström/Danny Leary, David Sandström/Sunny Ramen, David Sandström/Patricia DaVinci. Takes place over the years from 1996 to 2004, meaning it starts before DaVinci's Inquest and ends just prior to the beginning of ReGenesis.
Warnings: rampant bisexuality, bondage (with a very, very tiny tendril of paraphilia), angst.
Author: qe2
Recombinant
1996-Danny
The second time Danny Leary fucks David Sandström, he doesn't even take his fucking jeans off first.
David's been on the other end of that one more than once. Especially at university, when there never seemed to be enough time to either fuck or experiment half as much as he wanted to do both, making screwing science geeks a doubly efficient distraction and half-clothed supply-closet sex the order of every goddamned day. Back then, David's whole fucking wardrobe was button-flies and flannel, plus hiking boots and whatever huge puffy coat his mum'd forced on him for the cold days before he came back to school. The jeans were easy to unfasten, the boots were pure Sisyphean hell to get off and back on, and the whole pseudo-daring fucking-in-the-lab phenomenon made an amazing number of girls-and teachers-hot enough fast enough that nobody gave a shit about getting it on half-dressed.
Not at the time, anyway. Maybe afterwards they noticed things, back in their boyfriends' dorm rooms or their husbands' beds: not just beard burn, not just their mouths tasting like someone else, but the mark of another man's clothing on intimate bits of their skin, abraded and tender and reminding them minute to minute.
David never asked. Never even thought to. Probably wouldn't have asked even if he had thought to.
Now he knows.
Danny's hands tighten on either side of David's head, thumbs almost meeting where they lie, rough and warm, under David's chin. David doesn't remember having had a thing for paraphilia before tonight, that INXS guy last year notwithstanding-hell, he's not sure he'd have one now if it weren't for the fact that he's being fucked to within an inch of his life-but the imminent threat of losing what breath he has left given the bent-double position he's in is sure hell doing something for him. One of Danny's long, blunt fingers moves slick over the sweat on David's face-Jesus, he's hot, this is hot, Christ, who knew?-and slides between his lips. David sucks on it blindly, tasting smoke and alcohol and dirty salt and groaning every time Danny bottoms out, and doesn't think about what else he might want in his mouth, later, maybe, yeah, yeah, yeah ...
After longer than David can remember ever being hard without coming, Danny shifts his hands to the bed beside David's head. The move lets David unfold his legs a bit where they're spread out over Danny's shoulders. In theory, it also gives him access to his own cock, but when he reaches for it Danny bats his hand away and pins it to the bed. David grins at Danny open-mouthed and reaches down with his other hand, like a dare. Danny growls-growls, fuck, like they're dogs and David's beta-and captures that one as well. Then he changes his angle in David's ass, pulls out slower than David would have thought possible at this point, and slams into him again.
Three or four strokes later, David's coming all over himself and shouting loud enough to wake the actual frozen dead. Danny licks David's chin-there's come everywhere, Jesus-and puts his teeth into David's throat, just on the good side of too hard. His tongue flickers out against the unprotected skin just under David's jaw. David shudders, tightening down on Danny's cock involuntarily, and then it's Danny who's coming as he shoves into David one final time, head flung back and eyes closed and teeth in his lip hard enough to draw blood, as though he had a fucking prayer of holding back the groan that tears out of him there at the bitter end.
The third time Danny fucks David, it's better.
1998-Sunny
Dr DaVinci-Patricia, Patricia, first names are appropriate now-says that after a while, with a bit more experience, one simply doesn’t notice the smells.
Despite herself, Sunny remains skeptical.
It sounds good, certainly: the reassurance of a respected superior turned recalcitrant colleague, designed to patronize and to comfort in equal measure. And Sunny would like to believe it,
despite the evidence with which her scrubs present her at the end of a blood-stained, odorous day. Pathology, after all, is the field to which she's committed her life-at length, after effort, and against the will of a remarkable number of members of her family, not least her parents.
She does not intend to let its scents defeat her.
So. Other smells have become important, then-have become necessary, deliberate choices. Candles-nothing sweet, nothing chemical, evergreen and citrus and the spices of the food she hasn't had time to make from scratch since the second week of her graduate program. Cedar blocks for her sweaters. Different kinds of tea, mostly herbal; different kinds of plants. No flowers; there's too much death in temporary beauty. Specific types of soap and shampoo. All of it discovered through trial and frequent error.
Sunny wonders which way the current experiment will go.
There's so much to evaluate, a process made considerably more complicated by the distraction her partner presents. The smells that drew her initially: mild washroom soap on the hands holding an American quarter in front of her eyes where she stood searching through her resolutely Canadian change at the conference hotel's bank of public telephones; the aggressive tang of that same aftershave some of the younger Homicide detectives favor; an unfamiliar animal scent, warm and sharp and insistent. Later, red wine-a “good nose”, he'd said, and Sunny wonders how he knew-and arugula and the reek of the cheese plate's bluest component. And after that, a confusion of smells, hers overlaid with his overlaid with theirs, heat and need alchemizing even Sunny's own familiar scent into something unexpectedly different. An uncontrolled test …
A tiny sharp pain pulls Sunny out of her thoughts and back into the mildly enjoyable discomfort of their tangle on the fold-out bed (why are US hotels so often furnished this way?). They've stopped moving-or rather, Dr Sandström has. He's staring at her from about four inches away, hand poised to … did he just flick her forehead, as though she's a recalcitrant child? His hand smells like Sunny herself, from before. Sunny's nose wrinkles inadvertently, and Dr Sandström's hand opens to cup the side of her face.
“Sorry.” He's misunderstood her reaction. Sunny opens her mouth to respond, but Dr Sandström doesn't give her the chance. “Didn't hurt you.” It's not a question. Sunny suspects Dr Sandström doesn't question much. “But you're thinking about it, Dr Ramen-Sunny, Sunny. I'm pretty sure I told you before to quit that shit. This-” he runs the same hand down Sunny's side, careless and warm, and pulls gently on her knee until she brings it back up by his hip-“tends to work better if you turn your fucking scientist's brain off for a while and just go with it, eh?”
Sunny smiles at him. “I know, Dr Sandström. I'm sorry. I just- hnnnn.”
He's shifted his hips against her where they're joined, thrusting minutely inside her and putting renewed pressure on her clitoris. Distracting. She can feel how wet she is against him, humid and almost uncomfortable. It's … interesting. Noteworthy.
“Stop that. The 'sorries' and the thinking both. No need for either right now.” His tone's sharpened just a little, and Sunny's surprised to find herself lifting up into him in response. Mild rebuke as aphrodisiac? Very well, then. She wraps her legs around his hips, crossing her ankles against his back, and lifts up again.
“Good girl.” His wry grin robs the statement of any sting. “Flexible. I like that. Now call me David, for Christ's sake, and let's do this thing.” He shifts his hands back to their former spots by her shoulders-he has strong arms for a scientist, Sunny thinks-and begins to move in and out of her.
This new position they've wound themselves into opens a warm, scented space between their bodies, smelling of sweat and exercise and their intertwined personal musks. Smelling of sex. Sunny looks down her own body, dark against the sheets and where she's twined her limbs around Dr Sandström's-David's, yes-and watches for a moment, fascinated, as the pace of his thrusts into her increases. It's mesmerizing, this connection between what she feels and how that feeling's engendered, and for a moment she almost loses herself in the experience.
When she looks back up at Dr-David's face, however, she finds herself a little disconcerted. His eyes are unfocused, certainly, but she expected that; she can even tell over, in the apparently ever-discrete part of her mind, the physiological reasons for that particular reaction. And it's clear that he's concentrating on what he's doing here. He’s … well, he's paying attention, which she appreciates, particularly after her few experiences with fellow students.
But suddenly Sunny doesn’t think he's really seeing her at all.
2000-Patricia
Random banging on his bedroom door when any halfway sane person would be asleep makes David irritable, and irritability makes him even ruder than usual. So when the assault rifle he's firing from a third-floor crack-house window in the middle of a gangland turf war (and what in the fuck was that dream about, anyway?) turns out to be someone knocking briskly outside his hotel room at 6:30 fucking a.m., he doesn't feel particularly compelled to grab for a robe, or even his boxers, before he answers the door.
Fortunately for him, the woman on the other side of said door knows how to take advantage of a situation like nobody's business.
“Good morning,” she says, reaching out and running the back of a finger proprietarily down the length of his cock.
David knocks her hand away reflexively, covering himself with his other hand. “What the fuck-Jesus, lady, who in the hell are you and what do you think you're doing?”
“Patricia DaVinci. Doctor DaVinci, actually. And there's no need to be shy, Dr Sandström.” She gestures at the hand he has cupped protectively over his cock, the side of her mouth quirking upwards. “After all, I've seen what you have on offer. Up close and rather personal, actually. I wouldn't be here otherwise.”
“I beg your pardon.” Great, David thinks: as if being groped by a stranger isn't bad enough, now he's channelling his grandmother. He tries again, mustering all the irascible smartassery at his disposal and hoping the woman will turn out to be easily offendable. “Listen, lady-”
“Dr DaVinci,” the woman says helpfully, raising one eyebrow at him in that you-are-making-progress-grasshoppah way he's always found equal parts irritating and arousing. David shakes his head hard and waves her off, trying his best to ignore the fact that he's already a lot harder than his typical morning woody would explain. He is not going to do this. He is not. He has standards, damn it.
Somewhere.
“Lady. Doctor DaVinci, if you say so. You've got nice tits and good hair, you're reasonably attractive-as far as I can tell at way too early in the fucking morning, although you might want to check back with me when my eyes can actually focus-and I'm sure you're a great lay when you're on your meds. And if I was in the market for a hotel-hallway handjob from a total stranger, I would absolutely seek out your services, no question. As it happens, however, what I'm in the market for right now is for you to go far, far away from my soon-to-be-locked-again door, so that I can go back to sleep and you can reacquaint yourself with the good old custom of shaking hands when you meet a new person and saving the public sex for the second date. Or at least taking them out to dinner first, which is my personal prefer-”
“Yes, I know,” the woman says. “I was there.”
Say what?
David feels his mouth dropping open in astonishment, something he'd thought only happened in those fucking stupid romance novels Lilith's mother reads. Way to process, there, Sandström-but come on, this is a little much to expect even him to take in this early in the day. “You were … I'm sorry, what? Where?”
“At dinner. Last night. With you. May I come in?”
“Um.” For maybe only the second time in his life-third, max-David finds himself without a single thing to say, relevant or otherwise. Which is probably-maybe-possibly why his reaction to the woman's question, contrary to all logic, is to back his ass up into his own hotel room and let her into it.
He even holds the door open for her.
He finds himself desperately wishing he'd drunk a couple of pots of coffee about half an hour ago-in his sleep, granted, but still-because that's the only thing he can think of that might have given him a hope in hell of figuring out what's happening here. As it is, his brain's in a fuck-or-fight race with the rest of him, and he'd lay odds the pugilist side is going to lose by a mile. Which means he's about ten seconds from screwing a total stranger who claims to be a doctor and looks like the Naughty Professor.
… and then something shifts inside his head-something compounded of what he sees, the woman's wildly curly hair against the soft-looking shirt, and a sense memory he didn't know he had of the way that hair felt, feels, would feel against the oversensitive pads of his fingers-and he's suddenly, simultaneously, awake and embarrassed and hard as a rock.
“Shit.”
The woman's put down a bag David hadn't registered until now, stroking the soft-looking leather with her tapered fingers, but her eyes remain fixed on him. He remembers those eyes. He remembers those fingers, damn it-sliding over his thigh under the stupid floor-length cocktail-table cloth (God, fingernails, fingernails)-just before the rest of her slid right the fuck under the actual table, like something out of a triple-X except with less plot and bonus graduate degrees. He remembers, Christ Jesus, that mouth, red and shiny wet (Chardonnay? Black Russian? fucking gin and tonic?). He'd like to say he remembers what they talked about, washed up against one another at the damn opening-night drinks-and-snacks blah-blah-blah reception. But he'd be lying, because he has no fucking idea what they talked about, what either one of them said (damn good thing he wasn't supposed to be interviewing her, eh?). What he remembers about that mouth … fuck, that mouth: hot and wet and everywhere it shouldn't have been, her purse on the seat next to him like she'd just gone back to the bar for a refill and the rough silks of her hair and her shirt against the insides of his thighs, her fingers stroking back along his balls, the tip of one-shorter-nailed than the rest, how did she know to do that?-thrust up into him just as his cock slid deep, deep into her throat …
He's pretty sure he fooled the waiter, snatching the slick plastic menu from the man in a hand that shook only a little and asking for “just a minute, yeah, come back in a bit, we'll be ready then.”
On reflection, he doubts he fooled Patricia DaVinci at all.
“I … yeah, okay. I remember you now, I do. Jesus, yeah. You were-that was great, honestly. Kind of unexpected and batshit crazy, but great. I'm sorry, all right? About not remembering you before. It's fucking early, you know, and last night I was-”
“Drinking. Rather a lot, I believe. I'm familiar with the phenomenon.” DaVinci's tone is acerbic, but her smile has widened. There's a story or three there, David would bet on it. But he wouldn't bet much: now that his brain's caught up to his cock, he's pretty sure he'd rather fuck her than listen to her-at least at the moment-and it's pleasantly obvious she feels the same way.
“But I wasn't. Drinking,” she adds when David frowns at her, puzzled. Huh. Soda water, then. “Just as well one of us was sober at the time. Otherwise, this could have been somewhat embarrassing.”
Could have been, eh? David thinks. Having resolved the fuck-or-fight problem in favor of the former, however, he keeps that retort to himself
No sense queering the pitch.
“Now,” DaVinci goes on. “To the best of my recollection-and I have an excellent memory-due to your … limitations after our encounter last night, we agreed at that time on a quick morning assignation today before the seminars start.” She checks her watch-gold, thin, classy, predictable-and then unclasps it, laying it on the bedside table and beginning to unbutton her shirt. “I estimate we have approximately half an hour, factoring in time to shower afterwards. I see you'll have no problem … rising to the occasion.” She runs her eyes over David's body tip to toe, smiling slightly when his cock twitches strongly under her gaze, then looks back at his face as she flicks open the front clasp of her bra. “Unless you want me to stop?” She lifts her hands abruptly away from the fastening on her skirt, eyes bright, erect nipples on small sweet breasts framed in the loosened white lace and cotton. “I can, you know. Disappointing, but not hard-for me, at least. You need only say the word.”
David can feel his pulse in his cock. Can see it, even. He figures that's his answer-and a good thing, too, since between being hard enough to pound nails at this point and decaffeinated enough to forfeit his Mad Scientisttm card, he's pretty much bypassed the verbal stage of evolution and moved directly into monosyllabic mode. He reaches out and cups her breasts together in his hands, flicking the nipples with his thumbs, and then bends his head to suck one into his mouth.
“Mm. Ex. Excellent,” Patricia DaVinci says, voice still nearly under control. David feels the shift in her muscles as one hand comes up to press his head against her, the other going unerringly back to the waistband of her skirt.
It's going to be an interesting conference.
2002-Danny
Danny always liked to watch.
It started when him and Mick were kids, when they lived next door to the Delahuntys the summer before Danny entered grade 9. Jeanine Delahunty had a second-floor bedroom with the window right across from the room they shared, and she also had a thing for fresh air and open windows. (Or a thing for being watched, which Danny never thought of back then but has gotten pretty sure about since.) Almost every night that summer, she'd come up to her room about 9 in the evening, pull back the curtains, and then just start taking off her clothes. White shirt, uniform skirt, bras more lace and straps than anything else, tiny panties like nothing he'd ever seen before. And under it all that smooth-looking skin, pale smudges of hair on her pussy and under her arms, nipples a red so dark it looked black in the late evening light. She'd stand there, framed in the window, running her hands over her own body as if she was reminding herself what it felt like, an almost invisible smile curving her lips into a knowing smirk. Just wondering what she was thinking about-what she knew-made Danny hard.
Some nights, though, the hands on her body were a lot bigger than hers and the smile changed to something else. Danny could never see the face of the guy fucking her-he was dark, judging by his hands, and the room behind him stayed unlit-but his fingers were easy to see, pulling at Jeanine's tits or teasing her pussy or digging rhythmically into the pale skin of her hips in time with his thrusts. Being fucked by this guy, whoever he was, made Jeanine's face look a lot different from her usual untouchable cool-open and uncertain and a little out of control. Other than realizing that watching on the nights the guy was there made him harder than when Jeanine was alone, Danny couldn't put a name to how that difference made him feel.
By the end of the summer, though, he knew he wanted to see that look on other people. And to make someone look like that himself, maybe, some day.
Turned out becoming a cop gave him lots of chances for that first one. Observing from the showers as a truly amazing number of his fellow students fucked and sucked one another up against the academy lockers, catching his training officer blowing the bartender in the alley behind the local police bar, taking his turn in Vice and waiting for the johns to finish before he stepped out of the darkness flashing his badge and dangling his handcuffs … one way or another, Danny got to watch a good many different kinds of nakedness in those first years, emotional and physical and otherwise.
Going into undercover work changed the players-some of them, anyway-and when charming the bad guys into bed proved to be one of Danny's marketable skills he wound up being the watched one as often as the watcher. But he didn't mind that-the opposite, actually-and being flexible that way benefited him, on the job and otherwise.
And he always watched their faces, the people he fucked. To remind himself what he was there for, and so he'd know them later when he had to, and to remember.
And to see what he could make them feel.
A lot of faces, over time. A lot of different chances to work someone up to that point beyond control, that point where they had that look Jeanine had had on a few nights that summer way back when. Where they couldn't help but show themselves to him completely.
No complaints from anyone who mattered. Lots of compliments, some from surprising sources.
But David's the first and only person Danny's ever seen break open at his hands to that point beyond control.
Not the first time they met, which Danny knows David doesn't remember. He's since told Danny that was his first conference after he got his grad degree, the first time he presented a paper he'd written on his own, stressing him out way past normal and making him pretty much blind to anyone except the lab directors who'd refused to hire him before he published and the post-doc he was screwing at the time. Danny doesn't think David would have noticed him at that one anyway-no one registers security guards as actual people, it's why the job's a good watching-brief cover-and after all, helping a hotel guest pick up the papers they scattered all over the lobby when they ran into another egghead attendee maybe doesn't count as an actual meeting. Even if the security guard had been staring at the guest off and on since the conference started, whiling away the ungodly boring hours on duty by spending a lot of time imagining all the things he could do to the guy behind locked doors if he didn't already have a waitress in his bed as part of the job.
The second time they met, after Danny tracked David down at that high-profile Toronto lab, he fucked the living daylights out of him. More than once, actually-all those locked-door fantasies and then some. Making up for lost time, maybe. That one David does remember, which means it's been a good thing to distract him with when he's asked one too many (like any) nosy questions over the years about who and why. Could be Danny got to him that deep that time and didn't realize it, completely focused like he was on his own body, his own pleasure, after six months on a Vice gig undercover as a Catholic priest with a reassuring lack of sexual interest in anyone of any age or gender. He doesn't know. What he does know is that they didn't leave the hotel room for three days, and that the next time he showed up in David's life David punched him in the arm, harder than Danny'd thought anyone without training could hit, and told him he'd walked funny for a week last time and gotten shit from his labmates for another month after that.
So maybe it was the third time, or the seventh, or two years ago, or last January, that Danny opened his eyes and looked at David's face beneath his-mouth open, eyes closed, breath coming hot and fast against Danny's chest-and realized for the first time that he could remember every line of that face (including the new ones David seemed to have each time they reconnected) and that not a single thing in it was hidden from him.
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter when it was. What matters is that it's stayed that way. Outside the rooms they rent, Danny's pretty sure David lives up to the initial impression he makes: genius-level brain, Olympic-level sarcastic shithead, buy him a drink and let him talk but fuck him at your own risk. Inside those rooms, David is … Danny doesn't know, he doesn't know who David is when he's with Danny, but he does know David's different with him. Less bite. More silence. Trust Danny never intended to earn.
Also, and this scares the shit out of him, it's snuck up on Danny, this reaction David has to him-has had to him pretty much every time they've seen each other over the last couple of years, now that Danny bothers to use the brain God gave him and actually fucking think about it-and how much he likes that. Needs it. How much what he does to David now is about David, about making David look that way over and over, about figuring out what it means that David gives that up to him even though David doesn't know he's doing it.
Which that right there Danny doesn't like, that factor of surprise. Not at all. Because working deep cover means you had better not fucking let anything surprise you unless you want the next surprise to be what happens after you die. So he's used to being on guard and in character even when he's balls-deep in someone he might otherwise care about, used to lying in bed like a reflex. Used to coming with one eye on the door.
It's what he does to stay alive.
Cost him Pete, a long time ago. Cost him Kosmo, a lot more recently. Should have cost him David. Would have, if he'd done what he's trained himself to do and stayed shielded, whole, protected. If he'd been careful. Been watching the way he should have been, defensively, without invitation or exposure.
He wonders how far into his broken self David can already see.
2004-Danny
“God. That was. God. You fucking... Get me out of these things. I need my eyes back, dammit. My hands. I need...”
“Danny.”
“... Danny?”
Finally there's a susurration in the silence: denim on skin (that commando thing, Jesus, what is up with that?), then the rasp of Danny's zipper and the whispering rustle of shirt, shirt, coat. Danny's fingers come down, surprisingly lightly, on the rope around David's right wrist, untying the knots as efficiently as he created them hours-minutes?-ago and easing that arm down to lie against the disordered bedclothes. David waits for the rest of his freedom to be restored. Instead, he feels Danny move away from him, towards the table where David tossed the contents of his pockets when they stumbled headlong into this room last night, kissing and manhandling each other like the next thing to happen might be a fistfight rather than a fuck. Sounds like Danny's searching for something. Then what sounds like the snap of David's wallet opening crackles into the silence, and-wait a minute, now.
“Hey,” David says, raising his head from the pillows and craning it in Danny's direction. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Borrowing your slush fund.”
“I-what?” David's never heard Danny sound like this, and he doesn't remember ever wanting to. Not good. So not good, after something so far beyond good, that he's suddenly way more sober than he'd like. He's not used to not knowing what's going on-even with Danny, even after all this intermittent time-and now he can't figure out how to ask. The snap sounds again, loud in the small room; there's the crinkle of paper being shoved into a pocket, and Danny's harsh voice starts up again.
“Okay. Now stay there. Don't start on the rest of the knots until you know for a fact I'm gone. Ten minutes at least. No sooner. And do the blindfold after.”
David hears Danny moving through the room towards the door-thump, swish, sigh. When he gets there, though, he stops. There's a rasp at the bottom of his breathing, like sickness a long way off. “I saw the plane ticket in your case, and I know you can fucking expense the hotel. I've left you enough for a cab.”
Ouch. Nice one. Even for Danny, that's harsh-and a little unexpected. Not because of the sex-they came, they saw, they both came again, nobody's owed jack shit, right?-but because David doesn't remember being enough of an asshole to Danny to merit that kind of cocksucker kissoff.
Not ever, actually. Which is odd.
And maybe Danny agrees. Because, goddammit, the man is fucking hovering in the doorway. David can hear him, smell him, sense that intense unpredictable presence still in his space, not actually fucking gone yet. David's left shoulder's getting sore from his arm being stretched up so long, and now that he's not coming his brains out the knot on the blindfold is boring into his skull even without the hangover's help. Can't Danny just fucking leave already, so David can get on with waiting that goddamn ten minutes?
“I'm ...” Danny sounds like he's the one going anoxic this time. “David, I'm sor-”
“Don't. Do not fucking say that. I don't want to hear that come out of your goddamned mouth.”
Anger's always made David restless, made him need to fuck it out or walk it out or drive like he might run the car into a bridge the next second. To physically shake it off. Absent those options, turns out, anger tenses up his joints like he's a longbow. The handy things you learn from being tied up by a deep-cover cop. Bondage 101: Self-Knowledge Through Sex.
Fuck.
“Just.” Breathing now. Breathing and counting and keeping it together, keeping his voice hard so it won't start to shake him apart. “Be straight with me, for once in your goddamned life.”
There's a sound like the aftermath of a punch to the gut from over by the door, and David winces-he knows that's unfair, knows Danny's done his paltry best in the name of fucking honesty-but he won't give Danny the apology he wouldn't take himself. He forges on, relentless, like walking over coals. “You're gone, aren't you. Completely. You didn't borrow dick, and I won't get dick back. No more passing through town on a just-in-case; no more chance meetings that fucking well aren't. This is it, yeah? For good this time.”
“Probably,” Danny says. God, it's hot in here. Hard to fucking breathe. Fucking lousy hotel ventilation systems, Jesus. “Yeah. It is.”
Right. Okay.
Clearly, whatever comes next, David's beyond sure he doesn't want to hear it. Danny being Danny and this being David's life, he gets to hear it anyway. “I can't, can't… I. God. It's too fucking dangerous for me, David. This. Thing. With you. Whatever we've been doing here.”
It's called fucking, asshole, David thinks-what, they didn't teach you that at Undercover School?-and it's not actually dangerous if you glove up and pull out, you prick. But for once in his life he bites back the bullshit and tries to listen to the sound of something good breaking away from him.
“This- You have to understand, David, you have to realize… This fucking job, it only works if you can carry everything you need, everything you give a fuck about in one front pocket and walk away from anything else. Anything, David. Ever. You hear me?”
“Ever? What, forever and ever, like a fucking fairy tale? I call bullshit, Danny.” Loss and desperation shiver through David suddenly, pooling heavy and cold in his belly. There's nothing he can say-nothing that will help-but he never did know when to shut the fuck up and now doesn't seem like the time to learn. “It doesn't have to be- It's not just me, you asshole. Maybe it's not me at all. But you can't have no one- That can't be all you have, be the only way to do it. It's not fucking human.”
Silence from the doorway. David's chest hurts. Is he shouting? Probably. “You have people, man. A, what, a squad, a tribe, a family. I know you do.”
“... Not any more.”
The air in the room shifts suddenly, David's skin tightening in the errant draft and the hair on his arms springing erect. And then Danny's mouth is on his, wet and insistent, one rough hand splayed out desperately over his chest and the fingers of the other pushing into his hair, turning his head to just where Danny needs it. David opens to Danny without volition, instinct instantly trumping anger. All of a sudden, air seems extraneous: what matters is the choked-off sounds Danny's making, the curve of his rough-shorn head under the palm of David's free hand, the sharp flick of pain inside pleasure as he twists David's nipple hard. David's hips arch helplessly off the bed at that, his cock twitching in the still-moving air and a groan building in his throat.
And then Danny's gone, back at the door, and the only breathing David can hear now is his own loud panting, each gasp threaded with a telltale little whine.
“Not any more,” Danny says, in that voice David never wanted to hear again. A voice that belongs to someone else. “Ten minutes, David. No sooner. Do it.”
David waits five from the time the door closes, measuring the time deliberately and mathematically by the rhythms of his slowing breath.
But he keeps the blindfold on for another ten, just in case.
*****FIN*****
Title: Recombinant
Fandoms: ReGenesis crossover with DaVinci's Inquest
Rating: NC-17
Length: @5800 words
Notes: David Sandström/Danny Leary, David Sandström/Sunny Ramen, David Sandström/Patricia DaVinci. Takes place over the years from 1996 to 2004, meaning it starts before DaVinci's Inquest and ends just prior to the beginning of ReGenesis.
Warnings: rampant bisexuality, bondage (with a very, very tiny tendril of paraphilia), angst.
Author: qe2
Recombinant
1996-Danny
The second time Danny Leary fucks David Sandström, he doesn't even take his fucking jeans off first.
David's been on the other end of that one more than once. Especially at university, when there never seemed to be enough time to either fuck or experiment half as much as he wanted to do both, making screwing science geeks a doubly efficient distraction and half-clothed supply-closet sex the order of every goddamned day. Back then, David's whole fucking wardrobe was button-flies and flannel, plus hiking boots and whatever huge puffy coat his mum'd forced on him for the cold days before he came back to school. The jeans were easy to unfasten, the boots were pure Sisyphean hell to get off and back on, and the whole pseudo-daring fucking-in-the-lab phenomenon made an amazing number of girls-and teachers-hot enough fast enough that nobody gave a shit about getting it on half-dressed.
Not at the time, anyway. Maybe afterwards they noticed things, back in their boyfriends' dorm rooms or their husbands' beds: not just beard burn, not just their mouths tasting like someone else, but the mark of another man's clothing on intimate bits of their skin, abraded and tender and reminding them minute to minute.
David never asked. Never even thought to. Probably wouldn't have asked even if he had thought to.
Now he knows.
Danny's hands tighten on either side of David's head, thumbs almost meeting where they lie, rough and warm, under David's chin. David doesn't remember having had a thing for paraphilia before tonight, that INXS guy last year notwithstanding-hell, he's not sure he'd have one now if it weren't for the fact that he's being fucked to within an inch of his life-but the imminent threat of losing what breath he has left given the bent-double position he's in is sure hell doing something for him. One of Danny's long, blunt fingers moves slick over the sweat on David's face-Jesus, he's hot, this is hot, Christ, who knew?-and slides between his lips. David sucks on it blindly, tasting smoke and alcohol and dirty salt and groaning every time Danny bottoms out, and doesn't think about what else he might want in his mouth, later, maybe, yeah, yeah, yeah ...
After longer than David can remember ever being hard without coming, Danny shifts his hands to the bed beside David's head. The move lets David unfold his legs a bit where they're spread out over Danny's shoulders. In theory, it also gives him access to his own cock, but when he reaches for it Danny bats his hand away and pins it to the bed. David grins at Danny open-mouthed and reaches down with his other hand, like a dare. Danny growls-growls, fuck, like they're dogs and David's beta-and captures that one as well. Then he changes his angle in David's ass, pulls out slower than David would have thought possible at this point, and slams into him again.
Three or four strokes later, David's coming all over himself and shouting loud enough to wake the actual frozen dead. Danny licks David's chin-there's come everywhere, Jesus-and puts his teeth into David's throat, just on the good side of too hard. His tongue flickers out against the unprotected skin just under David's jaw. David shudders, tightening down on Danny's cock involuntarily, and then it's Danny who's coming as he shoves into David one final time, head flung back and eyes closed and teeth in his lip hard enough to draw blood, as though he had a fucking prayer of holding back the groan that tears out of him there at the bitter end.
The third time Danny fucks David, it's better.
1998-Sunny
Dr DaVinci-Patricia, Patricia, first names are appropriate now-says that after a while, with a bit more experience, one simply doesn’t notice the smells.
Despite herself, Sunny remains skeptical.
It sounds good, certainly: the reassurance of a respected superior turned recalcitrant colleague, designed to patronize and to comfort in equal measure. And Sunny would like to believe it,
despite the evidence with which her scrubs present her at the end of a blood-stained, odorous day. Pathology, after all, is the field to which she's committed her life-at length, after effort, and against the will of a remarkable number of members of her family, not least her parents.
She does not intend to let its scents defeat her.
So. Other smells have become important, then-have become necessary, deliberate choices. Candles-nothing sweet, nothing chemical, evergreen and citrus and the spices of the food she hasn't had time to make from scratch since the second week of her graduate program. Cedar blocks for her sweaters. Different kinds of tea, mostly herbal; different kinds of plants. No flowers; there's too much death in temporary beauty. Specific types of soap and shampoo. All of it discovered through trial and frequent error.
Sunny wonders which way the current experiment will go.
There's so much to evaluate, a process made considerably more complicated by the distraction her partner presents. The smells that drew her initially: mild washroom soap on the hands holding an American quarter in front of her eyes where she stood searching through her resolutely Canadian change at the conference hotel's bank of public telephones; the aggressive tang of that same aftershave some of the younger Homicide detectives favor; an unfamiliar animal scent, warm and sharp and insistent. Later, red wine-a “good nose”, he'd said, and Sunny wonders how he knew-and arugula and the reek of the cheese plate's bluest component. And after that, a confusion of smells, hers overlaid with his overlaid with theirs, heat and need alchemizing even Sunny's own familiar scent into something unexpectedly different. An uncontrolled test …
A tiny sharp pain pulls Sunny out of her thoughts and back into the mildly enjoyable discomfort of their tangle on the fold-out bed (why are US hotels so often furnished this way?). They've stopped moving-or rather, Dr Sandström has. He's staring at her from about four inches away, hand poised to … did he just flick her forehead, as though she's a recalcitrant child? His hand smells like Sunny herself, from before. Sunny's nose wrinkles inadvertently, and Dr Sandström's hand opens to cup the side of her face.
“Sorry.” He's misunderstood her reaction. Sunny opens her mouth to respond, but Dr Sandström doesn't give her the chance. “Didn't hurt you.” It's not a question. Sunny suspects Dr Sandström doesn't question much. “But you're thinking about it, Dr Ramen-Sunny, Sunny. I'm pretty sure I told you before to quit that shit. This-” he runs the same hand down Sunny's side, careless and warm, and pulls gently on her knee until she brings it back up by his hip-“tends to work better if you turn your fucking scientist's brain off for a while and just go with it, eh?”
Sunny smiles at him. “I know, Dr Sandström. I'm sorry. I just- hnnnn.”
He's shifted his hips against her where they're joined, thrusting minutely inside her and putting renewed pressure on her clitoris. Distracting. She can feel how wet she is against him, humid and almost uncomfortable. It's … interesting. Noteworthy.
“Stop that. The 'sorries' and the thinking both. No need for either right now.” His tone's sharpened just a little, and Sunny's surprised to find herself lifting up into him in response. Mild rebuke as aphrodisiac? Very well, then. She wraps her legs around his hips, crossing her ankles against his back, and lifts up again.
“Good girl.” His wry grin robs the statement of any sting. “Flexible. I like that. Now call me David, for Christ's sake, and let's do this thing.” He shifts his hands back to their former spots by her shoulders-he has strong arms for a scientist, Sunny thinks-and begins to move in and out of her.
This new position they've wound themselves into opens a warm, scented space between their bodies, smelling of sweat and exercise and their intertwined personal musks. Smelling of sex. Sunny looks down her own body, dark against the sheets and where she's twined her limbs around Dr Sandström's-David's, yes-and watches for a moment, fascinated, as the pace of his thrusts into her increases. It's mesmerizing, this connection between what she feels and how that feeling's engendered, and for a moment she almost loses herself in the experience.
When she looks back up at Dr-David's face, however, she finds herself a little disconcerted. His eyes are unfocused, certainly, but she expected that; she can even tell over, in the apparently ever-discrete part of her mind, the physiological reasons for that particular reaction. And it's clear that he's concentrating on what he's doing here. He’s … well, he's paying attention, which she appreciates, particularly after her few experiences with fellow students.
But suddenly Sunny doesn’t think he's really seeing her at all.
2000-Patricia
Random banging on his bedroom door when any halfway sane person would be asleep makes David irritable, and irritability makes him even ruder than usual. So when the assault rifle he's firing from a third-floor crack-house window in the middle of a gangland turf war (and what in the fuck was that dream about, anyway?) turns out to be someone knocking briskly outside his hotel room at 6:30 fucking a.m., he doesn't feel particularly compelled to grab for a robe, or even his boxers, before he answers the door.
Fortunately for him, the woman on the other side of said door knows how to take advantage of a situation like nobody's business.
“Good morning,” she says, reaching out and running the back of a finger proprietarily down the length of his cock.
David knocks her hand away reflexively, covering himself with his other hand. “What the fuck-Jesus, lady, who in the hell are you and what do you think you're doing?”
“Patricia DaVinci. Doctor DaVinci, actually. And there's no need to be shy, Dr Sandström.” She gestures at the hand he has cupped protectively over his cock, the side of her mouth quirking upwards. “After all, I've seen what you have on offer. Up close and rather personal, actually. I wouldn't be here otherwise.”
“I beg your pardon.” Great, David thinks: as if being groped by a stranger isn't bad enough, now he's channelling his grandmother. He tries again, mustering all the irascible smartassery at his disposal and hoping the woman will turn out to be easily offendable. “Listen, lady-”
“Dr DaVinci,” the woman says helpfully, raising one eyebrow at him in that you-are-making-progress-grasshoppah way he's always found equal parts irritating and arousing. David shakes his head hard and waves her off, trying his best to ignore the fact that he's already a lot harder than his typical morning woody would explain. He is not going to do this. He is not. He has standards, damn it.
Somewhere.
“Lady. Doctor DaVinci, if you say so. You've got nice tits and good hair, you're reasonably attractive-as far as I can tell at way too early in the fucking morning, although you might want to check back with me when my eyes can actually focus-and I'm sure you're a great lay when you're on your meds. And if I was in the market for a hotel-hallway handjob from a total stranger, I would absolutely seek out your services, no question. As it happens, however, what I'm in the market for right now is for you to go far, far away from my soon-to-be-locked-again door, so that I can go back to sleep and you can reacquaint yourself with the good old custom of shaking hands when you meet a new person and saving the public sex for the second date. Or at least taking them out to dinner first, which is my personal prefer-”
“Yes, I know,” the woman says. “I was there.”
Say what?
David feels his mouth dropping open in astonishment, something he'd thought only happened in those fucking stupid romance novels Lilith's mother reads. Way to process, there, Sandström-but come on, this is a little much to expect even him to take in this early in the day. “You were … I'm sorry, what? Where?”
“At dinner. Last night. With you. May I come in?”
“Um.” For maybe only the second time in his life-third, max-David finds himself without a single thing to say, relevant or otherwise. Which is probably-maybe-possibly why his reaction to the woman's question, contrary to all logic, is to back his ass up into his own hotel room and let her into it.
He even holds the door open for her.
He finds himself desperately wishing he'd drunk a couple of pots of coffee about half an hour ago-in his sleep, granted, but still-because that's the only thing he can think of that might have given him a hope in hell of figuring out what's happening here. As it is, his brain's in a fuck-or-fight race with the rest of him, and he'd lay odds the pugilist side is going to lose by a mile. Which means he's about ten seconds from screwing a total stranger who claims to be a doctor and looks like the Naughty Professor.
… and then something shifts inside his head-something compounded of what he sees, the woman's wildly curly hair against the soft-looking shirt, and a sense memory he didn't know he had of the way that hair felt, feels, would feel against the oversensitive pads of his fingers-and he's suddenly, simultaneously, awake and embarrassed and hard as a rock.
“Shit.”
The woman's put down a bag David hadn't registered until now, stroking the soft-looking leather with her tapered fingers, but her eyes remain fixed on him. He remembers those eyes. He remembers those fingers, damn it-sliding over his thigh under the stupid floor-length cocktail-table cloth (God, fingernails, fingernails)-just before the rest of her slid right the fuck under the actual table, like something out of a triple-X except with less plot and bonus graduate degrees. He remembers, Christ Jesus, that mouth, red and shiny wet (Chardonnay? Black Russian? fucking gin and tonic?). He'd like to say he remembers what they talked about, washed up against one another at the damn opening-night drinks-and-snacks blah-blah-blah reception. But he'd be lying, because he has no fucking idea what they talked about, what either one of them said (damn good thing he wasn't supposed to be interviewing her, eh?). What he remembers about that mouth … fuck, that mouth: hot and wet and everywhere it shouldn't have been, her purse on the seat next to him like she'd just gone back to the bar for a refill and the rough silks of her hair and her shirt against the insides of his thighs, her fingers stroking back along his balls, the tip of one-shorter-nailed than the rest, how did she know to do that?-thrust up into him just as his cock slid deep, deep into her throat …
He's pretty sure he fooled the waiter, snatching the slick plastic menu from the man in a hand that shook only a little and asking for “just a minute, yeah, come back in a bit, we'll be ready then.”
On reflection, he doubts he fooled Patricia DaVinci at all.
“I … yeah, okay. I remember you now, I do. Jesus, yeah. You were-that was great, honestly. Kind of unexpected and batshit crazy, but great. I'm sorry, all right? About not remembering you before. It's fucking early, you know, and last night I was-”
“Drinking. Rather a lot, I believe. I'm familiar with the phenomenon.” DaVinci's tone is acerbic, but her smile has widened. There's a story or three there, David would bet on it. But he wouldn't bet much: now that his brain's caught up to his cock, he's pretty sure he'd rather fuck her than listen to her-at least at the moment-and it's pleasantly obvious she feels the same way.
“But I wasn't. Drinking,” she adds when David frowns at her, puzzled. Huh. Soda water, then. “Just as well one of us was sober at the time. Otherwise, this could have been somewhat embarrassing.”
Could have been, eh? David thinks. Having resolved the fuck-or-fight problem in favor of the former, however, he keeps that retort to himself
No sense queering the pitch.
“Now,” DaVinci goes on. “To the best of my recollection-and I have an excellent memory-due to your … limitations after our encounter last night, we agreed at that time on a quick morning assignation today before the seminars start.” She checks her watch-gold, thin, classy, predictable-and then unclasps it, laying it on the bedside table and beginning to unbutton her shirt. “I estimate we have approximately half an hour, factoring in time to shower afterwards. I see you'll have no problem … rising to the occasion.” She runs her eyes over David's body tip to toe, smiling slightly when his cock twitches strongly under her gaze, then looks back at his face as she flicks open the front clasp of her bra. “Unless you want me to stop?” She lifts her hands abruptly away from the fastening on her skirt, eyes bright, erect nipples on small sweet breasts framed in the loosened white lace and cotton. “I can, you know. Disappointing, but not hard-for me, at least. You need only say the word.”
David can feel his pulse in his cock. Can see it, even. He figures that's his answer-and a good thing, too, since between being hard enough to pound nails at this point and decaffeinated enough to forfeit his Mad Scientisttm card, he's pretty much bypassed the verbal stage of evolution and moved directly into monosyllabic mode. He reaches out and cups her breasts together in his hands, flicking the nipples with his thumbs, and then bends his head to suck one into his mouth.
“Mm. Ex. Excellent,” Patricia DaVinci says, voice still nearly under control. David feels the shift in her muscles as one hand comes up to press his head against her, the other going unerringly back to the waistband of her skirt.
It's going to be an interesting conference.
2002-Danny
Danny always liked to watch.
It started when him and Mick were kids, when they lived next door to the Delahuntys the summer before Danny entered grade 9. Jeanine Delahunty had a second-floor bedroom with the window right across from the room they shared, and she also had a thing for fresh air and open windows. (Or a thing for being watched, which Danny never thought of back then but has gotten pretty sure about since.) Almost every night that summer, she'd come up to her room about 9 in the evening, pull back the curtains, and then just start taking off her clothes. White shirt, uniform skirt, bras more lace and straps than anything else, tiny panties like nothing he'd ever seen before. And under it all that smooth-looking skin, pale smudges of hair on her pussy and under her arms, nipples a red so dark it looked black in the late evening light. She'd stand there, framed in the window, running her hands over her own body as if she was reminding herself what it felt like, an almost invisible smile curving her lips into a knowing smirk. Just wondering what she was thinking about-what she knew-made Danny hard.
Some nights, though, the hands on her body were a lot bigger than hers and the smile changed to something else. Danny could never see the face of the guy fucking her-he was dark, judging by his hands, and the room behind him stayed unlit-but his fingers were easy to see, pulling at Jeanine's tits or teasing her pussy or digging rhythmically into the pale skin of her hips in time with his thrusts. Being fucked by this guy, whoever he was, made Jeanine's face look a lot different from her usual untouchable cool-open and uncertain and a little out of control. Other than realizing that watching on the nights the guy was there made him harder than when Jeanine was alone, Danny couldn't put a name to how that difference made him feel.
By the end of the summer, though, he knew he wanted to see that look on other people. And to make someone look like that himself, maybe, some day.
Turned out becoming a cop gave him lots of chances for that first one. Observing from the showers as a truly amazing number of his fellow students fucked and sucked one another up against the academy lockers, catching his training officer blowing the bartender in the alley behind the local police bar, taking his turn in Vice and waiting for the johns to finish before he stepped out of the darkness flashing his badge and dangling his handcuffs … one way or another, Danny got to watch a good many different kinds of nakedness in those first years, emotional and physical and otherwise.
Going into undercover work changed the players-some of them, anyway-and when charming the bad guys into bed proved to be one of Danny's marketable skills he wound up being the watched one as often as the watcher. But he didn't mind that-the opposite, actually-and being flexible that way benefited him, on the job and otherwise.
And he always watched their faces, the people he fucked. To remind himself what he was there for, and so he'd know them later when he had to, and to remember.
And to see what he could make them feel.
A lot of faces, over time. A lot of different chances to work someone up to that point beyond control, that point where they had that look Jeanine had had on a few nights that summer way back when. Where they couldn't help but show themselves to him completely.
No complaints from anyone who mattered. Lots of compliments, some from surprising sources.
But David's the first and only person Danny's ever seen break open at his hands to that point beyond control.
Not the first time they met, which Danny knows David doesn't remember. He's since told Danny that was his first conference after he got his grad degree, the first time he presented a paper he'd written on his own, stressing him out way past normal and making him pretty much blind to anyone except the lab directors who'd refused to hire him before he published and the post-doc he was screwing at the time. Danny doesn't think David would have noticed him at that one anyway-no one registers security guards as actual people, it's why the job's a good watching-brief cover-and after all, helping a hotel guest pick up the papers they scattered all over the lobby when they ran into another egghead attendee maybe doesn't count as an actual meeting. Even if the security guard had been staring at the guest off and on since the conference started, whiling away the ungodly boring hours on duty by spending a lot of time imagining all the things he could do to the guy behind locked doors if he didn't already have a waitress in his bed as part of the job.
The second time they met, after Danny tracked David down at that high-profile Toronto lab, he fucked the living daylights out of him. More than once, actually-all those locked-door fantasies and then some. Making up for lost time, maybe. That one David does remember, which means it's been a good thing to distract him with when he's asked one too many (like any) nosy questions over the years about who and why. Could be Danny got to him that deep that time and didn't realize it, completely focused like he was on his own body, his own pleasure, after six months on a Vice gig undercover as a Catholic priest with a reassuring lack of sexual interest in anyone of any age or gender. He doesn't know. What he does know is that they didn't leave the hotel room for three days, and that the next time he showed up in David's life David punched him in the arm, harder than Danny'd thought anyone without training could hit, and told him he'd walked funny for a week last time and gotten shit from his labmates for another month after that.
So maybe it was the third time, or the seventh, or two years ago, or last January, that Danny opened his eyes and looked at David's face beneath his-mouth open, eyes closed, breath coming hot and fast against Danny's chest-and realized for the first time that he could remember every line of that face (including the new ones David seemed to have each time they reconnected) and that not a single thing in it was hidden from him.
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter when it was. What matters is that it's stayed that way. Outside the rooms they rent, Danny's pretty sure David lives up to the initial impression he makes: genius-level brain, Olympic-level sarcastic shithead, buy him a drink and let him talk but fuck him at your own risk. Inside those rooms, David is … Danny doesn't know, he doesn't know who David is when he's with Danny, but he does know David's different with him. Less bite. More silence. Trust Danny never intended to earn.
Also, and this scares the shit out of him, it's snuck up on Danny, this reaction David has to him-has had to him pretty much every time they've seen each other over the last couple of years, now that Danny bothers to use the brain God gave him and actually fucking think about it-and how much he likes that. Needs it. How much what he does to David now is about David, about making David look that way over and over, about figuring out what it means that David gives that up to him even though David doesn't know he's doing it.
Which that right there Danny doesn't like, that factor of surprise. Not at all. Because working deep cover means you had better not fucking let anything surprise you unless you want the next surprise to be what happens after you die. So he's used to being on guard and in character even when he's balls-deep in someone he might otherwise care about, used to lying in bed like a reflex. Used to coming with one eye on the door.
It's what he does to stay alive.
Cost him Pete, a long time ago. Cost him Kosmo, a lot more recently. Should have cost him David. Would have, if he'd done what he's trained himself to do and stayed shielded, whole, protected. If he'd been careful. Been watching the way he should have been, defensively, without invitation or exposure.
He wonders how far into his broken self David can already see.
2004-Danny
“God. That was. God. You fucking... Get me out of these things. I need my eyes back, dammit. My hands. I need...”
“Danny.”
“... Danny?”
Finally there's a susurration in the silence: denim on skin (that commando thing, Jesus, what is up with that?), then the rasp of Danny's zipper and the whispering rustle of shirt, shirt, coat. Danny's fingers come down, surprisingly lightly, on the rope around David's right wrist, untying the knots as efficiently as he created them hours-minutes?-ago and easing that arm down to lie against the disordered bedclothes. David waits for the rest of his freedom to be restored. Instead, he feels Danny move away from him, towards the table where David tossed the contents of his pockets when they stumbled headlong into this room last night, kissing and manhandling each other like the next thing to happen might be a fistfight rather than a fuck. Sounds like Danny's searching for something. Then what sounds like the snap of David's wallet opening crackles into the silence, and-wait a minute, now.
“Hey,” David says, raising his head from the pillows and craning it in Danny's direction. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Borrowing your slush fund.”
“I-what?” David's never heard Danny sound like this, and he doesn't remember ever wanting to. Not good. So not good, after something so far beyond good, that he's suddenly way more sober than he'd like. He's not used to not knowing what's going on-even with Danny, even after all this intermittent time-and now he can't figure out how to ask. The snap sounds again, loud in the small room; there's the crinkle of paper being shoved into a pocket, and Danny's harsh voice starts up again.
“Okay. Now stay there. Don't start on the rest of the knots until you know for a fact I'm gone. Ten minutes at least. No sooner. And do the blindfold after.”
David hears Danny moving through the room towards the door-thump, swish, sigh. When he gets there, though, he stops. There's a rasp at the bottom of his breathing, like sickness a long way off. “I saw the plane ticket in your case, and I know you can fucking expense the hotel. I've left you enough for a cab.”
Ouch. Nice one. Even for Danny, that's harsh-and a little unexpected. Not because of the sex-they came, they saw, they both came again, nobody's owed jack shit, right?-but because David doesn't remember being enough of an asshole to Danny to merit that kind of cocksucker kissoff.
Not ever, actually. Which is odd.
And maybe Danny agrees. Because, goddammit, the man is fucking hovering in the doorway. David can hear him, smell him, sense that intense unpredictable presence still in his space, not actually fucking gone yet. David's left shoulder's getting sore from his arm being stretched up so long, and now that he's not coming his brains out the knot on the blindfold is boring into his skull even without the hangover's help. Can't Danny just fucking leave already, so David can get on with waiting that goddamn ten minutes?
“I'm ...” Danny sounds like he's the one going anoxic this time. “David, I'm sor-”
“Don't. Do not fucking say that. I don't want to hear that come out of your goddamned mouth.”
Anger's always made David restless, made him need to fuck it out or walk it out or drive like he might run the car into a bridge the next second. To physically shake it off. Absent those options, turns out, anger tenses up his joints like he's a longbow. The handy things you learn from being tied up by a deep-cover cop. Bondage 101: Self-Knowledge Through Sex.
Fuck.
“Just.” Breathing now. Breathing and counting and keeping it together, keeping his voice hard so it won't start to shake him apart. “Be straight with me, for once in your goddamned life.”
There's a sound like the aftermath of a punch to the gut from over by the door, and David winces-he knows that's unfair, knows Danny's done his paltry best in the name of fucking honesty-but he won't give Danny the apology he wouldn't take himself. He forges on, relentless, like walking over coals. “You're gone, aren't you. Completely. You didn't borrow dick, and I won't get dick back. No more passing through town on a just-in-case; no more chance meetings that fucking well aren't. This is it, yeah? For good this time.”
“Probably,” Danny says. God, it's hot in here. Hard to fucking breathe. Fucking lousy hotel ventilation systems, Jesus. “Yeah. It is.”
Right. Okay.
Clearly, whatever comes next, David's beyond sure he doesn't want to hear it. Danny being Danny and this being David's life, he gets to hear it anyway. “I can't, can't… I. God. It's too fucking dangerous for me, David. This. Thing. With you. Whatever we've been doing here.”
It's called fucking, asshole, David thinks-what, they didn't teach you that at Undercover School?-and it's not actually dangerous if you glove up and pull out, you prick. But for once in his life he bites back the bullshit and tries to listen to the sound of something good breaking away from him.
“This- You have to understand, David, you have to realize… This fucking job, it only works if you can carry everything you need, everything you give a fuck about in one front pocket and walk away from anything else. Anything, David. Ever. You hear me?”
“Ever? What, forever and ever, like a fucking fairy tale? I call bullshit, Danny.” Loss and desperation shiver through David suddenly, pooling heavy and cold in his belly. There's nothing he can say-nothing that will help-but he never did know when to shut the fuck up and now doesn't seem like the time to learn. “It doesn't have to be- It's not just me, you asshole. Maybe it's not me at all. But you can't have no one- That can't be all you have, be the only way to do it. It's not fucking human.”
Silence from the doorway. David's chest hurts. Is he shouting? Probably. “You have people, man. A, what, a squad, a tribe, a family. I know you do.”
“... Not any more.”
The air in the room shifts suddenly, David's skin tightening in the errant draft and the hair on his arms springing erect. And then Danny's mouth is on his, wet and insistent, one rough hand splayed out desperately over his chest and the fingers of the other pushing into his hair, turning his head to just where Danny needs it. David opens to Danny without volition, instinct instantly trumping anger. All of a sudden, air seems extraneous: what matters is the choked-off sounds Danny's making, the curve of his rough-shorn head under the palm of David's free hand, the sharp flick of pain inside pleasure as he twists David's nipple hard. David's hips arch helplessly off the bed at that, his cock twitching in the still-moving air and a groan building in his throat.
And then Danny's gone, back at the door, and the only breathing David can hear now is his own loud panting, each gasp threaded with a telltale little whine.
“Not any more,” Danny says, in that voice David never wanted to hear again. A voice that belongs to someone else. “Ten minutes, David. No sooner. Do it.”
David waits five from the time the door closes, measuring the time deliberately and mathematically by the rhythms of his slowing breath.
But he keeps the blindfold on for another ten, just in case.
*****FIN*****