Fic: Swing on a Star (Danny/Rusty)
Title: Swing on a Star
Author: luzdeestrellas (luzdeestrellas@livejournal.com)
Summary: Rusty had always been smarter than Danny where it counted.
Rating: adult
Spoilers: Ocean's 11 and 12
Recipient: musesfool
Notes: Thanks to musesfool and mousapelli for running the challenge, and to musesfool especially for the beta. You rock big time.
***
Swing on a Star
“This is your fault,” Rusty says, breathing heavily, fists clenched at his side, and Danny folds his arms across his chest and smiles, that exact smile, corners of his mouth raised only slightly, he knows will drive Rusty crazy.
“How is this my fault?”
“Well, if you hadn’t been stupid enough to break up with Tess, you wouldn’t have been living in my hotel, and people wouldn’t have started talking.”
“People were already talking. Probably all that food you eat while I’m around. Oral fixation.”
“Shut up. I wasn’t done. I’m also not the one who forgot to bring a walkie-talkie.”
“And I’m not the one who turned down a perfectly good vacation in the Caribbean! Twice!”
“Well,” Rusty says. “Well. You’ve just gone so far over the edge I can’t even begin to follow.”
“You’ll follow,” Danny says, leaning in until he can see the flakes of chocolate round Rusty’s mouth, thinking of rockets and stealing a star. “And for the record, I didn’t break up with Tess. She left me, remember?”
“That’s hardly surprising, is it? If I weren’t stuck here right now, I’d leave you, too.”
“Would you?”
“Post modern art could totally be my thing.”
***
She’d gone by the time Danny got home. It was a Tuesday, and Danny felt like it should’ve been raining but it wasn’t. He felt like he should’ve been - something, hurt, sad, rejected, but that was missing, as well. There was a note on the fridge, everything else that was Tess’s gone, and Danny had always hated this house - three stories that made his skin feel too tight, Connecticut skyline that would never be home - and now that his reason for staying had left, he could, too. He didn’t even stop to think about where he’d go.
There was only ever one answer to that question, if it was a question at all.
***
”I was just telling Linus here about your recent difficulties,” Rusty said, as Danny came into his hotel room. “He was very curious to know the reason, and I, being a good friend, didn’t want to share without permission.”
Danny sighed, threw the doughnuts he’d bought at Rusty’s head, and said, “She wants to be an artist.”
Rusty grinned, like he had the five other times he’d made Danny say it. “So she didn’t know you were on a job? Wasn’t even pissed at you?” he asked, just like he had every other time.
“If she was, I didn’t know.”
“Danny Ocean. Left by a woman for no other reason than that his charms couldn’t hold up against art. You must be losing your touch.”
“It’s funny,” Linus said, and Danny wondered why Rusty and Isabel had to finish things on such good terms, until he realised Linus didn’t mean funny funny. “I mean, everyone thought Tess would leave you because, well, you know…” He trailed off and waved a hand between Danny and Rusty, and both of them looked back blankly.
“You know,” he tried again, and when the response didn’t change, “this job looks good, doesn’t it?”
“Linus,” Rusty said, forgotten doughnut growing sticky in his hand, which Danny knew should tell anyone that he meant business, “what don’t we know?”
“Many things. Saul says you’re only sharp while you’ve got things still to learn. There’s no shame in it.”
It wasn’t a bad attempt, Danny thought, and he’d have smiled, if he were three months out of school, instead of a seasoned professional. He and Rusty kept staring at Linus, the chocolate beginning to drip down Rusty’s fingers, and Danny almost did smile, thinking about the mess there would be if Linus didn’t talk soon, and how Rusty would insist on licking every drop of chocolate off, rather than cleaning up like an adult.
“Linus,” Rusty said again, and Danny watched the chocolate drip, hoped maybe it would ruin that green shirt he was wearing, which frankly hurt Danny’s soul just a little bit.
“That you’re, you know,” he waved his hand again, “not exactly clear on the boundaries of friendship.”
There was a moment when Danny didn’t fully understand. He and Rusty had always been unclear about those boundaries - personal space forgotten years ago, long before Tess, lost in a thousand jobs in tiny spaces that meant arms and legs and hands touching, whispered conversations that drew them closer and closer together - and then it hit, round about the time Rusty said, “You mean we’re fucking?”
“I, well, it’s not necessarily how I would put - yeah, that.”
“Danny,” Rusty said, finally remembering the doughnut and beginning to eat, “are we doing that now?”
“If we are, I wasn’t informed. And speaking of informing, who told you we were, Linus?”
Linus shrugged. “I can’t remember. Basher, maybe. Or Reuben. Maybe Livingston. It’s not like it’s a secret, or anything. Everyone says it- even the twins agree you are.”
There was a pause. “I just made that so much worse for myself, didn’t I?” Linus asked, and Rusty nodded. “I’ll just be, um, leaving now.”
“Feel free to tell people we’re not of one flesh yet,” Rusty said to Linus’s rapidly retreating back. “Saving ourselves until the wedding.” Linus made a choking sound and slammed the door a little louder than was strictly necessary.
“How in the world could we not know this?” Danny asked when he was gone. Rusty stretched out on the bed, long legs hanging off the edge, and Danny shoved him over. “I mean, everyone’s saying this?” he flopped back, stretching out beside Rusty. “It’s ridiculous.”
“It is ridiculous,” Rusty agreed, beginning to lick the chocolate from between his fingers. “I’m far too good for you.”
“The way you dress, my friend, it’s lucky you get anyone.”
“My style is unique,” Rusty said, between licks, and Danny only watched in fascination that a grown man really did that sort of thing.
"Your style is an affront to human decency."
Rusty ignored him, and went on licking.
“You know,” Danny said, after a moment’s contemplation of how Rusty’s long fingers looked slipping in and out of his mouth, “it’s doing things like that in front of me that probably gives people the wrong idea.”
Rusty shrugged. “It’s probably you watching me do it that does it. Or it could be me putting you up in my hotel. Kept man, and all.”
“It’s possible you have a point. Still, not to know. We’re slipping, Rus.”
Rusty nodded. “That is upsetting. And to have only found out by accident. I feel my status as knower of things has been impugned.”
“I feel more than that’s been impugned, but the other things I can live with.”
Rusty only grinned and flipped on the TV, and they drank a little and ate a little, and Danny didn’t really mean to fall asleep lying there, but still his eyes grew heavy, and his own room seemed like a million miles away.
“Wonder who started it,” he said, drifting off, and beside him he felt Rusty shrug, warm and comforting in the darkness.
***
“I started it,” Saul said. “Who did you think it was? None of the others have the imagination.”
Rusty spluttered into his drink, and Danny knew better, but asked anyway. “Why? I mean, seriously, why?”
“If a thing does not happen by itself, children, steps must be taken from the outside.”
“Why thank you, Buddha,” Rusty said. “What does that mean?”
Saul put his knife and fork carefully on his plate and folded his hands, looking at them like he used to, when they’d screwed up a job. “You really don’t see it? Not even now?”
They shook their heads.
Saul sighed. “I must still teach you everything. For two weeks,” he said, “until the job is done, I want you to be in a room together and behave like colleagues. Just people doing a job. No finishing of sentences, no stealing food, no touching. No late night drinking, driving, no ganging up on Linus.”
“Will someone else gang up on him?” they both asked in unison, and Saul banged his glass down on the table.
“This is what I’m talking about. None of that, either. Be in the room, and don’t be together. Pretend like you know other people exist.”
“This is really, really stupid. You know that, right?”
“I taught you everything you know, young man. Are you stupid?”
Rusty shook his head mutely.
“Then in two weeks, come back and see me.”
“How are we supposed to do it? I mean, most of this stuff, it’s just-“
“The way you are. Yes, I know. Apparently you boys need to learn. Two weeks. I’ll let the rest know so they can help. And don’t go using this as an excuse to screw the job up. Be professional, if you’ve ever learned how.”
***
Danny’s mom had cried a lot when Danny was a kid. Not so Danny could see, but sometimes he would hear her all the same. He hadn’t understood all that was wrong - he only learned of his father’s other girlfriends years later - but he understood about the official looking envelopes that piled up on the table, understood that money was tighter than normal when she’d say maybe he shouldn’t watch so much TV this week, okay? Which was fine, because he didn’t watch much TV anyway, spent most of his time with Rusty from two doors down, passing on all his twelve year old’s wisdom - how to always win at One-Armed Bandits, how to get snacks out of machines without paying, how to get a look in Elizabeth Sheldon’s room (though Rusty at ten wasn’t quite so interested in that information as Danny thought he should be) - but he’d say okay, anyway, and he’d sometimes leave the money he won from the arcade games in her purse. And still he’d wake up in the night and hear her crying in the room next door.
He was too old to believe in fairy stories, but she’d still make him wish on the stars before he went to bed, and sometimes he’d wish he could bring her one, so she could keep all that magic herself.
He told Rusty that one day, promising to throw him in the river if he ever told anyone, and Rusty hadn’t laughed like Danny thought he might.
“You’d need a rocket, or something,” he’d said seriously, in that way he had when there was a really big problem needing solved, brow furrowed, lower lip between his teeth. “Get you up there.”
Danny had grinned. “I could totally build that. I’ll take physics in school. You wanna come with?”
And Rusty, who didn’t much like the space project he’d done in school, and who got scared when Danny conned them into ball games and took him to the high seats, grinned back. “Sure I will,” he said. “It’ll be awesome.”
They took the train to see one of Saul’s contacts in the two weeks of stupidity, and Linus, making the most of the extra time Danny was being forced to spend with him, requesting stories like a kid at bedtime, finally asked how he’d gotten into stealing things. Danny thought about being twelve, thought about Rusty not laughing, and wondered if maybe he understood what Saul was trying to say.
“I wanted a star,” he said, and Linus only looked bemused. Danny turned to look for Rusty, only to find, for the hundredth time it seemed like, that he wasn’t where he should be. He sat with Basher, farther down the carriage, probably not understanding a word being said to him, and he looked up as Danny looked over, and they grinned, because they both knew what the other was thinking. Please never let me spend this long with either of these people again.
It could’ve been then, or it might have been planning the job, leaning in like he always did to look at blueprints with Rusty, so close that he could feel the familiar rhythm of Rusty’s breathing, only to have Linus clear his throat and Rusty pull away, leaving Danny off balance, feeling like maybe he wasn’t in his own skin at all, because other people weren’t meant to come between them.
Or maybe it was playing cards with everyone else, knowing they could clean them out if they only looked at each other, if Rusty scratched his face like he normally did, if Danny spun his glass in his hand -- Basher has the ace. I don’t have the seven. -- neither of them doing it because neither of them backed down from a challenge, the world somehow all out of whack because of it.
By the time he’d brought the plan to Rusty, and Rusty had picked out seven flaws everyone else had missed, and said, “Maybe if-“
“We go in early-“ Danny had finished, he’d known he thought better when Rusty was around, and that Rusty was maybe more than someone he trusted to make the job go well. It had hung in the air between them, and Danny had almost said it, and Rusty had almost moved forward, but Danny had time to think, to wonder if this would screw them up completely, and he walked away before either could happen.
And then the night in the bar had happened, with the girl. There was always a girl - Tess or Isabel or Julie or that other girl of Rusty’s in Nevada, who had almost been the one, except that Danny had left for a job and Rusty had followed - but this time it was different. Because Danny suspected that maybe he didn’t want there to be a girl anymore, and because he’d been sitting across the room, watching as the girl touched Rusty and flirted with him, bought him drinks and offered him every kind of snack food the bar had to offer, while his own fingers itched to do the same.
“You know the thing about girls like that, Linus?” Danny asked, drinking more scotch. “They want to do things - vacation at Christmas, for example. Everyone knows Christmas is when the biggest jobs come up. Or they want to go in the summer, and everyone knows summer is when you get all those tourists.”
“You and Tess did that?”
Danny shook his head. “Rusty went. Except he didn’t. She wanted to - looked just like that, by the way. Ended up breaking up with her over it.”
Linus was quiet beside him, and Danny shrugged. “Shut up,” he said. “I know.” And maybe he did. Because there had always been girls -- pretty girls with pretty smiles and prettier promises of a different life - and Rusty had smiled and kissed them and made promises of his own, but they’d never lasted, never meant as much as the things he and Danny didn’t say. Probably because Rusty had always been smarter than Danny where it counted, had spent a lifetime waiting for Danny to catch up, to think through the plan and see that Incan matrimonial head masks weren’t the way to go, or that retirement would kill him a little bit every day, and he had always known what Danny knew before Danny worked it out.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. “There are some things you should share.”
He drank his scotch and smiled, watched Rusty and figured he could keep his own secrets, too, at least for a little while. Three days left of Saul’s education, and Danny could wait that long before doing what he should have done years ago - Rusty’s punishment for holding out on him, for trying to make him jealous with a girl he didn’t want.
Which turned out to be stupid, because not talking incessantly to Rusty made Danny forget things, which meant he didn’t have a radio with him the afternoon they went to lay the groundwork for the job, which meant he couldn’t say they were late to the elevator, which meant being stuck there when Basher put the power out.
And if Danny had still had any doubts,, he lost them there, cramped with Rusty in that tiny space, feeling like he hadn’t since before Tess, like the world was his again, like he could steal the stars if he wanted.
***
“If you leave,” Danny says, backing Rusty against the wall, placing his hands on either side of his face, “you know people are gonna start saying I’m sleeping with Linus.”
Rusty shrugs, doesn’t bother trying to move away. “You have spent a lot of time together this week.”
“Tell me about it,” Danny says. Rusty smiles, and Danny doesn’t know if they can get closer, but he wants to, wants to wipe out years of stupidity with skin against skin, wants to make Rusty see that all his clever words and big ideas have only ever been about this, even when he didn’t know. “Rus,” he says, and then he kisses Rusty, hungry and deep and desperate, a hundred things he could never say, never need to say, spilling from his mouth with every slide of his tongue against Rusty’s, every hitching moan he makes when Rusty’s hands skate down his chest, opening buttons as they go.
“This would be a very unfortunate time for the power to come back on,” Danny says, leaning against Rusty, still running kisses down his neck.
Rusty laughs, a sound as familiar as breathing, and somehow it makes Danny even harder. “All those people when we get back up,” Rusty says, and his voice so close to Danny’s ear makes Danny feel like a kid again, standing outside Elizabeth Sheldon’s window, learning what a world of possibility he’d just fallen into.
Danny lets his pants and boxers slide down, his cock aching in the sudden coolness, and his fingers, the same ones that have picked a million pockets and cheated so many card tables, fumble with the buttons on Rusty’s.
“Call yourself a professional,” Rusty says, laughing his laugh again, and then it’s done, and there is nothing between them, like there’s never been anything between them.
Rusty kisses him, and Danny wonders if he might come apart then and there, but then they move together, fast and hard, until there’s only fire left in Danny’s veins, only Rusty’s name that means anything. He hears Rusty’s head strike the wall, feels sharp pain as Rusty bites down on his shoulder, but all of it disappears, because there is only this, need and want and light like a star to drown in.
When they are done, cleaned up as best they can, Danny still can’t quite let go, can’t stop touching Rusty. “I’ve been thinking we should make a move on NASA. Steal us a rocket,” he says, as Rusty’s fingers tangle in the hair at the back of his neck.
“That would take a lot of planning, Daniel.”
“Yeah. Not scared, are you?”
Rusty grins and kisses him, and Danny knows Rusty never has been.
***
Author: luzdeestrellas (luzdeestrellas@livejournal.com)
Summary: Rusty had always been smarter than Danny where it counted.
Rating: adult
Spoilers: Ocean's 11 and 12
Recipient: musesfool
Notes: Thanks to musesfool and mousapelli for running the challenge, and to musesfool especially for the beta. You rock big time.
***
Swing on a Star
“This is your fault,” Rusty says, breathing heavily, fists clenched at his side, and Danny folds his arms across his chest and smiles, that exact smile, corners of his mouth raised only slightly, he knows will drive Rusty crazy.
“How is this my fault?”
“Well, if you hadn’t been stupid enough to break up with Tess, you wouldn’t have been living in my hotel, and people wouldn’t have started talking.”
“People were already talking. Probably all that food you eat while I’m around. Oral fixation.”
“Shut up. I wasn’t done. I’m also not the one who forgot to bring a walkie-talkie.”
“And I’m not the one who turned down a perfectly good vacation in the Caribbean! Twice!”
“Well,” Rusty says. “Well. You’ve just gone so far over the edge I can’t even begin to follow.”
“You’ll follow,” Danny says, leaning in until he can see the flakes of chocolate round Rusty’s mouth, thinking of rockets and stealing a star. “And for the record, I didn’t break up with Tess. She left me, remember?”
“That’s hardly surprising, is it? If I weren’t stuck here right now, I’d leave you, too.”
“Would you?”
“Post modern art could totally be my thing.”
***
She’d gone by the time Danny got home. It was a Tuesday, and Danny felt like it should’ve been raining but it wasn’t. He felt like he should’ve been - something, hurt, sad, rejected, but that was missing, as well. There was a note on the fridge, everything else that was Tess’s gone, and Danny had always hated this house - three stories that made his skin feel too tight, Connecticut skyline that would never be home - and now that his reason for staying had left, he could, too. He didn’t even stop to think about where he’d go.
There was only ever one answer to that question, if it was a question at all.
***
”I was just telling Linus here about your recent difficulties,” Rusty said, as Danny came into his hotel room. “He was very curious to know the reason, and I, being a good friend, didn’t want to share without permission.”
Danny sighed, threw the doughnuts he’d bought at Rusty’s head, and said, “She wants to be an artist.”
Rusty grinned, like he had the five other times he’d made Danny say it. “So she didn’t know you were on a job? Wasn’t even pissed at you?” he asked, just like he had every other time.
“If she was, I didn’t know.”
“Danny Ocean. Left by a woman for no other reason than that his charms couldn’t hold up against art. You must be losing your touch.”
“It’s funny,” Linus said, and Danny wondered why Rusty and Isabel had to finish things on such good terms, until he realised Linus didn’t mean funny funny. “I mean, everyone thought Tess would leave you because, well, you know…” He trailed off and waved a hand between Danny and Rusty, and both of them looked back blankly.
“You know,” he tried again, and when the response didn’t change, “this job looks good, doesn’t it?”
“Linus,” Rusty said, forgotten doughnut growing sticky in his hand, which Danny knew should tell anyone that he meant business, “what don’t we know?”
“Many things. Saul says you’re only sharp while you’ve got things still to learn. There’s no shame in it.”
It wasn’t a bad attempt, Danny thought, and he’d have smiled, if he were three months out of school, instead of a seasoned professional. He and Rusty kept staring at Linus, the chocolate beginning to drip down Rusty’s fingers, and Danny almost did smile, thinking about the mess there would be if Linus didn’t talk soon, and how Rusty would insist on licking every drop of chocolate off, rather than cleaning up like an adult.
“Linus,” Rusty said again, and Danny watched the chocolate drip, hoped maybe it would ruin that green shirt he was wearing, which frankly hurt Danny’s soul just a little bit.
“That you’re, you know,” he waved his hand again, “not exactly clear on the boundaries of friendship.”
There was a moment when Danny didn’t fully understand. He and Rusty had always been unclear about those boundaries - personal space forgotten years ago, long before Tess, lost in a thousand jobs in tiny spaces that meant arms and legs and hands touching, whispered conversations that drew them closer and closer together - and then it hit, round about the time Rusty said, “You mean we’re fucking?”
“I, well, it’s not necessarily how I would put - yeah, that.”
“Danny,” Rusty said, finally remembering the doughnut and beginning to eat, “are we doing that now?”
“If we are, I wasn’t informed. And speaking of informing, who told you we were, Linus?”
Linus shrugged. “I can’t remember. Basher, maybe. Or Reuben. Maybe Livingston. It’s not like it’s a secret, or anything. Everyone says it- even the twins agree you are.”
There was a pause. “I just made that so much worse for myself, didn’t I?” Linus asked, and Rusty nodded. “I’ll just be, um, leaving now.”
“Feel free to tell people we’re not of one flesh yet,” Rusty said to Linus’s rapidly retreating back. “Saving ourselves until the wedding.” Linus made a choking sound and slammed the door a little louder than was strictly necessary.
“How in the world could we not know this?” Danny asked when he was gone. Rusty stretched out on the bed, long legs hanging off the edge, and Danny shoved him over. “I mean, everyone’s saying this?” he flopped back, stretching out beside Rusty. “It’s ridiculous.”
“It is ridiculous,” Rusty agreed, beginning to lick the chocolate from between his fingers. “I’m far too good for you.”
“The way you dress, my friend, it’s lucky you get anyone.”
“My style is unique,” Rusty said, between licks, and Danny only watched in fascination that a grown man really did that sort of thing.
"Your style is an affront to human decency."
Rusty ignored him, and went on licking.
“You know,” Danny said, after a moment’s contemplation of how Rusty’s long fingers looked slipping in and out of his mouth, “it’s doing things like that in front of me that probably gives people the wrong idea.”
Rusty shrugged. “It’s probably you watching me do it that does it. Or it could be me putting you up in my hotel. Kept man, and all.”
“It’s possible you have a point. Still, not to know. We’re slipping, Rus.”
Rusty nodded. “That is upsetting. And to have only found out by accident. I feel my status as knower of things has been impugned.”
“I feel more than that’s been impugned, but the other things I can live with.”
Rusty only grinned and flipped on the TV, and they drank a little and ate a little, and Danny didn’t really mean to fall asleep lying there, but still his eyes grew heavy, and his own room seemed like a million miles away.
“Wonder who started it,” he said, drifting off, and beside him he felt Rusty shrug, warm and comforting in the darkness.
***
“I started it,” Saul said. “Who did you think it was? None of the others have the imagination.”
Rusty spluttered into his drink, and Danny knew better, but asked anyway. “Why? I mean, seriously, why?”
“If a thing does not happen by itself, children, steps must be taken from the outside.”
“Why thank you, Buddha,” Rusty said. “What does that mean?”
Saul put his knife and fork carefully on his plate and folded his hands, looking at them like he used to, when they’d screwed up a job. “You really don’t see it? Not even now?”
They shook their heads.
Saul sighed. “I must still teach you everything. For two weeks,” he said, “until the job is done, I want you to be in a room together and behave like colleagues. Just people doing a job. No finishing of sentences, no stealing food, no touching. No late night drinking, driving, no ganging up on Linus.”
“Will someone else gang up on him?” they both asked in unison, and Saul banged his glass down on the table.
“This is what I’m talking about. None of that, either. Be in the room, and don’t be together. Pretend like you know other people exist.”
“This is really, really stupid. You know that, right?”
“I taught you everything you know, young man. Are you stupid?”
Rusty shook his head mutely.
“Then in two weeks, come back and see me.”
“How are we supposed to do it? I mean, most of this stuff, it’s just-“
“The way you are. Yes, I know. Apparently you boys need to learn. Two weeks. I’ll let the rest know so they can help. And don’t go using this as an excuse to screw the job up. Be professional, if you’ve ever learned how.”
***
Danny’s mom had cried a lot when Danny was a kid. Not so Danny could see, but sometimes he would hear her all the same. He hadn’t understood all that was wrong - he only learned of his father’s other girlfriends years later - but he understood about the official looking envelopes that piled up on the table, understood that money was tighter than normal when she’d say maybe he shouldn’t watch so much TV this week, okay? Which was fine, because he didn’t watch much TV anyway, spent most of his time with Rusty from two doors down, passing on all his twelve year old’s wisdom - how to always win at One-Armed Bandits, how to get snacks out of machines without paying, how to get a look in Elizabeth Sheldon’s room (though Rusty at ten wasn’t quite so interested in that information as Danny thought he should be) - but he’d say okay, anyway, and he’d sometimes leave the money he won from the arcade games in her purse. And still he’d wake up in the night and hear her crying in the room next door.
He was too old to believe in fairy stories, but she’d still make him wish on the stars before he went to bed, and sometimes he’d wish he could bring her one, so she could keep all that magic herself.
He told Rusty that one day, promising to throw him in the river if he ever told anyone, and Rusty hadn’t laughed like Danny thought he might.
“You’d need a rocket, or something,” he’d said seriously, in that way he had when there was a really big problem needing solved, brow furrowed, lower lip between his teeth. “Get you up there.”
Danny had grinned. “I could totally build that. I’ll take physics in school. You wanna come with?”
And Rusty, who didn’t much like the space project he’d done in school, and who got scared when Danny conned them into ball games and took him to the high seats, grinned back. “Sure I will,” he said. “It’ll be awesome.”
They took the train to see one of Saul’s contacts in the two weeks of stupidity, and Linus, making the most of the extra time Danny was being forced to spend with him, requesting stories like a kid at bedtime, finally asked how he’d gotten into stealing things. Danny thought about being twelve, thought about Rusty not laughing, and wondered if maybe he understood what Saul was trying to say.
“I wanted a star,” he said, and Linus only looked bemused. Danny turned to look for Rusty, only to find, for the hundredth time it seemed like, that he wasn’t where he should be. He sat with Basher, farther down the carriage, probably not understanding a word being said to him, and he looked up as Danny looked over, and they grinned, because they both knew what the other was thinking. Please never let me spend this long with either of these people again.
It could’ve been then, or it might have been planning the job, leaning in like he always did to look at blueprints with Rusty, so close that he could feel the familiar rhythm of Rusty’s breathing, only to have Linus clear his throat and Rusty pull away, leaving Danny off balance, feeling like maybe he wasn’t in his own skin at all, because other people weren’t meant to come between them.
Or maybe it was playing cards with everyone else, knowing they could clean them out if they only looked at each other, if Rusty scratched his face like he normally did, if Danny spun his glass in his hand -- Basher has the ace. I don’t have the seven. -- neither of them doing it because neither of them backed down from a challenge, the world somehow all out of whack because of it.
By the time he’d brought the plan to Rusty, and Rusty had picked out seven flaws everyone else had missed, and said, “Maybe if-“
“We go in early-“ Danny had finished, he’d known he thought better when Rusty was around, and that Rusty was maybe more than someone he trusted to make the job go well. It had hung in the air between them, and Danny had almost said it, and Rusty had almost moved forward, but Danny had time to think, to wonder if this would screw them up completely, and he walked away before either could happen.
And then the night in the bar had happened, with the girl. There was always a girl - Tess or Isabel or Julie or that other girl of Rusty’s in Nevada, who had almost been the one, except that Danny had left for a job and Rusty had followed - but this time it was different. Because Danny suspected that maybe he didn’t want there to be a girl anymore, and because he’d been sitting across the room, watching as the girl touched Rusty and flirted with him, bought him drinks and offered him every kind of snack food the bar had to offer, while his own fingers itched to do the same.
“You know the thing about girls like that, Linus?” Danny asked, drinking more scotch. “They want to do things - vacation at Christmas, for example. Everyone knows Christmas is when the biggest jobs come up. Or they want to go in the summer, and everyone knows summer is when you get all those tourists.”
“You and Tess did that?”
Danny shook his head. “Rusty went. Except he didn’t. She wanted to - looked just like that, by the way. Ended up breaking up with her over it.”
Linus was quiet beside him, and Danny shrugged. “Shut up,” he said. “I know.” And maybe he did. Because there had always been girls -- pretty girls with pretty smiles and prettier promises of a different life - and Rusty had smiled and kissed them and made promises of his own, but they’d never lasted, never meant as much as the things he and Danny didn’t say. Probably because Rusty had always been smarter than Danny where it counted, had spent a lifetime waiting for Danny to catch up, to think through the plan and see that Incan matrimonial head masks weren’t the way to go, or that retirement would kill him a little bit every day, and he had always known what Danny knew before Danny worked it out.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. “There are some things you should share.”
He drank his scotch and smiled, watched Rusty and figured he could keep his own secrets, too, at least for a little while. Three days left of Saul’s education, and Danny could wait that long before doing what he should have done years ago - Rusty’s punishment for holding out on him, for trying to make him jealous with a girl he didn’t want.
Which turned out to be stupid, because not talking incessantly to Rusty made Danny forget things, which meant he didn’t have a radio with him the afternoon they went to lay the groundwork for the job, which meant he couldn’t say they were late to the elevator, which meant being stuck there when Basher put the power out.
And if Danny had still had any doubts,, he lost them there, cramped with Rusty in that tiny space, feeling like he hadn’t since before Tess, like the world was his again, like he could steal the stars if he wanted.
***
“If you leave,” Danny says, backing Rusty against the wall, placing his hands on either side of his face, “you know people are gonna start saying I’m sleeping with Linus.”
Rusty shrugs, doesn’t bother trying to move away. “You have spent a lot of time together this week.”
“Tell me about it,” Danny says. Rusty smiles, and Danny doesn’t know if they can get closer, but he wants to, wants to wipe out years of stupidity with skin against skin, wants to make Rusty see that all his clever words and big ideas have only ever been about this, even when he didn’t know. “Rus,” he says, and then he kisses Rusty, hungry and deep and desperate, a hundred things he could never say, never need to say, spilling from his mouth with every slide of his tongue against Rusty’s, every hitching moan he makes when Rusty’s hands skate down his chest, opening buttons as they go.
“This would be a very unfortunate time for the power to come back on,” Danny says, leaning against Rusty, still running kisses down his neck.
Rusty laughs, a sound as familiar as breathing, and somehow it makes Danny even harder. “All those people when we get back up,” Rusty says, and his voice so close to Danny’s ear makes Danny feel like a kid again, standing outside Elizabeth Sheldon’s window, learning what a world of possibility he’d just fallen into.
Danny lets his pants and boxers slide down, his cock aching in the sudden coolness, and his fingers, the same ones that have picked a million pockets and cheated so many card tables, fumble with the buttons on Rusty’s.
“Call yourself a professional,” Rusty says, laughing his laugh again, and then it’s done, and there is nothing between them, like there’s never been anything between them.
Rusty kisses him, and Danny wonders if he might come apart then and there, but then they move together, fast and hard, until there’s only fire left in Danny’s veins, only Rusty’s name that means anything. He hears Rusty’s head strike the wall, feels sharp pain as Rusty bites down on his shoulder, but all of it disappears, because there is only this, need and want and light like a star to drown in.
When they are done, cleaned up as best they can, Danny still can’t quite let go, can’t stop touching Rusty. “I’ve been thinking we should make a move on NASA. Steal us a rocket,” he says, as Rusty’s fingers tangle in the hair at the back of his neck.
“That would take a lot of planning, Daniel.”
“Yeah. Not scared, are you?”
Rusty grins and kisses him, and Danny knows Rusty never has been.
***