Fic: Selling Goodbye (Danny/Rusty)
Title: Selling Goodbye
Author: luzdeestrellas (luzdeestrellas@livejournal.com)
Summary: Now they’re going to Jersey, one last time, Danny says. One last shot, one final gamble, and then he’ll put this life away.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Ocean's 11
Recipient: storydivagirl
Notes: Thanks to musesfool for the beta. All remaining mistakes are mine.
***
Selling Goodbye
Danny drives on long journeys, because he gets bored if he doesn’t, and Rusty has learned that a bored Danny is a dangerous Danny, a Danny who plans and dreams like the lunatic he is, always coming up with something guaranteed to land them in more trouble.
He drives like he steals, like he talks, like he does everything: smooth and effortlessly--fingers tapping on the steering wheel because all of him can never be still--confident and sure, though he misses six turnoffs, would’ve got them lost hours ago, except that Rusty knows better than to trust him.
“We could’ve taken the plane, you know,” Rusty says, as Danny tosses coins into the toll without even looking.
“I asked about that. Apparently you need some kind of, I don’t know, pilot’s qualification or something before they let you fly one of those.”
Rusty leans back in his seat and grins. He suspects Danny could probably talk someone into giving him one if he really wanted, but he’s less sure he could talk himself out of being dead later, though even that he doesn’t think is a given. They both know flying is for wusses, anyway, and it leaves a trail, and who really wants to be carrying valuable stolen property back through customs? This is how they do it, have always done it - Danny at the wheel, whatever they can find on the radio (jazz, or blues, or rock, motown, soul, Rusty doesn’t care, so long as it isn’t country), Texas turning to Vegas, Vegas turning to Chicago, a hundred roadside cafés, a hundred cheap motels, running high with the promise of the job or of the thrill of doing it right. It is the second constant in a life that has only two, and Rusty has never wanted it any other way.
But now they’re going to Jersey, one last time, Danny says. One last shot, one final gamble, and then he’ll put this life away, make a new one, walk the road with the picket fence and the pretty house at the end. Danny can sell anything to anyone, has sold hundreds of dreams and promises to Rusty that would’ve been only dust in another man’s hands, but Rusty doubts that even Danny can make this one stand.
He doesn’t say it, of course. Instead he packs a bag when Danny calls, like he always does, gets in a car that’s a little more expensive than the ones they drove ten years ago, and reads directions to which Danny only half listens, excitement simmering low under his skin, just waiting for it to spark into fire.
He doesn’t even ask what the job is until they’re half way there, six packets of M&M’s already demolished, three stops already made for Danny to buy coffee.
Danny shrugs a shoulder. “Reuben wants some stuff from a guy,” he says, and his eyes don’t leave the road. It doesn’t matter what the job is, and they both know it. They’re going home, saying goodbye, completing a circle so Danny can play it straight, or at least convince himself that he wants to.
“You got a plan?” he asks, and this time Danny does look, smile bright like diamonds in the sun.
“Not get caught,” Danny says. “I figured you’d handle the details.”
Rusty does, over a cheese burger and apple-pie, served with cheap coffee from Styrofoam cups that make something inside Rusty ache for reasons he doesn’t want to name. It’s certainly not that they remind him of home, as he scribbles on a napkin, and it’s not Danny’s fingers he thinks of, long and capable, wrapped round the cup, casual and easy, graceful like he shouldn’t be able to make it, like he’s holding the world in the palm of his hand.
“If we go in here--” he says, and Danny nods, understanding, passes his fries over to Rusty without Rusty having to ask, and Rusty keeps on drawing, and Danny keeps on watching.
“We could--” Danny says a little later, when he’s been watching long enough so that his eyes could have bored holes into the back of Rusty’s head, except that’s never been necessary for him to know what Rusty’s thinking.
They can’t, so Rusty shakes his head.
“Not for some left over fries, Daniel,” he says, and Danny grins, and Rusty doesn’t look higher than his mouth, because he doesn’t want to see if the grin reaches Danny’s eyes. He doesn’t think it does, anyway.
***
They’re in Jersey again before Rusty changes his mind. Jersey feels like it always has - alive, restless, like it’s just biding time before it becomes something bigger, brighter, -- like Danny used to feel under Rusty’s hands, warm and safe and always his. There’s a Gap and an American Eagle now, a whole lot of other shops that he doesn’t recognise from before, and there’s seven hundred Starbucks for every other coffee shop, it seems like, but the park where Danny and he used to play poker with the big kids who thought they’d be easy marks is still there, and the apartment blocks where he and Danny grew up is, too, though it’s brighter now, all the old graffiti painted over, covered in a whole new set - different words, maybe, but all meaning the same thing.
Rusty waits for Danny to finish calling Reuben and thinks of hotel deeds with his name on them, thinks of a five bedroom house in Connecticut that will soon be Danny’s. They’ve travelled a million miles from where they started, and not left at all, because it’s never been about the money, never been about what percentage they took home (though Danny still talked their way round to a pretty high one anyway, just to prove he could). Only the amount at stake changed, different but the same, because it’s always been the job, the thrill of taking and running and taking again, of knowing there was nobody better, nobody smarter. Rusty can spot ten ways out of every room he’s in, ten ways in as well, and he knows that if there’s something to be dreamt up, some idea too crazy to have, then Danny will have it. He’ll sell it to Rusty without even trying - with his head tilted sideways and his hands in Rusty’s hair, the beginning of Rusty’s name on his lips - and he’ll keep on selling long after Rusty’s bought, just to be sure, because Danny needs Rusty, like Rusty needs Danny, takes wrong turns and stupid turns without him.
He’s maybe planning to take another one, feels like he has to, but wrong turns never made a straight road, and Rusty can wait for Danny to come back round. He always does.
“We can,” Rusty says when Danny gets back, and Danny’s eyes widen for only a second - and Danny confused is a sight so rare that Rusty has to laugh - before he catches on, and then Rusty’s laugh gets lost in Danny’s mouth, swallowed by Danny’s kisses, and Rusty thinks that’s okay. Is more than okay, really, because Danny tastes like coffee and chocolate and home, like big ideas and bigger dreams, and Rusty has never not wanted to be lost there.
“We in?” he asks when Danny pulls away, breathing hard, eyes shining the way only scams and Rusty make them.
“We are,” Danny says. “We should get it over quickly.”
***
They pull the job like it's nothing, because by now it is, easy like taking money from rich kid celebrities at poker, just a safe and a few security cameras to work round, an alarm to turn off, and they’re done.
Still, with Danny here beside him, clever hands turning security to liability, Rusty feels the adrenaline burn inside him, lets it lift him as high as it can take him, until Jersey is a hundred million miles away, and he knows Danny feels the same, because he’s smiling when they get out, grinning like he’s just remembered nothing in the world can beat them when they’re like this.
“You need to work on your memory,” Rusty tells him, and Danny knocks into his shoulder, wraps his arm around him before Rusty can lose his balance.
“My memory’s just fine,” Danny says. “I remember, just as an example, that we’ve got another job needs taking care of.”
Rusty grins, and in the moment he believes it really is just him and Danny, no one else able to touch them.
***
In the hotel room, on a bed that is so squeaky Danny laughs, imagining what the people next door must think, and lumpier than Danny’s old couch (where they did it that first time, what seems like a thousand years ago, a little drunk and a little stupid), Rusty tries selling Danny his own idea.
“If this hotel thing doesn’t work out,” he says, covering Danny’s bare chest with kisses, hand stroking Danny’s cock, slow at first, building to a pace and a rhythm he knows drives Danny crazy, “maybe I could do this professionally. I’m very good.”
He really means stay, and Danny knows it, but Danny has always been the idea guy, and when he rolls Rusty over, slides on top of him, so that their legs and arms tangle, and they lie hip to hip, chest to chest, Rusty knows that Danny is selling goodbye. Which is okay, too, because goodbye is the one thing Danny can’t make him believe. He lets Danny wash over him, breathes him in and gets swept up in the current of him, knowing that it’s all right to drown here, because he has always been Danny’s anchor, always will be.
Danny comes, clinging to Rusty, still kissing him, mumbling a flood of words that are the most honest he ever says, and Rusty follows soon after, falling over an edge where there is only Danny and always Danny and Danny, Danny, Danny.
***
“I got you something,” Danny says behind him, “now that we’ve made a bit of extra money.”
Rusty turns to take the milkshake Danny’s holding, chocolate, of course, because all this newfangled mango and banana flavouring is six million kinds of wrong, and Danny’s too smart not to know it.
He drinks and knows Danny’s still selling - that they’re doing the right thing, that this isn’t because Danny’s being stupid again - and Rusty smiles some more. Different words but it all means the same thing.
“Time to go,” he says, and Danny nods.
“You better have been paying attention on the way here.”
Danny watches him for a second. “Flying, huh?”
It’s Rusty’s turn to nod. “You get lost, you’re on your own.”
“Yeah,” Danny says, “I know. But if you get lost, you’re in a whole lot more trouble.”
Rusty smiles. “Just as well I never get lost, then.”
“Makes you easier to find,” Danny says, and they look at each other for a second, both a little startled by how close they’ve come to saying what they mean.
“Yeah,” Rusty says, and turns to walk away, then glances back. “It’s the second left off the interstate, okay? Not the third. And Danny, next time, bring me a doughnut, as well.”
Danny sticks his hands in his pockets, casual and easy and maybe like he owns the world and grins. “Next time, I might give you two.”
Rusty walks away, and Danny isn’t behind him, but sooner or later he will be. Rusty figures he can live with that.
***
Author: luzdeestrellas (luzdeestrellas@livejournal.com)
Summary: Now they’re going to Jersey, one last time, Danny says. One last shot, one final gamble, and then he’ll put this life away.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Ocean's 11
Recipient: storydivagirl
Notes: Thanks to musesfool for the beta. All remaining mistakes are mine.
***
Selling Goodbye
Danny drives on long journeys, because he gets bored if he doesn’t, and Rusty has learned that a bored Danny is a dangerous Danny, a Danny who plans and dreams like the lunatic he is, always coming up with something guaranteed to land them in more trouble.
He drives like he steals, like he talks, like he does everything: smooth and effortlessly--fingers tapping on the steering wheel because all of him can never be still--confident and sure, though he misses six turnoffs, would’ve got them lost hours ago, except that Rusty knows better than to trust him.
“We could’ve taken the plane, you know,” Rusty says, as Danny tosses coins into the toll without even looking.
“I asked about that. Apparently you need some kind of, I don’t know, pilot’s qualification or something before they let you fly one of those.”
Rusty leans back in his seat and grins. He suspects Danny could probably talk someone into giving him one if he really wanted, but he’s less sure he could talk himself out of being dead later, though even that he doesn’t think is a given. They both know flying is for wusses, anyway, and it leaves a trail, and who really wants to be carrying valuable stolen property back through customs? This is how they do it, have always done it - Danny at the wheel, whatever they can find on the radio (jazz, or blues, or rock, motown, soul, Rusty doesn’t care, so long as it isn’t country), Texas turning to Vegas, Vegas turning to Chicago, a hundred roadside cafés, a hundred cheap motels, running high with the promise of the job or of the thrill of doing it right. It is the second constant in a life that has only two, and Rusty has never wanted it any other way.
But now they’re going to Jersey, one last time, Danny says. One last shot, one final gamble, and then he’ll put this life away, make a new one, walk the road with the picket fence and the pretty house at the end. Danny can sell anything to anyone, has sold hundreds of dreams and promises to Rusty that would’ve been only dust in another man’s hands, but Rusty doubts that even Danny can make this one stand.
He doesn’t say it, of course. Instead he packs a bag when Danny calls, like he always does, gets in a car that’s a little more expensive than the ones they drove ten years ago, and reads directions to which Danny only half listens, excitement simmering low under his skin, just waiting for it to spark into fire.
He doesn’t even ask what the job is until they’re half way there, six packets of M&M’s already demolished, three stops already made for Danny to buy coffee.
Danny shrugs a shoulder. “Reuben wants some stuff from a guy,” he says, and his eyes don’t leave the road. It doesn’t matter what the job is, and they both know it. They’re going home, saying goodbye, completing a circle so Danny can play it straight, or at least convince himself that he wants to.
“You got a plan?” he asks, and this time Danny does look, smile bright like diamonds in the sun.
“Not get caught,” Danny says. “I figured you’d handle the details.”
Rusty does, over a cheese burger and apple-pie, served with cheap coffee from Styrofoam cups that make something inside Rusty ache for reasons he doesn’t want to name. It’s certainly not that they remind him of home, as he scribbles on a napkin, and it’s not Danny’s fingers he thinks of, long and capable, wrapped round the cup, casual and easy, graceful like he shouldn’t be able to make it, like he’s holding the world in the palm of his hand.
“If we go in here--” he says, and Danny nods, understanding, passes his fries over to Rusty without Rusty having to ask, and Rusty keeps on drawing, and Danny keeps on watching.
“We could--” Danny says a little later, when he’s been watching long enough so that his eyes could have bored holes into the back of Rusty’s head, except that’s never been necessary for him to know what Rusty’s thinking.
They can’t, so Rusty shakes his head.
“Not for some left over fries, Daniel,” he says, and Danny grins, and Rusty doesn’t look higher than his mouth, because he doesn’t want to see if the grin reaches Danny’s eyes. He doesn’t think it does, anyway.
***
They’re in Jersey again before Rusty changes his mind. Jersey feels like it always has - alive, restless, like it’s just biding time before it becomes something bigger, brighter, -- like Danny used to feel under Rusty’s hands, warm and safe and always his. There’s a Gap and an American Eagle now, a whole lot of other shops that he doesn’t recognise from before, and there’s seven hundred Starbucks for every other coffee shop, it seems like, but the park where Danny and he used to play poker with the big kids who thought they’d be easy marks is still there, and the apartment blocks where he and Danny grew up is, too, though it’s brighter now, all the old graffiti painted over, covered in a whole new set - different words, maybe, but all meaning the same thing.
Rusty waits for Danny to finish calling Reuben and thinks of hotel deeds with his name on them, thinks of a five bedroom house in Connecticut that will soon be Danny’s. They’ve travelled a million miles from where they started, and not left at all, because it’s never been about the money, never been about what percentage they took home (though Danny still talked their way round to a pretty high one anyway, just to prove he could). Only the amount at stake changed, different but the same, because it’s always been the job, the thrill of taking and running and taking again, of knowing there was nobody better, nobody smarter. Rusty can spot ten ways out of every room he’s in, ten ways in as well, and he knows that if there’s something to be dreamt up, some idea too crazy to have, then Danny will have it. He’ll sell it to Rusty without even trying - with his head tilted sideways and his hands in Rusty’s hair, the beginning of Rusty’s name on his lips - and he’ll keep on selling long after Rusty’s bought, just to be sure, because Danny needs Rusty, like Rusty needs Danny, takes wrong turns and stupid turns without him.
He’s maybe planning to take another one, feels like he has to, but wrong turns never made a straight road, and Rusty can wait for Danny to come back round. He always does.
“We can,” Rusty says when Danny gets back, and Danny’s eyes widen for only a second - and Danny confused is a sight so rare that Rusty has to laugh - before he catches on, and then Rusty’s laugh gets lost in Danny’s mouth, swallowed by Danny’s kisses, and Rusty thinks that’s okay. Is more than okay, really, because Danny tastes like coffee and chocolate and home, like big ideas and bigger dreams, and Rusty has never not wanted to be lost there.
“We in?” he asks when Danny pulls away, breathing hard, eyes shining the way only scams and Rusty make them.
“We are,” Danny says. “We should get it over quickly.”
***
They pull the job like it's nothing, because by now it is, easy like taking money from rich kid celebrities at poker, just a safe and a few security cameras to work round, an alarm to turn off, and they’re done.
Still, with Danny here beside him, clever hands turning security to liability, Rusty feels the adrenaline burn inside him, lets it lift him as high as it can take him, until Jersey is a hundred million miles away, and he knows Danny feels the same, because he’s smiling when they get out, grinning like he’s just remembered nothing in the world can beat them when they’re like this.
“You need to work on your memory,” Rusty tells him, and Danny knocks into his shoulder, wraps his arm around him before Rusty can lose his balance.
“My memory’s just fine,” Danny says. “I remember, just as an example, that we’ve got another job needs taking care of.”
Rusty grins, and in the moment he believes it really is just him and Danny, no one else able to touch them.
***
In the hotel room, on a bed that is so squeaky Danny laughs, imagining what the people next door must think, and lumpier than Danny’s old couch (where they did it that first time, what seems like a thousand years ago, a little drunk and a little stupid), Rusty tries selling Danny his own idea.
“If this hotel thing doesn’t work out,” he says, covering Danny’s bare chest with kisses, hand stroking Danny’s cock, slow at first, building to a pace and a rhythm he knows drives Danny crazy, “maybe I could do this professionally. I’m very good.”
He really means stay, and Danny knows it, but Danny has always been the idea guy, and when he rolls Rusty over, slides on top of him, so that their legs and arms tangle, and they lie hip to hip, chest to chest, Rusty knows that Danny is selling goodbye. Which is okay, too, because goodbye is the one thing Danny can’t make him believe. He lets Danny wash over him, breathes him in and gets swept up in the current of him, knowing that it’s all right to drown here, because he has always been Danny’s anchor, always will be.
Danny comes, clinging to Rusty, still kissing him, mumbling a flood of words that are the most honest he ever says, and Rusty follows soon after, falling over an edge where there is only Danny and always Danny and Danny, Danny, Danny.
***
“I got you something,” Danny says behind him, “now that we’ve made a bit of extra money.”
Rusty turns to take the milkshake Danny’s holding, chocolate, of course, because all this newfangled mango and banana flavouring is six million kinds of wrong, and Danny’s too smart not to know it.
He drinks and knows Danny’s still selling - that they’re doing the right thing, that this isn’t because Danny’s being stupid again - and Rusty smiles some more. Different words but it all means the same thing.
“Time to go,” he says, and Danny nods.
“You better have been paying attention on the way here.”
Danny watches him for a second. “Flying, huh?”
It’s Rusty’s turn to nod. “You get lost, you’re on your own.”
“Yeah,” Danny says, “I know. But if you get lost, you’re in a whole lot more trouble.”
Rusty smiles. “Just as well I never get lost, then.”
“Makes you easier to find,” Danny says, and they look at each other for a second, both a little startled by how close they’ve come to saying what they mean.
“Yeah,” Rusty says, and turns to walk away, then glances back. “It’s the second left off the interstate, okay? Not the third. And Danny, next time, bring me a doughnut, as well.”
Danny sticks his hands in his pockets, casual and easy and maybe like he owns the world and grins. “Next time, I might give you two.”
Rusty walks away, and Danny isn’t behind him, but sooner or later he will be. Rusty figures he can live with that.
***