Disclaimer: Thankfully I own nothing to do with Ocean's 11
A/N 1:InSilva has heard me talking about this story for over a year now. And has casually - very, very casually - suggested on a number of occasions that it might be quite nice if I wrote it. Then she has read just about every stage of writing and has offered incomparable opinions and help and all the right thoughts and has helped me understand what the hell I'm writing. Of course it's for her. What, it's going to be written for anyone else? Thank you. As always.
A/N 2: This story links to absolutely nothing I have ever written - unlike, I freely admit, most things I write where things are crossovered bizarrely - and I am not going to write any more details about anything written.
A/N 3: This story disturbs me for reasons I can't exactly explain and some reasons that I can. There are warnings for angst and disturbing images and strangeness. Sorry.
By the time Danny fully understood Rusty it was far too late to do anything about it, even if he wanted to. They were too entwined, soul by almost-soul, and he couldn't hope to learn to breathe alone again.
He could say he never wondered.
He could.
But he'd be lying.
They'd met, late one night, amidst death and danger and darkness. They were children, or as good as, and there were old dreams in their eyes.
There was a bar with a convenient cellar and a hatch that opened onto the river. There was a barman with a stout stick and too many muscles. There was a Mr Moresby who liked his money to stay in his pockets and his tills and his banks.
Examples had to be set. Lessons had to be learned. That night he'd rounded up two thieves and there was shouting and there was violence and they knew exactly what was going to happen.
Danny had found himself crouched on the floor, next to a blond boy, even younger than he was, and he got called 'kid' often enough to resent it. The boy had been watching, and he looked at Danny and there was more than Danny understood, there was more than Danny could imagine, and he wanted to know, and he wanted to see.
There was a candle and a box of matches lying next to a leaking barrel of oil.
Danny edged closer. The blond boy opened his mouth and Chris Calhoun – whom Danny had never met before and never would again – started pleading for his life. He was shaking, trembling and whining. Pathetic. Begging. Mr Moresby was entranced.
The snarl hurt Danny's face a little.
There was a fire and a lot of screaming and when the boys dived into the river they were still very much alive.
Later, they shared a cigarette under a street lamp then walked away in opposite directions.
They never said a word to each other.
There were more meetings, some engineered and some not. Inevitable and far more than inevitable. Of course, they worked the same patch but that had nothing to do with it. There was something invisible and intangible and Danny watched the blond and thought of sunshine, and he saw the way he was watched in return.
They'd spend an hour together, here and there. Sheltering from the rain in a doorway, walking the streets acquiring cash, sitting in anonymous diners and silently showing each other new ways to get by without paying.
There were no plans. There was no discussion beforehand. But Danny invented Leo Harkness and Clint Tucker and Robert Penn, and he looked at the blond boy and met Dale Deagan and Sy Smith and Phillip Frame; and between however many of them there were, they found that there were many ways to get money from those arrogant enough to throw it away.
Back in the real world there was no talking. There were no names.
Three months, perhaps, and the first words Danny ever spoke were "I need your help." The blond had looked up at him, from his perch on the edge of the rooftop, and the stare had been all things considering, measuring. Danny had met it willingly. Wasn't like he didn't know what the answer was long before he didn't ask the question.
"Yes," the blond had said at last, and Danny had smiled and watched the answering grin set the sky ablaze.
Alan Carstairs existed to be hated. Cruelty for the sake of cruelty, violence for the sake of violence, power for the sake of power and there had been a day when Danny hadn't been able to stand by and watch him lean on Sarah any more. Sarah was a nice girl. Worked out of the back of Doc's. She was Danny's age, give or take. Owed Carstairs a lot of money and he wanted it back, one way or another.
She'd told Danny all this as they sat on the stairs and she'd been crying, not hysterically, not obviously. Quiet little sobs. Resigned little tears.
Girls who went with Carstairs never came back the same.
And Danny thought that maybe Sarah should come into a bit of money, and he thought that it would be good and right that maybe Sarah should come into Carstairs' money, and there'd been opportunity, there'd been the pay-off money for the customs agents, in Carstairs' hands for a whole twelve hours before it vanished. Dirty money. Drug money. Money that could go to a better place.
But it was a job for two. Two, and he was only one.
He asked the only person he trusted.
And everything went like clockwork and they were away and free when Carstairs' lackey stepped out of the shadows, gave them Carstairs' regards, and drove the knife into Danny's side.
He didn't know what happened next.
He'd thought, as he sank to the sidewalk, pained and cold, he'd thought he was going to die. And his only hope was that the blond got away clean.
He woke up lying on an unfamiliar sofa in an unfamiliar house. The blond was lying on the floor beside him, holding his hand.
Danny cleared his throat, and the movement hurt.
The blond dropped his hand instantly and leapt up. Danny felt himself being studied for a long second, and then the blond disappeared out of his sight and returned with a glass of water and a couple of pills. Danny swallowed them without even thinking about it.
"Where are we?" he asked, finally.
The blond shrugged. "House," he said laconically. "The owners are away for a few days."
Danny nodded. Seemed reasonable enough. "Sarah - "
" - yeah," the blond nodded. "She says hi. And thanks."
And that was good. He relaxed a little, only to tense up again as he saw the blond gather up his jacket. "You're leaving?" he asked quietly.
The blond looked at him. "Yeah," he agreed.
"I'm Danny Ocean," he said and he reached out and grabbed the blond's hand again, desperate not to be alone.
There was a long, long silence. "Rusty Ryan," the blond said at last.
Danny nodded and smiled and yawned and he could feel the darkness beckon. "Will you be here when I wake up?" he asked sleepily and still he tried to keep the hope and the need out of his voice.
"Yes," Rusty promised, and it meant so much more.
He knew right from the start that Rusty Ryan had never existed before that moment.
And that was okay. It was. Wasn't as though Daniel Ocean was a name with a full lifetime's worth of memories behind it.
And besides, he'd always known that the reasons they both flinched when they heard sirens had nothing to do with anything they'd pulled together.
He slept on the sofa for another day.
They left town together.
The first time, he thought that Rusty was kidding around. Barely two weeks after they skipped town, and they'd been insinuating themselves into the set-up around Bud Reilly's gambling den.
It had been late, they'd been back drinking in the motel, and Danny had been amused to find himself talking to Brian Bell instead of Rusty Ryan.
That was at first. Two hours of watching the wrong facial expressions, the wrong body language, of hearing the wrong speech patterns and the joke began to wear thin.
"Stop it, would you?" he demanded irritably.
Brian looked up at him, confusion written on Rusty's face. "Stop what?" he asked in a voice that wasn't the one Danny had come to know.
"It's not funny anymore," he insisted.
Brian stared at him. It wasn't friendly. It wasn't understanding. It wasn't Rusty.
Suddenly frightened, Danny stood up and put his hand on Rusty's. "Rus'?" he asked, quiet and desperate.
There was a long moment of nothing and then, just for a second, Rusty was looking up at him with fear and misery in his eyes. Then he smiled and everything was shut off behind a wall of confidence and denial. "Hey, Danny. What's up?" Rusty asked lazily.
He didn't ask why Danny was holding his hand. And he made no attempt to get him to stop.
Danny had always liked movies.
After a while, Rusty did too.
The second time was longer. More difficult. Less clearcut. Spring break and a group of rich high school kids blowing their parents' money. Danny had spent three days watching Jace Jackson lounging on the beach, playing in the surf, drinking beer with the boys and flirting with the girls. Jace was always laughing. Jace was happy and carefree.
Danny couldn't help but wonder if Jace wasn't maybe a better place to be than Rusty.
But three days and he couldn't stand it and he waited until the kids were drunk enough and, ignoring Jace's bewildered protests, he hauled Rusty out of the bar and hauled him back to their room.
Four hours of talking and pleading. Four hours he held Jace's hand until he saw familiar blue eyes.
Rusty had stared at him for a long moment, then he'd thrown himself forwards and clung tightly to Danny, his hands clenched in Danny's shirt. He'd cried in Danny's arms and neither of them ever wanted to let go.
A while later and Rusty tried to apologise for the first time.
Even as Danny brushed it off - even as he told Rusty fiercely that there was nothing to be sorry for, that he couldn't help it, that 'sorry' wasn't what they were about - there was a tiny, tiny part of him that wondered.
He watched not-Rusty – earnest and sincere and academic – sitting at the bar, chatting to today's girl. He watched her fall in love. Just a little.
Rusty could be whatever anyone wanted (needed) him to be. Anyone in the world. Anything in the world. And he always knew.
And it had taken a while, but Danny thought he understood how difficult it was for him to get back.
Rusty needed Danny.
He could be who he was in Danny's eyes.
Danny was the only fixed point in the centre of a hurricane of shifting, ephemeral chaos.
Danny was the only thing Rusty could anchor himself on.
And Rusty was who Danny loved. (Wanted. Needed.)
Not-Rusty and the girl smiled at each other and then not-Rusty carefully dropped a pile of money on the bar and left, arm in arm with the girl.
Danny understood about escape. Tomorrow they would find each other again and Rusty would be Rusty.
There was time and there was distance and they stopped jumping at shadows and sirens and there was comfort and a kind of respite.
They understood each other, better, perhaps, than they understood themselves. Neither of them ever asked the obvious questions. The past was unreachable, they were unchangeable and besides, there were always other things to talk about.
" . . . What?"
"The house last week."
"Uh huh."
"The little - "
" - ivory. Yeah."
"They - "
" - since when are you an environmentalist?"
"Since I saw - "
" - oh. Oh, trust me, they don't really fly."
"You know that for certain?"
"Everyone knows - "
" - don't give me everyone - "
" - besides you're eating - "
" - they don't make hot dogs with elephants!"
"You know that for certain?"
" . . . huh."
"Yeah."
"Danny . . . "
Sigh. " . . .we'll give the money to an elephant charity."
There was glib and there was sincere and there was surface and there was depth and the only problem was telling it all apart.
The first time Danny saw Rusty prepare to leave the hotel bar with a man he was compelled to interfere. The woman he'd been chatting to was less than impressed, but that couldn't be helped.
He casually stepped between Rusty and the man and he forced Rusty to meet his eyes. "Rus'. Do you know what you're doing?" It wasn't an idle question.
He didn't recognise the man – boy – who smiled back at him and giggled. "'Course I do. Don't worry Danny."
Less than reassured, he put a hand on Rusty's wrist and tried again. "Rus' . . ." he began softly, and the man behind him interrupted.
"Look, pal. You heard what your friend said. So why don't you run along and enjoy your evening and let us do the same?"
Reasonable enough. And the hand that gripped his shoulder suggested that the man wasn't the patient type. But Danny couldn't let it go unless he heard it from Rusty. And that didn't look like happening.
"Come on, Rus'," he said quietly. "Let's go get a couple of drinks and talk about this, right?"
"You just don't know when you're not welcome, do you pal?" The man behind him sighed and he was shoved out of the way hard, and he felt the side of the bar hitting into his ribs. He winced.
Rusty was rarely that far away.
The fight was short and they quickly found themselves thrown out into the alley beside the hotel, Rusty's plans for the evening unconscious on the ground beside them.
Rusty was looking at him with a frown.
"He's a he," Danny explained with a shrug and a question.
"Does it matter?" Rusty asked, after a pause.
Danny considered and eventually decided on honesty. "Not if it doesn't matter to you."
"He wanted me." Rusty's voice was quiet. Danny wished there were more factors to be considered. Rusty sighed and his lips twitched. "Sex is - "
" - oh, sex is." Danny agreed, with a slight grin. He sobered quickly. "I had to be sure, Rus'. Couldn't let anyone do anything you wouldn't want."
Rusty smiled at him then, and the love and trust shone brighter than anything else Danny would ever know. "Thank you."
Time passed. Money was easy and irrelevant and they chose to walk through the world like they'd never known a day's hardship.
Oddly Danny proved to be better at that than Rusty.
There was always something other about Rusty. Some lingering, indescribable hint of damage that could be seen by people who knew how to look.
(Danny would never admit that he took a certain comfort in that. Maybe Rusty really did have an existence beyond Danny's reflection.)
Thankfully people who knew how to look were few and far between.
There was Saul, who saved them in Trenton from death and worse-than-death at the hands of Elmer Wright who proved to be just a little better at spotting a forgery than they'd ever dreamed he could be. Saul had been posing as an art expert. They hadn't spotted him. He'd spotted them and he'd been – intrigued? Interested? Concerned? He'd been something and he'd chosen to leave his own plans behind and help them.
He'd gotten them out, he'd gotten them safety, he'd gotten them a doctor and he'd stayed as they healed and apologised every day for not being in time to spare them the pain. (He was a couple of decades too late for that.) He never asked them for anything in return. And it took a long time for them to understand that.
Trust was between the two of them. Valuable, precious, unique. Extending that outside themselves . . . it had seemed unthinkable.
But Saul was different. More than they could have imagined. And there were examples set and lessons learned and they stayed and they were introduced to a new world and it was wonderful.
It wasn't fair. Wasn't anyone's fault but it wasn't fair. It was wrong and it was cruel, even if it meant everyone was happy.
Saul grew to care about them.
Danny let him and let himself feel the same feelings and it was an unfamiliar kind of helplessness.
But Rusty . . .Rusty changed. Every time Saul entered the room, Rusty changed. And Danny knew he couldn't help it, knew he couldn't stop it, and that didn't stop it from being agony to watch. For Saul, Rusty was the perfect son. The child, the protégé Saul had always wanted; to teach, to scold, to love.
He prayed that Saul would never realise that the Rusty he knew was a fiction.
It wasn't fair. And it wasn't anyone's fault.
The only thing they could possibly do would be to walk away from Saul and stay away forever. And Danny was the only one who would understand that decision, and it would hurt all of them. He stayed. They stayed. He hurt.
But Saul was observant, and sometimes they'd be on a job and Rusty would step into character and fall a little too far, a little too hard, and Saul would look at him and there'd be worry and speculation and Danny would be left to distract Saul and bring Rusty out of it without anyone being the wiser.
He had responsibilities past understanding.
There were more people in time. Not like before. Saul introduced them to people who wanted to work with them, talk with them, spend time with them. People who wanted little more than their friendship. They were quick and clever and charming and very much in demand.
Danny liked people.
Rusty wanted Danny happy.
Rusty could make people happy.
There was Reuben; and Rusty was charming and funny and reckless and careless and loyal.
There was Bobby and Rusty was professional and brilliant and quiet and watchful and edged.
There was Frank and Rusty was nimble and exuberant and impulsive and fast and dangerous.
Danny watched him change and sometimes he saw the strain in his eyes and he'd drag him someplace quiet and send an agonising hour or so in the company of a perfect stranger.
There were looks. Frowns. Inconsistencies were noted, weaknesses seen, if not understood. Rusty was trapped; a series of mirrors reflecting something, oh, ever so slightly different. The chaos-storm raged against the walls, and Rusty withered, vanished, in the face of conflicting understandings.
All Danny could offer was a few moments shelter.
Definition hurt. Hiding was difficult.
Danny watched Rusty start to crumble and he nodded to himself and prepared to give up people.
It was little things. Little things, and it took Danny a while to understand.
Rusty stopped eating meals and started living on junk. Candy and potato chips, sugar and grease. He ate constantly and unselfconsciously and people saw and people watched and people laughed.
He dressed in bright clothes, obvious and unsubtle, and he let charm and sex shine through his skin. Everything a good conman didn't want.
(Danny didn't want to think too hard about how he could be that and still not be memorable.)
In time Danny saw, and smiled, and let the distraction reign, and when Rusty began to slip and when Rusty began to fall, a little teasing comment about the clothes, or the food or the dazzle could sometimes bring him back before he got lost.
Little things. A character in shorthand. They defined Rusty so no-one else had to.
A shiny enough surface could hide a sin of multitudes.
Late one night and Reuben was curious and innocent. "Rusty can't be your real name?"
The pause lasted no time but there was eternity enough for Danny to wonder what he knew, what he'd seen, before he understood the real nature of the question and relaxed.
"Robert Charles," Rusty smiled and Reuben laughed and agreed that Rusty was far better.
Later still and they were alone and Danny had to ask. "Charles?"
Rusty raised an eyebrow. "Don't you think I look like a Charles?"
Like it matters. Neither of them said it.
"A Charlie, maybe," Danny suggested lightly.
Rusty laughed and said something about chocolate and Oompa Loompas and the moment passed. Like it always did.
They learned to be what people never expected them to be.
There was vision and knowledge, plans and execution. Why not dream a little further than they should? They danced in the stars and had further to fall.
Laughing, they ran across Atlantic City with Frank, barely three steps ahead of Jacob Foley and his threats and his promises, and piece by piece, twist by twist, leap by leap, all his money fell into their hands and they escaped the consequences by a coin toss. (Heads they win. Tails they die. Flip it. Now.)
In Chicago Bobby told them not to walk blithely into the Lanzecki house. Begged them. He told them it wasn't worth it. But they went anyway. Even though they knew it was almost certainly a trap. (Walk into hell and fear no evil for the devil is dead.)
They learned and they fought and they planned and they stole and they had to keep moving, they always, always had to keep moving because if they stopped . . .
They played the game. They had nothing to lose.
Rusty wandered home, a little later than he should have been, and Danny smiled and fixed him a drink.
"Livingston?" he asked.
Rusty collapsed gracefully on the sofa. "Yeah. Explaining - "
" - oh," Danny nodded and wondered. "You understand?"
"Some," Rusty allowed.
"You interested?" Danny asked and immediately regretted it.
Rusty smiled in shadows. "I was."
There was a pause. Time stretched. Light faded. "You should learn to say no," Danny suggested lightly.
A one-night stand lasted four days and left Rusty lying on their sofa, blood still slowly oozing, battered beyond recognition.
"It was what he wanted," Rusty explained, giddy weariness through swollen lips.
Danny clenched his fists and said nothing.
(There were fingermarks on Rusty's hips; purple and livid. He saw the ways Rusty's body had been used and he knew the ways Rusty had begged.)
He fetched the first aid kit.
"You're crazy," Saul told them, late one evening. "You do know that, right?"
"To be absolutely fair - " Danny began,
" - in our own defence," Rusty contributed.
" - we do know that," they finished.
Saul smiled a little. Danny pretended. Probably one of them was lying. But he didn't know who.
Darkness, silence and pain. They sat on the floor, leaning back against the sofa and even if they'd been able to see, they wouldn't have been looking at each other.
Danny didn't speak. What was there to say?
"I don't remember," Rusty said, eventually and the whisper echoed round the room. His good arm was wrapped tightly around his ribs and maybe Danny could hear the pain in his voice and maybe he was imagining it.
There had been a cellar, soundproofed and stained with old blood. They'd been handcuffed and apart, and Jonathan Faulks had stood over them, tying knots in a length of rope.
"It was you though," Danny said quietly.
It had been Rusty, winning all of Faulks' attentions, taking all of his mercies. It had been Rusty spitting endless profanity. Rusty staring Faulks in the eyes. Rusty, whose mocking laughter had echoed through the cellar. And worse. When Faulks had been walking away. Rusty who had screamed out the truth that everyone knew and no-one ever, ever mentioned. ("I know what you did, you bastard. You left him. Ten years ago, you left him and he died.") It had been Rusty. Only Rusty.
"I don't remember," Rusty repeated and Danny could hear the truth of it.
He closed his eyes and listened to the sound of the rope coming down again and again, listened to the sound of bones cracking and flesh breaking. "I should be protecting you."
One day there was Tess and for a second time Danny fell in love at first sight. For a long time he didn't tell Rusty. Didn't want to. Wasn't as if Rusty didn't know.
He didn't tell Tess either. Oh, he saw her. There were meetings, engineered and otherwise, and she smiled her interest and he chatted happily and avoided answering her questions so well that she never noticed.
He had responsibilities. Ones he couldn't abandon just because his heart ached.
"You should," Rusty told him, in a little hotel room overlooking the Hudson, in response to a thought he would never, ever voice.
"You think it's all about you, don't you?" Danny taunted back.
There was an eternity's silence, and Rusty's eyes were full of the always-apology. "Think I want you to live your life - "
Danny had to interrupt. Had to. " - think I have a life without - "
" - look me in the eyes, Danny," Rusty demanded. "Look me in the eyes and tell me you don't want a bit of normal."
"There's lots of things I want," Danny said quietly.
Rusty looked at him then, open and unguarded and impulsively, impossibly, he leaned forwards and he was kissing Rusty, pushing Rusty back against the wall, his hand gripping Rusty's wrist tightly, and there was passion and ferocity and this was everything he could have imagined, no, no, better than he could have imagined, everything he could ever want, need, everything he could want, and it wasn't like kissing Rusty, it was like . . .everything . . .he'd . .ever . .. wanted . . .
With a cry of horror he jumped back and, panting heavily, he stared at the stranger looking back at him, the beautiful, perfect stranger, and there was desire and there was lust and he wanted and he ached and he forced himself to look away for a long moment.
When he finally dared to look back, Rusty was there, sagging against the wall, his fingers rubbing at his mouth. "Don't ever do that again," he said, and there was infinite exhaustion and endless defeat.
"I'm sorry," Danny whispered and Rusty nodded.
"I need - "
" - a few days." Danny agreed.
Rusty paused. "A week," he said quietly.
"No!" Danny was definite. Rusty never stayed away that long. Never stayed in the hurricane that long. Anything could happen. Anyone could happen. "Three days," he offered.
"This isn't a fucking negotiation, Danny," Rusty snapped. "A week." And his voice was trembling and already he was losing himself and Danny couldn't hold him together this time.
Knowing his defeat, he nodded. "A week," he promised. "I'll find you."
"You always do," Rusty said quietly, bitter and weary beyond comprehension.
Danny closed his eyes.
Rusty vanished.
And Danny didn't open his eyes until long after he heard the door close.
He spent the week with Tess and dreamed of other lives.
Eventually he introduced Rusty to Tess and he watched as Tess was polite and proprietary and possessive and he watched as Rusty faded, watched the dazzle turn up and the substance drop away.
All through dinner Rusty was smiling and happy. Mildly charming. Faintly vacuous. At every step he deferred to Danny, looking for his opinion, seeking his approval. Rusty was harmless and non-threatening and infinitely less than he should be, and Danny's heart clenched as he watched Tess warm to this eager-to-please stranger whom Danny would find it so easy to despise.
Later he grabbed Rusty's arm. "Is that really what she wants?" he asked desperately.
Rusty just blinked at him and didn't understand the question.
Danny tried his best to keep the two halves of his life (soul) separate. And maybe it killed him and maybe it didn't.
There was time and there was distance. They stepped apart, a little apart, and the world didn't end. The need was still there. The urgency. Danny still heard the storm at night. But he had more than he could ever ask for. He felt safe.
Complacency set in. Luck faded.
Danny got caught.
Danny went to prison.
Four years and every day was a fresh wound.
He lost Rusty. He lost Tess.
Difference was, Tess had wanted to leave. And he knew she'd still be there when he got out.
Everyday he wondered where Rusty was. Who Rusty was. Who he was with and what they were making him. Every day he imagined new hells.
There were cookies that arrived at irregular intervals and that was comforting, because at least it meant that somewhere in the hurricane, he was remembered.
And he wished he dared reply. But it was dangerous. A phone call, a letter. Too easy to let his loneliness and his longing and his need create someone he would need to face afterwards.
He was alone.
He hurt.
The day he got out he went to Frank not expecting anything to come of it. He'd long since accepted that tracking Rusty down would be difficult, bringing him back almost impossible, and he'd gone to Frank looking for a starting point. Probably a four-years-ago starting point.
But Frank had smiled and told him. Smiled. Like there were no rumours, like there was no word of anyone else seeing the storm. And that was just a little bit impossible.
The picture of Tess and Benedict burned in his pocket and maybe he could get everything back.
He watched Rusty for a while and he worried. Rusty slumped at the bar, alone and diminished and aching and Danny wondered.
The tattoo was new, and when Danny saw it for the first time it almost blinded him. A note, a whisper, a brand of wrongness.
The poker school was not amusing. Nowhere Rusty should be. Nothing Rusty should be.
But it was Rusty that walked in. Rusty that looked at him, recognition in his eyes, relief shining through his skin, and Danny sat and they played themselves for the benefit of a group of spoiled children who would never see the starshine. Of course, they'd never see the storm either.
Maybe there was an advantage to ignorance.
Rusty was musing lightly on Reuben's likely reaction, like nothing had happened, like the impossible was commonplace and Danny couldn't bear it any more. He leaned across and hit the emergency stop button.
"How long?" he asked, and Rusty shrugged and didn't pretend not to understand.
Danny stared at him. "Four years?" he demanded, and he didn't know which of them deserved the anger.
Rusty looked at him. "Maybe," he said and the uncertainty, the confusion wasn't feigned.
"Tell me," Danny ordered quietly. Because it wasn't possible. Shouldn't have been possible. For Rusty to stay for four years. On his own. And he could see the strain, could almost hear the roar of the hurricane, so close to the surface.
"I wanted you to have someone to come back to," Rusty said eventually while his fingers traced over the ink lines on his forearm and Danny wondered how many layers of meaning he'd have to unravel before he could read his own name.
He was a coward and didn't try.
"It hurt so much," Rusty added, quiet and pleading and desperate, and Danny closed his eyes and still, still he could see the raging misery engrained on Rusty's being, a storm tied down with string, a soul tethered in darkness. He quickly nodded his permission and Rusty disappeared.
Danny spent three days letting the storm rage around him. They found the places with the most people and Rusty changed in response to every passing thought and Danny watched and endured and was alone.
The fourth morning he woke up in the Cabana Suite in the Hollywood Roosevelt, and Rusty handed him a cup of espresso. "Fight night," he said simply.
Danny nodded and accepted the apology. "We're gonna take him - "
" - might as well take him for money he doesn't even have yet," Rusty agreed with a smile. "Tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow," Danny nodded. Today was all about them. And they did nothing and everything and he was the happiest he'd been in four years.
It was a bar and he was sitting with Rusty and Rusty wasn't there. Wasn't the first time, so he knew it didn't matter. Sometimes, no one came back. Sometimes, there was an emptiness. He'd learned to cope, learned to deal with the fact that, eventually, if he stayed and talked and didn't make a fuss, eventually Rusty would find his way back to him. Wasn't the first time. It didn't matter. He wasn't worried.
"And Saul makes ten," he said into the silence. "Ten ought to do it, you think?"
No answer. "You think we need one more?" he asked. They'd had the conversation earlier. There hadn't been a conclusion.
"You think we need one more," he repeated more definitely. After all, Rusty did. Had. Would again.
He paused again. "Okay, we'll get one more," he agreed affably.
Rusty could have whatever he liked. If he'd just come back.
Danny was lonely.
Wasn't the first time.
It didn't matter.
He watched the way Rusty reacted to Linus and Yen and he learned who they were. Learned about anger and pride and confidence and humour on the one side and youth and impatience and uncertainty and hero-worship and an edge of adoration on the other.
It was something of a cheat, but his ability to read people came from understanding and instinct. His ability to read whatever was imprinted on Rusty was something else, something deeper and older and colder.
It was something of a cheat but they were conmen and everything they were was a lie.
Danny wasn't altogether surprised when, late one night, he came across Rusty and Linus, sitting on the sofa together. Linus was nervous and his hand was on Rusty's thigh. Rusty's eyes were blank and his mouth was smiling and inviting.
The old misery and fury rose up inside, and he knew it was irrational, knew it wasn't Linus' fault, wasn't Rusty's fault.
"Linus?" he smiled. "Can I talk to you for a moment?"
With an audible gulp, Linus followed him. Rusty didn't react in any way and Danny would get to that in a moment.
As soon as they stepped round the corner Linus started talking. "Look, Danny, I know you're in charge, but we're both adults and it's not really your business - "
" - it is my business," Danny interrupted recklessly and with satisfaction he watched Linus' eyes widen.
"You and . . .you aren't . . .you don't . . . " He bit his lip. "I'm sorry."
Danny sighed, and managed to look miserable and trying to hide it. "We're not at the . . . we're not. But you and Rusty . . . it's unprofessional, okay? It'll just lead to trouble."
Linus looked abashed, and Danny wondered whether Bobby had ever sat him down and explained the nature of working relationships. "I didn't mean to. It's just that . . . " he trailed off and he looked so unhappy that Danny suddenly found it very easy to feel sorry for him.
"It's okay, kid," he said gently. "Don't worry about it." He smiled. "How's it going with Benedict, anyway?"
He escaped a half hour later and went and tracked down Rusty. Took a long moment before he was confident. "Linus?" he asked with the slightest, weariest smile.
Rusty sighed and rubbed a hand across his mouth. "He - "
" - wanted you," Danny finished flatly. "Yeah. Yeah."
"Thanks," Rusty said quietly after a long moment.
Danny smiled. "You're lucky. You imagine what Bobby would say if he heard you fucked his only son?"
Rusty grinned. "Actually, he didn't want me to fuck him."
"Oh." Danny considered this. "Oh. Kid's got more ambition than I thought."
It was all a joke and he didn't think of other times when he'd stood by and done nothing. Of course he didn't.
Rusty had been right; she looked good. She always looked good.
Still, he walked away (for the moment) and when he got into his room he was almost surprised, somehow, to see Rusty lying on his bed staring at the ceiling. He closed the door and leaned against it and waited.
"You could have lied to me," Rusty said and Danny paused and considered.
Yes, He could have lied to Rusty. Or, rather, he could have managed things, manipulated things, so that Rusty would see things his way. So Rusty would always have seen things his way. He could have made Rusty believe that stealing Tess had always been the plan, had always been the right thing to do.
"I'd never have known," Rusty added after a second and that was true too."You could have lied."
"I couldn't," he said quietly.
"If Tess was what you wanted - " Rusty began, and Danny had to interrupt.
"Tess was never . . . " he hesitated. "Tess was never all I wanted," he said finally.
Rusty nodded and looked at Danny for the first time. "We can make it work," he said and Danny didn't really know if he meant the con or them. Didn't matter. They could make it work.
He smiled. "We'll need - "
" - the kid," Rusty suggested.
Danny considered, and part of him was thinking about Rusty's eyes as he'd been sitting on the sofa and he considered snatched moments and kisses he hadn't been there to interrupt and Rusty bending to any will that would have him. "We need to be nice about it?" he asked.
Rusty grinned.
He knew Tess was waiting in the car long before he saw her. Because it wasn't exactly Rusty who greeted him.
That was okay. There was time.
He could have everything. At least for a little while.
Time passed and he lived Tess' dreams and walked in Rusty's nightmares.
He never showed he was hurt by either.
He met a man named Robert Ryan who owned a hotel and cared about his guests and his staff and not so much about profit. Danny liked him and could see the echo of the man he loved.
Later, when he could, later, with little more than whisky and curiosity, he asked Rusty why, and Rusty had laughed and said that roses were passée.
Terry Benedict swept back into their lives like he thought he was their own personal nemesis and there were so many people in their past, his past, Rusty's past, that he wanted to introduce Terry to. People who would teach him the real meaning of ruthlessness. The real meaning of pain.
Still. There were the others. There was Tess. And they looked at each other and agreed what they could not risk.
Playing someone else's game. Looking for ways to cheat.
He caught Rusty by the arm and stared at him in the moonlight. "Who does she know?"
Rusty shrugged and looked away. "Me. She knows me," he lied.
The smallest of hopes died in Danny's soul.
"You don't think I look fifty?" he asked as Rusty tried to decide what vending machine he was going to ransack.
"Think Italian Mars Bars taste any different?"
He shrugged. "Maybe. You should set up a taste test."
Rusty nodded. "How old are you?"
"How old are you?" he countered and Rusty shrugged.
Uncertainty hung in the air.
"Guess you look older."
"Guess I probably am."
He spent the poker game watching Isabel and within ten minutes he was convinced that she would never see the hurricane. It would never touch her and she'd never be able to hold back the storm.
He watched her smile at Robert. Roses were passée.
It was late and they were alone. "I do love her, you know," Rusty told him earnestly. "I know I'm not . . . I know you think . . .I love her. I am capable of that."
Danny stared at the TV and watched Tyler Durden for a while.
"Hey, you created me. I didn't create some loser alter-ego to make myself feel better. Take some responsibility!"
He didn't say anything.
"I am," Rusty whispered.
One month into six and he got a phone call from Tess who'd had a phone call from Isabel. He went and found Rusty.
"You planning on calling your girlfriend some time in the next year?" he asked lightly and he watched the blankness in Rusty's eyes. He sighed. "Isabel," he said gently.
There was a long moment of nothing. Rusty closed his eyes. "Most women just have to worry about their boyfriend forgetting their anniversary," he said at last and his voice was full of hatred and self-loathing.
Danny nodded and buried the guilt where Rusty couldn't see.
He'd never wanted Isabel in Rusty's life.
He spent the next five months mentioning her as often as he could.
Rusty didn't forget again.
"He's not deaf, Linus," he said and maybe he was a little irritable and maybe he just had more experience at talking to someone who wasn't there.
He looked back at the screen for a while and watched Dr Dwayne Dawling. He'd spent last night in Dwayne's company, listening to him earnestly explain the Billups-Mancini report and the man was altogether too real for his liking. Rusty was latching on to anything, any way to get some respite from the storm and some days the world crumbled for no reason and some days Danny was afraid.
There was a moment when sincerity and knowledge threatened to overwhelm everything that should be. Gritting his teeth, he waited, and tried to come up with a contingency plan for Bank agreeing to shut the hotel and for the thousandth, thousandth time, tried to come up with a contingency plan for Rusty losing himself to the storm while they were in the middle of the con. Pragmatism. Some days it was all he had.
Finally, Rusty's eyes flickered to his tattoo and Danny watched him reassert himself and he breathed a sigh of relief and rejoiced that Linus would never know.
Later, later after he'd left Reuben, and was busy pacing the hallway, hurting to see Reuben like that, later Linus caught up with him, the remains of embarrassment clinging to him, and Danny was too tired to ask why.
"Hey, Danny," Linus began, "I was wondering . . . " He trailed off.
Danny leaned back against the wall. "What, kid?" he asked.
Linus bit his lip. "Well, you know how Rusty is so good at being other people? And Saul too . . . I was wondering if you thought I could learn to do that?"
For a long moment all Danny could do was stare. Then he started laughing. He really, really couldn't help it.
The kid looked hurt. "What?"
Danny shook his head. "Oh, private joke," he apologised. "Sorry. Ask Saul for lessons."
"Really?" Linus perked up. "Not Rusty?"
"No!" Danny snapped. He forced himself to smile. "Not Rusty. Trust me, Saul's method would work better for you."
"Okay," Linus nodded and in Danny's mind he went off skipping.
He sighed. There were advantages to ignorance.
He watched Rusty – Taylor Tamworth – leave the bar hand in hand with an awestruck, infatuated croupier.
Six months and too many people, and too many reflections and more and more Danny had been looking at Rusty and no one had been looking back.
Rusty had known exactly what Danny had been suggesting when he'd mentioned the bar. A place to vanish. A time to be someone else, to be someone else's and tomorrow they could start again, no harm, no foul and neither of them had mentioned Isabel.
Today was a day of pragmatism. Today wasn't the end of the world.
Tomorrow they could start again.
At this point Danny couldn't even meet his eyes in the mirror over the bar.
Abigail Sponder had access, and Danny hadn't even hesitated before saying that Rusty could do it. He'd have sent Rusty in to disappear into someone else's desires, someone else's mind, someone else's reflections, and the only defence he'd ever had was that he always found Rusty again.
Use what you've got. Even the weaknesses.
But Linus wooed Sponder with charm and chemicals and a fake nose, and if it had been Rusty there would have been sex and betrayal and Danny never sold his own soul for money or pride.
Staring at Oprah and he found himself wondering if they could have made different choices. He wondered if their life had been inevitable, a scripted path of manipulations and lies, a constant fight to hide everything they were from the people they loved. He wondered if there'd even been a moment when they could have said no.
He wondered.
(He never wondered if he'd have been happier without Rusty. Never. He didn't.)
The sun was rising over Vegas and he wandered next to Rusty and the world was warm around them.
"I remember when this used to be the Dunes," he mused. "Reuben taught me to shoot craps here when I was a kid. I'd play hard ways and double sixes. He straightened me out. I was . . . twenty-two."
Rusty smiled. "First time I met Reuben he looked me off getting cheated in an all-dealers game at the El Rancho. Then he bought me breakfast."
Danny nodded and didn't comment. That wasn't the first time that Rusty had met Reuben. The first time that Rusty had met Reuben had been almost a year before that when they'd been taking part in the taking down of Anthony Parker, and they'd found themselves involved in a poker game in the Xanadu, for the sort of stakes that Danny didn't like to think of too much. That had been the first time Reuben had ever smiled at them and said they were out of their minds. It hadn't been the last.
And Rusty didn't remember, and that hurt a little. But Rusty's memories got tangled sometimes, oftentimes, most times. Personal history twisted and overwritten, the hurricane destroying, and Danny would never know why and Rusty would never know at all.
"The Sands was there," Rusty added pointing, "The Desert Inn."
He smiled. "They built them a lot smaller back then."
"They seemed pretty big," Rusty commented.
"Town's changed." Hadn't they all.
Danny gazed out at the the constantly-shifting city and felt at home.
However much it might change, year to year, day to day, Vegas endured. The soul survived.
He left Rusty at the airport. They didn't say goodbye. They never said goodbye. Every time could be the last and they had to live as if it was forever.
It all ended, late one night, amid death and danger and darkness. They hadn't been children for a very long time and the dream had lasted thirty years longer than Danny would ever have believed.
There was a simple con, a mark who was more puzzled than angry, a need to get out of town before he figured out he'd been taken. There were the three of them, Danny, Rusty, Linus and a feeling of happiness, of confidence. There was the convertible, haphazardly parked in the middle of the parking lot and Danny had thought it had looked perfectly stealable.
Then the owner stepped out of the shadows and, with an angry shout, drove a knife into Danny's side.
He knew, as he fell to the sidewalk, pained and cold, he knew he was going to die.
He heard Linus screaming, terrified, horrified, disbelieving. He heard the sound of his murderer running away. He heard, felt, knew Rusty, dropping down beside him, pulling him into his arms. "Danny, Danny, I'm here. I'm here. I've got you."
There was a point when he smiled, and there was pain and he turned his head and kissed Rusty's arm. "Rus'," he whispered and there was so much he needed to say.
"Linus is calling an ambulance," Rusty said and his hands were pressing into Danny's side, trying to keep Danny's life from spilling out. "It's going to be okay."
"No it's not," Danny told him gently.
Rusty shook his head in frantic denial. "Yes - "
" - look at me, Rus'," he ordered. "They're not going to be in time." There wasn't any time.
They looked at each other for a long, long moment. An endless, wonderous, agonising ache of a moment, and Danny could hold the storm back with a look, but he couldn't save them, he'd never been able to save them.
"No," Rusty agreed at last in a whisper. There was no more time. Danny squeezed his hand tightly and demanded a little longer anyway.
He looked over to where Linus was just hanging up his phone, hurt and desperate and needing to believe in miracles. "They'll be here soon Danny," he said in a voice that was choked with tears. "If you can just - "
" - I need you to do something for me, Linus," he interrupted. "Please."
Linus dropped down next to them. "Anything," he promised wildly. "Oh, anything."
"I need you to tell Tess . . . " He swallowed hard and tasted blood. "I need you to tell her that I love her. That I'm sorry and I was thinking of her."
"Of course," Linus nodded frantically. "But you can tell her yourself, you'll be able to tell her yourself, the ambulance will be here soon, Danny, it really will."
He tried to smile. "Sure, kid," he murmured. "Thank you." And he looked Linus in the eyes, and he meant so much more than this.
The kid was crying and Danny didn't watch.
Rusty was there and the rest of the world died away. "Rus'."
"Danny, oh, Danny, I'm . . .I . . . " He could see the words burning through Rusty, the words that were always there. Love and sorry and always and he could see everything that Rusty was – his Rusty– and he didn't want to lose that, didn't want the world to lose that, he wanted them to stay, together and whole and eternal, burning brightly through forever.
"It's okay," he said gently. "I already know."
He did. He really did. Rusty was Danny's. His perfect reflection. Danny was Rusty's anchor. The only thing that bound him to the world, the only thing that kept the hurricane from tearing itself apart.
"I'm sorry," Rusty whispered, and the tears fell on to Danny's face, and Danny almost wished he could accept the apology, almost wished he could give in to the selfish desire to be remembered.
In a month, week, day's time, and then for all eternity, the man who would walk in Rusty's skin would not know Danny's name. There would be no one left alive who knew who they'd been and what that had meant.
He raised his hand and stroked Rusty's cheek and he watched the trails of blood his fingers left behind. "I loved you," he said softly and the storm whispered a lullaby to his soul. He looked up at Rusty and thought of sunshine and he smiled and the darkness came.
Danny died. The storm broke. And three days later in a city that could have been anywhere and was probably nowhere, a man whose name might have been Caleb Callaghan looked at himself in the mirror for the first time, blinked and wiped the last traces of blood off his cheek.
Thank you for reading. I'd really like to know what you thought. Please.