Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Ocean's 11
A/N: Companion piece to 'And home'.
For InSilva, partly because she asked for it, mostly for other reasons.
The sun was setting now. The sky was on fire and it was beautiful. Reflected in the ocean. He took a swig from the bottle and didn't think of the obvious. It was the Pacific, he thought. Probably. Judging by the temperature and what he vaguely remembered of the flight. The Pacific. Almost certainly.
Didn't really matter. He'd run away, that was for sure. Run far, and even if she was looking she'd never find him. (If anyone was looking, they'd never find him. That was good. Honestly, it was.)
She'd left. She'd looked at him and there'd been fury and there'd been horror and she'd slammed the door and left, and there'd been things he could have done. Sensible things. But instead, he'd taken a drink. And another one. And then he'd realised that she might come back, that she might want to talk things over, and he'd left in a hurry, and he'd ran, and there'd been a plane, he knew there'd been a plane, and a stewardess with sympathy and a nice smile who'd had no idea how drunk he was and had been only too happy to give him his complimentary champagne and keep serving him, long after anyone who really knew him would have cut him off. (Danny, always Danny, only Danny, and that was one of the problems right there.)
He'd run away and he'd got drunk. He sighed and rubbed at the corner of his eye and winced. This was a great way of solving his problems. Very grown-up. Very mature.
He could have done the sensible thing. Of course he could have. Danny would never have said 'I told you so.' Hell, Danny hadn't told him so. Closest had been that night, after Toulour and after Benedict, during a lull in the poker.
Danny had been staring at him for a while. And he'd finally snapped and asked. "What?"
There'd been a sigh. "She thinks she knows you. She thinks she's got you all figured out. And she doesn't have the first clue."
He hadn't looked at Danny. And he hadn't looked over at Isabel, laughing with Reuben. "I know her," he'd offered quietly.
"Yeah," Danny had said. He hadn't sounded happy.
And Danny had been right, of course. He usually was. Though maybe he couldn't have predicted that the real problem would be that Isabel would think he was a better man than he was.
He'd cheated on her. That was the simple truth. The complicated truth took a little longer and involved Frank, and more importantly Frank's hapless brother-in-law, a five million dollar paper weight and the storm of trouble it brought in its wake. The stuff dreams are made of, he hadn't said, and there'd been no-one there to hear him think it. And it had involved Lizzie, sweet and selfish, and Herman Dorst who would have been overjoyed to see them all dead.
It had been a split second decision. Everything had fallen apart and Dorst had to get wind of the contract, and Lizzie's warm bed - and her snooping eyes and prying fingers – had been the easiest option. She hadn't wanted him; she'd wanted his attaché case. Hell, she hadn't even been sleeping with him; she'd been sleeping with Josh Tucker, her rival's lawyer.
Maybe he should have tried that line on Isabel. 'Honey, I didn't cheat on you. Josh Tucker did.' Somehow he didn't think she'd have taken that well. Not that she could exactly have taken it worse. He sighed. His hand felt cool against his face.
It had been the easiest option. There had been others, but it had been the easiest, the quickest, and the closest to risk-free. Anything else took him that step closer to spending serious quality time in Herman Dorst's basement. Maybe he should have risked it anyway. Maybe that was the right thing to do. Trouble was, that would have meant breaking a promise far older than any he'd made to Isabel.
But he'd cheated on her. Didn't matter what the reasons were. He'd cheated and he'd gone home and told her and that had gone about as well as he could have expected. She yelled and eventually she left. And after a time, so did he.
And there'd been a plane, and at some point the plane must have landed, must surely have landed, and there must have been an airport, must have been customs, but he couldn't remember that right now. There'd been a bar. He knew that. There'd been a bar and there'd been a bottle and then there'd been a beach and briefly there'd been a barbeque and there'd been shrimp and a friendly man in an obscene apron who would have been more than happy for him to stay, but he'd been heading for the ocean, walking in the dust, walking in the sand. There was sand between his toes. At some point he'd had shoes. Almost definitely. And socks. That was less certain.
He'd fallen. Not just metaphorically. At some point he'd fallen, and he'd got a mouthful of sand and salt, and he hadn't wanted to get back up, so he'd crawled over to the tree and propped himself up and admired the sunset. And that was where he was. Seemed to be everything important covered.
He took another mouthful of liquid. It burned his mouth and he couldn't taste it. Didn't know what it was. Whisky or rum or something else. The letters on the bottle kept moving.
Danny slumped down beside him and silently held out a glass.
He could never be surprised. Even when it was impossible, he could never be surprised.
They watched the rest of the sunset. Eventually the stars shone down on them. Eventually the bottle was empty. Danny ensured that the tree had got the lion's share. Rusty kept his face turned away and let the sand trickle through his fingers and waited.
"So," Danny began lightly, as the night unfolded ahead of them. "Are we going to talk about why I had to chase you half way round the world to sit under a coconut tree?"
Rusty paused and answered as best he could. "It's a banana tree, isn't it?"
There was an endless second of understanding, and Danny could accept that answer. He shook his head. "It's a coconut tree," he said, definitely. "We're on a desert island, therefore it's a coconut tree."
He made a conscious effort not to turn round and inspect the twinkling lights of the city behind them. "I don't think this counts as a desert island. And it's a banana tree."
"Coconut tree," Danny argued, with a smile in his voice.
Rusty looked up. "There are bananas growing in it."
"And?" Danny demanded and Rusty shrugged and considered that really, neither of them knew much about nature.
"Frank called you," he said, after a moment. Frank had known he was going to tell Isabel everything. And he hadn't been so sure that was a good idea.
"Frank called you," Danny corrected awkwardly. "Then he called me."
"He called me?" A very vague memory stirred.
"You told him he had a nice voice." Danny's voice was neutral.
Rusty closed his eyes then hid the wince as best he could.
"At least it was Frank," Danny commiserated. "If it was Linus, we'd have to be coming up with something clever right now."
"Yeah." He sighed. Frank had called Danny. And Frank wouldn't mention it again. He had always been understanding that way.
"He called me," Danny said and there was a question there.
"And I didn't," Rusty agreed.
"Yeah." Danny waited.
And he was angry, and he didn't know why. "Well, I thought about doing something stupid and reckless. Maybe trying to steal some Incan Matrimonial Headmasks and getting caught, and not calling you, and getting arrested, and not calling you, and spending four years in prison and not calling you once – not once – and leaving you to worry and imagine the worst every day for one thousand four hundred and sixty one days. But then I thought that would just be ridiculous. So I decided to spend the rest of my life under this coconut tree instead."
He stopped, breathing hard, and there was a long silence.
"Banana tree," Danny said quietly.
"Whatever." He stared up at the stars.
"What's going on, Rusty?"
"She left, Danny."
Danny's voice was patient and he was never going to accept that was all there was. "I know that. What's going on?"
He took a deep breath. "It was my fault. I betrayed her."
But Danny was implacable. "What's going on?"
He sighed and for the first time he turned to face Danny. And he knew the moment Danny saw, because the world stopped, frozen on a knife edge of ice and fire, an instant, endless supernova of rage.
Danny knelt up in front of him and he relaxed as Danny's fingers traced over the bruising and the swelling. "I'm sorry," he said, because there were some things he should never have said.
As Danny's lips brushed against his forehead, he felt like crying. "Idiot," Danny murmured. "Did I ever thank you for the cookies?"
"Yeah." A long time ago now.
Danny nodded. "You can't rhyme Seattle and cattle though."
He smiled. "Everyone's a critic." He looked down and the smile faded and he leaned against Danny and accepted the warmth and accepted the understanding. "She left."
"Good," Danny said shortly.
"I cheated on her," he pointed out. She was the innocent one here, really.
"Because you had to. For – "
" – I didn't have to," he interrupted. "And even if I had, what would you do if Tess came to you and said she'd cheated on you, but that it was okay, because it had been a matter of . . . " He trailed off. Because he could already see the flaw in that line of argument.
Danny was merciless. "If that happened, Tess wouldn't be walking around the next day with a black eye."
"It's different," he protested. "Isabel is – "
" – a highly trained police officer with about six black belts – "
" – four – " he interrupted, because if he was going to lose, he might as well lose to accuracy.
" – who could kill both of us with her bare hands," Danny finished.
He sighed. "It wasn't like that."
Danny was looking at him. "Tell me it was just this once."
"What? Yes!" he said immediately.
Danny continued looking.
"It was just this one time, Danny," he promised and he felt Danny relax fractionally. "I told her what I'd done and she was . . . " Furious. Understandably furious. "We argued, and things got out of hand." He'd lain on the floor, blinking up at her, trying to clear his head and he'd seen . . . "The look on her face . . . she didn't leave because of me, Danny. She left because of her. She was horrified. She was frightened. I should call her."
"No." Danny said firmly. "You're not calling her."
Rusty twisted round and sat up straight, leaning away from him. "Is this because of . . . or is this because you just don't like her?"
"Rus' . . ." Danny sighed.
"You never liked her," he pointed out.
"No," Danny agreed. "She didn't understand you. She didn't see you. And she didn't understand . . . " He waved a hand between them and Rusty knew what he meant. She hadn't understood the indescribable, the eternal, the unique.
"Neither does Tess," he said, after a second.
"Tess knows that there's something she doesn't understand, though," Danny said immediately.
Rusty bit his lip and tried not to agree. But Isabel had never understood that there was a DannyandRusty that she could never be a part of. Not that anyone ever understood. Not really. And he thought of Cora and Danny wishing things were easier, and he remembered the five days of alien coldness, and Danny pleading with him, and the lonely fear, deep inside, when he couldn't find his way back.
Isabel had never demanded more than he could give.
"I love her," he whispered and he leant back and closed his eyes.
"Plenty more fish in the sea." And he frowned because there was an abundance of endless understanding and eternal love and boundless compassion in Danny's voice, that didn't fit the words, and Danny didn't talk in clichés anyway. Not to him. He opened his eyes and was confronted with a napkin full of shrimp.
He grinned. "Pick it up specially?"
"Guy with a barbeque, further down the beach," Danny agreed.
"The one with the amusing apron?" Rusty asked.
Danny frowned. "What – "
" – Yen on a good day," he explained.
"A good day?" Danny raised an eyebrow.
He considered. "Or a bad day."
"Or any day, really."
He smiled. They ate the shrimp.
"How did you find me?" he asked, eventually.
Danny shrugged. "Figured if you hadn't called me then you probably thought you wanted to be on your own."
"And you weren't going to allow that," he commented ironically.
"No," Danny's voice was serious. "I wasn't." He leaned over and squeezed Rusty's hand, and Rusty revelled in the reminder that he was never on his own. "Anyway, I went to the hotel, checked your rooms, realised you'd been drinking so I checked with the cab company, followed you to the airport and charmed the staff into giving me details of the first five flights you would have seen. Found Simon Paxton on the third one. So I followed you out here and made enquiries."
Rusty looked at him.
"What?" Danny asked.
"I'm slightly impressed," Rusty admitted.
Danny grinned. "I'm slightly impressive."
He laughed. "I'm impressed you managed to find someone who'd both seen me and spoke English."
"Hey!" Danny managed to look offended. "I might not speak seven languages – "
" – eight." Rusty corrected.
"Eight?" Danny blinked.
"My new bar manager speaks Russian." He shrugged. "You pick things up."
"You do." Danny sounded amused. "Russia, huh?"
"We've never been." That had always been a good enough reason to go anywhere.
"Anyway," Danny went on, "I might not be an insane polyglot, but I can say 'Have you seen a beautiful, blond, blue-eyed American wearing a surprising shirt' in fourteen languages."
"Huh." Rusty considered that carefully and he thought of other times and other countries, and he thought of four days in Havana, lying on a dirt floor, breathing dust and the look in Danny's eyes when he'd broken the door down. That had been impossible too.
Danny nodded. "Yeah. Comes in handy."
There was silence and he was almost sober now and he stared up at the stars and wondered where she was.
"I should call her," he said again.
"No," Danny said, and there was anger in his voice.
He sighed. "It's not – "
Danny looked at him fiercely. " - I'm not forgiving her, and you're not calling her."
Turning away he pulled out his cell phone. Danny grabbed it out of his hands, leapt up and strode towards the ocean.
"Hey!" he protested, and by the time he'd managed to get his legs sorted out enough to follow, the phone was history. "Nice throw," he commented, tracking its progress out to sea.
"They don't build those things to survive that," Danny said smugly, and all unnoticed Rusty's hand was already creeping into Danny's jacket pocket. He turned back in time to see Rusty punching the number into his phone. "No you don't,"
They both watched as Danny's phone followed Rusty's into the Pacific.
"Well," Danny said eventually. "We're ten thousand miles from home, you look like you went five rounds with King Kong and I just threw away our only means of communication with the wider world."
Rusty nodded and considered sitting back down. Danny put an arm around his shoulders. "Come on," he said gently.
The stars moved. Just a little bit. "Where are we going?" he asked.
"I'm going to find a bed to put you to."
"Okay," he nodded. That sounded like a good idea. 'And you'll stay,' he didn't ask, because Danny would stay as long as Rusty needed him.
Danny's eyes promised he'd stay just a bit longer than forever. "And tomorrow or the next day, or whenever, things will be better and we'll find you some new shoes."
"And some chocolate?" he asked, hopefully.
Danny smiled. "Chocolate we can do tonight."
"And a drink?" he asked.
There was a mild glare. "You've had enough."
"I love her." He spoke quietly.
Danny held him a little tighter. "I know."
"I didn't mean to hurt her." He could hardly hear himself over the sound of the waves.
Danny held him a little closer. "I know."
"She hit me." He whispered.
Danny held him as if he was never going to let go. "I know."
He let himself fall then, he let himself cry, and Danny held him up and held him together and the world didn't end.
Presently he looked up and he smiled and the stars were bright and Danny kissed him, brief and tender.
"Let's go home."