...More Important Than That... by InSilva
Summary: Post-O13. Danny makes a decision. Danny/Rusty. One-shot.
Disclaimer: Danny and Rusty know who they belong to. It isn't me.
"I'm sorry."
Danny studies the back of his nails for a moment and then looks up, smile in place.
"I see."
"You're awfully calm. Most people…well…"
Danny continues to smile. "Would it change anything if I got angry or upset?" And off the other man's reaction, "Didn't think so."
Rusty slides the key into the lock and opens the door to find Danny standing by the window, hands in pockets, looking out. He turns as Rusty closes the door.
"Isabel away?"
"Europe. Tess know you're here?"
Danny shakes his head.
Rusty frowns. This is something more than a casual call. There's something in Danny that he can't decipher. "So tell me."
"I want to do something I should have done long ago."
And he crosses the room purposefully, runs a hand through Rusty's hair, pulls him close and kisses him.
It is full-on, it is intense, it is from nowhere and it takes Rusty a second to react. As he starts to respond, he hears what Danny has said, what he is saying, and suddenly he realises what the something is. He breaks free and stares at Danny, willing himself to be wrong but he is reading resignation and stoicism…
"How long?" Rusty asks, voice tight with emotion.
Danny shrugs. "Three months. Six. This year. Next year. Sometime."
Never.
This draws a smile from Danny. "There's someone in Paris they think I should see."
Immediately, Rusty pulls his phone out and starts to punch in the number for the airline. Danny takes the phone off him.
"Paris can wait."
"Like hell it can."
"Rusty…" and that is full of what might have been.
Rusty's eyes are asking questions, seeking answers. "So no to Paris. What do you want to do?"
"Make up for lost time," Danny says firmly and pulls him close again.
They lie in bed in the Four Seasons, close to the Champs-Elysées, windows open, curtains blowing in a light breeze and morning sunshine.
Danny looks over at Rusty who is lost in thought, staring at the ceiling.
"What?"
A half-grin plays on Rusty's lips. "I'm trying to decide whether or not this counts as masturbation."
A deep chuckle comes from Danny. "Well, either way, it's certainly sinful."
Rusty looks at him long and hard and with meaning. "Yeah."
There is a silence for a moment and then Rusty asks, "So…this…"
"The pity sex?"
The half-grin reappears at the gallows humour. "I'm not objecting, you understand, I'm just curious as to the-"
"- frequency?" Danny rolls on to his front and looks down at Rusty. "Like I said. Lot of catching up to do."
Coffee in Mont-Martre.
"Did she understand?"
"Didn't tell her."
"Not anything?"
"Well, I started writing a note saying I was going to spend the rest of your life with you, spend every waking and sleeping moment with you, never, ever let you out of my sight again to the point where I'm going to be accompanying you to restaurant toilets, but somehow, I didn't think she'd probably get it. How did Tess take it?"
Danny's smile is wide. "Probably as well as can be expected, I guess."
"You haven't told her either, have you?"
Danny looks down at the coffee cup. "What's to tell? Life's too short for apologies."
That night, Rusty lies in bed and watches Danny sleeping. He has taken to waking up at random times of the night just to do this very thing.
It's not out of any maudlin self-pity: there will be time for tears later; much later, he hopes. It's not that he thinks Danny will steal away from his side when he's not watching; they've already had the conversation about the end and Rusty knows that Danny won't go it alone yet, though he also knows that later, when he can't fully hide the symptoms, when it starts to show in the charisma and the presence and the voice and the eyes and the smile, then, in spite of what Danny says now, he will try to. Rusty is very certain that that will not be happening: Danny is not going to be on his own.
Watching Danny sleep is about burning the impression of him deep into his mind, needless but necessary. Rusty doesn't want to miss a thing.
Danny is first to wake. He glances over at Rusty, still wrapped in sleep and marvels not for the first time at this man of grace and beauty, of ferocious loyalty, this man with the quicksilver mind at his side. It is, he feels, a privilege to have met Rusty, to know him, to have him in his life, entwined at levels they can't articulate, at levels they have yet to find the boundaries of.
He doesn't feel selfish in seeking Rusty out. He doesn't feel wrong in the physicality he has initiated. He doesn't feel bad about cutting out Isabel and Tess. It all feels right; so very, very right.
Rusty stirs and opens irresistible, sleepy eyes. Danny leans over and wakes him properly with a long, slow kiss.
They have all the time in the world.
A/N: tricky to summarise and impossible to title. I ended up with part of a Bill Shankly quote. Although that was about football. And this isn't. :-)