On Board by InSilva
Disclaimer: None of them mine, sadly. Still hopeful.
A/N: am being nagged to post. No, not by her. Well. No more than usual. :) And otherhawk is currently denying I have artistic talent. Le sigh.
Summary: Set between O12 and O13. In which a friend's best intentions lead to discomfort and no escape. Warnings for no violence. But there is certainly some profanity.
Reuben had meant well; of that, Rusty was sure. It didn't mean he wasn't going to kill him when he caught up with him.
When he'd found out Rusty had bought the Standard Hotel, Reuben had been highly delighted and anxious to share the wisdom of experience in the same way that Saul did. Unlike Saul, Reuben's expertise embraced a sizeable chunk of legitimate.
"Let me help, Rusty," Reuben had said. "This is something I know something about. Indulge me."
And that had led to a weekend spent with Reuben, trying to absorb what he could and to fit Reuben's generalisms around what he knew he wanted to do with the Standard.
Rusty had a plan to update and modernise and freshen up the tired and the worn. He had a plan to ask without asking for commitment from his staff and to lead by example. He had a plan to use his contacts within Hollywood to publicise and to launch.
Reuben hadn't wanted to talk about that; at least, not so much as he had wanted to talk about his main message.
"Your bottom line. You need to watch your costs above everything. People get caught up in chasing revenue and they don't look at the other side of the balance sheet. The empty vanity of sales, they call it."
He'd puffed on his cigar and Dominic had appeared with a light lunch and Rusty had smiled and nodded.
The trouble was that Rusty had no trouble keeping track of costs when a job was involved. He might not have Reuben's quickfire mathematical brain but he was certainly able to add and subtract. The hotel business, however, appeared to be the next stage up of accounting: accruals and prepayments and amortization and depreciation and assets and bad debt and Rusty's head started to ache. It surely couldn't be that difficult.
A few years on and Rusty was still convinced it couldn't be that difficult. He had figured out the details of how to get in to any number of impossible places and out again. Impossible was what he did best. Surely he could cope with a hotel. Except that somehow, the hotel accounts were like the tar baby in the Brer Rabbit story. Silent and yet demanding attention and all in all, a sticky situation.
Generating funds to keep the hotel afloat had become second nature and when he'd hesitantly explained to Isabel, she'd asked only that he be careful.
Danny had been amused and had asked the same thing.
Reuben had been horrified.
"You can't survive like that! Think of the long-term! You think you should want to be pulling jobs at my age?"
Actually, Rusty thought he probably did. In any case, he thought he was at one of the more content places in his life. Danny on the end of a phone (or occasionally visitor or host), Isabel, the hotel and the heists. It was a comfortable balance of the settled and the restless.
Reuben didn't stop worrying about him and it was a different kind of worry to that which permeated Saul. It was almost funny.
"Rusty, promise me that you're looking at the economic climate and taking into account the…what? Yeah, I'm fine. No, I am, really. Dominic's keeping an eye on my diet whether I want him to or not. Saul came by to see me the other week…"
"He means well."
"I know he does."
Doesn't make it any easier.
You got it.
Isabel was away and Danny was visiting and he'd just witnessed the Rusty side of one of the conversations.
"He sent this over for Christmas."
Danny caught the envelope and pulled out the gilt-edged invitation.
"Huh. I got socks." He studied the elegant script. "The EHOA invites you to join their seminar…learn the secrets of success…only a select few…"
He looked up at Rusty. "EHOA? Sounds like you're saying hello in another language."
"Elite Hotel Owners Association." Rusty pulled a face. "He made me a life member for my birthday."
"And this…?"
"This is an away weekend. A chance to be guided by the best minds in the business. To learn from experience."
Danny grinned and Rusty sighed.
"How bad do you think it would be if I didn't go?"
The grin grew sympathetic but the answer was clear.
"Yeah," Rusty nodded morosely. "That's what I thought."
"Maybe you could just-"
"Can you lie to Reuben any better than you can lie to Saul?"
Danny screwed up his face.
Wouldn't be easy.
"Wouldn't stop him either. He'd just book me on to the next one."
Danny looked down at the invitation again. "This is this weekend."
"Yeah."
"You've taken this long to decide you haven't decided whether you're going?"
"I've taken this long to decide that I still haven't decided how I can get out of it."
There was an obvious ask in there and Danny had the sudden image of Rusty running through a hundred and ten different excuses and their impact. Danny pursed his lips and thought long and hard and then shook his head regretfully.
"That's what I thought," Rusty said despondently.
The venue was imposing, stylish, high-class and oozing five stars. Everything that would be expected by members of the EHOA. It was also afloat.
Holdall in hand, Rusty stared up at the luxury ocean liner, the air of despondency still hanging over him.
"Looks nice," Danny commented, standing beside him, hands in pockets, his own holdall at his feet.
"According to the literature that came with the invitation, it's new," Rusty said with a gloomy air. "Launched a few months ago."
"I'm so glad I came to see you off before I headed back."
Rusty shot him a sideways glare and then his bottom lip moved fractionally.
Da-nny…
Danny's lips twitched. "Do you really think that's still going to work after all these years?"
There was a heavy sigh and a doleful silence. Danny left him hanging for a moment and then relented.
"Come on. I told Tess I'd be back on Monday. Let's get on board."
Rusty's smile was immediate and Danny could see how grateful he really was because there was not even a hint of retribution for the teasing in store.
As they walked up the gangplank, there was a last call for all those who were going ashore to go ashore.
No.
But-
Reuben.
Damn you.
Signage encouraged EHOA delegates towards a conference suite outside which there was a table with three name badges and a redhead. The redhead wore a badge declaring her to be Klareese and she smiled prettily at them and they both smiled prettily back. She blinked at them, a little wide-eyed and their smiles dimmed down to the right side of blinding.
"My name is Rusty Ryan," Rusty said, flashing his invitation.
"Welcome, Rusty. Oh, it is good to see you. I was worrying that you wouldn't make it in time. My name is Klareese." She handed him a badge with his name on. "I will be your facilitator this weekend."
"Klareese."
Her eyes travelled over to Danny and Danny's eyes crinkled. Distraction. Charm. Allow Rusty time to read upside down. Allow Rusty time to pass his own invite to him surreptitiously.
"And you are…?"
"This is Corbett Branson," Rusty explained. "We just met on the way up here."
"Oh, that's good!" Klareese said happily, taking the invitation from Danny and looking as if she wanted to clap her hands. "You've broken the ice already."
Danny's badge firmly in place, Klareese looked over their shoulders and then sighed.
"We're still missing Grace Fuller but I think we should make a start. Please go in and find a seat."
She pushed open the door to the suite and ushered them in.
"Thank you for not making me Grace Fuller," Danny murmured.
"Quite impossible," Rusty muttered back.
Danny's eyes narrowed but Rusty's expression remained innocent.
There was a boardroom table with seven men seated and four empty chairs dotted round it, two of them together. They gravitated naturally towards them and sat down.
"Everyone, we have two new arriv…" Klareese began and then frowned. "Where…?"
The man sitting the other side of the table from them – Walter Christie, according to his name badge - stirred in his seat and indicated the empty chair opposite Rusty. "He's just using the facilities."
"Well, we'll wait," Klareese smiled brightly and if there was any annoyance at the delay it was professionally masked.
Rusty and Danny exchanged a casual look of amusement and then the laughter faded away from Danny's face. Rusty frowned.
What?
But the what didn't need to be answered because walking back from the bathroom, straightening his cuffs with a disdainful fastidiousness, was Terry Benedict.
He sat down in his chair and then looked up, saw them and the scowl was immediate and fierce as he half-rose and leaned forward .
"What are you-?"
"Terry," Klareese interrupted. "Now you're back-"
Terry wasn't listening. The snarl was all in the voice. "You think you're going to-"
"Terry!"
Klareese's voice was just this side of stern and Terry seemed to realise where he was. He composed himself and sat back in his chair, glared warnings at them and when he spoke, his voice held restrained anger.
"My apologies, Klareese. Do continue."
Terry's eyes said that this was by no means finished.
A/N: yes, yes, yes. Danny, Rusty and Terry on a boat. Again. ;)