Title: I ain't gonna change the World for You (and that's just the way we are)
Author: Kirschli Kuchen
Players: Danny; Rusty
Disclaimer: Please insert something witty here that tells that I don't own the characters and the original anime/manga/game.
Summary: Because sometimes Rusty just can't shut up and Danny just wants to strangle him.
When they meet again a couple of months after their last heist Rusty is all sharp eyes and words. His smiles are razors and his glances burn.
"I fucked Linus last night," he says nonchalantly as if it were the most normal thing in the world to screw the kid whose father you've worked with just years previous.
"That so?" Danny says and doesn't stiffen up but with Rusty it's like he's yelled all his innermost feelings at his face and left in a huff. He slumps down onto one of the loveseats in the lounge.
"Yeah," he just says and grins that small conspiratory smile like he knows something Danny doesn't and that doesn't – shouldn't – work anymore with all the years they go back.
Danny looks away, out of one of the windows into the sky and thinks he sees a tree in the distance. Rusty mutters something inaudible and huffs a breath.
"But there's more to it than that, isn't there?" he stands up and crosses the couple of steps until he's in Danny's personal space – and since when had Danny ever had any kind of personal space around Rusty anymore? – he leans over and rests his hands on Danny's armrests, leans over and stares into Danny's eyes, into his soul, searches for something Danny can't place but won't afford to give up – again – not even to Rusty.
Some moments-like-eternity pass. Rusty sighs and draws back again a little still at eyelevel.
"I love you is what it is." Rusty says and Danny can't stand it.
Danny can stand the half-truths, the skirting around the issue and the purely interpreted body language.
Danny just can't stand the truth.
Danny can't stand the blunt truth because it makes everything too real. It makes this too real like what he had with Tess and he isn't too sure if he can afford that again. Isn't sure he can afford the inevitable heartbreak that came when every relationship he's ever had had crumbled in on itself and combusted.
He hates that he can't say it back and mean it anymore.