A/N: Okay so the author's notes on the last one didn't show up right away, but here: have some more Danley! Hope you like it 3 Rated for suggestive material and a tiny bit of swearing
When they first meet, its by complete accident and Henley swears she made a complete fool of herself (she didn't).
He knows when he sees her hair, natural and practically glowing in the morning sunlight, that she is absolutely positively the one for him and everyone else who auditioned to be J. Daniel Atlas' assistant should just go home. She wasn't even there for him and still, she catches his eye and that's that.
Hook, line, and sinker.
XXX
He teaches her about cards and how to play the game of magic, he teaches her how to put on a show and smile at audiences like she's accepting a Grammy. He puts her in the tiny little costumes so other people can envy what he has, but at the same time, she provides a distraction for the bigger trick. He's selfish, he knows, but he doesn't want to say it out loud in fear of her thinking anything but the best of him.
He doesn't know that she will always think the best of him, even at three in the morning when her bags are all packed and she's still yelling about Rebecca and how could he do this to her, after all they've been through. Its a married couple's argument but a lover's quarrel, and they split the deck in half.
XXX
He stole her heart, her mind, her body, her everything and if he wanted it back all it would take were two little words.
Unfortunately for him, Danny's still too selfish to realize what he could have if he just said the words out loud.
When he sees her a year later, it echoes after every single syllable in his mind.
"Always be the smartest man in the room" I'm so sorry, Henley.
"You have lost weight" I didn't mean it, I swear. I'm teasing you and I'm an asshole and this is my way of coping, I'm sorry.
XXX
Everybody's got a trump card; something that gives away the trick or the illusion. When they sit in silence next to each other with their palms intertwined and later, with their mouths and their bodies and their hearts, Daniel thinks he knows his at long last. She tears down his walls only to have him build them higher, so nobody can get in.
But if he said those two little words, all the walls would crumble, the illusion would fall away and she'd stop being a trump card and become the Queen of his Heart. Yeah, card puns, sue him.
If only he knew what she felt, what she thought, that she felt the same.