Winter Sunshine by InSilva
Disclaimer: I don't own them and if I did, I would be reported to the RSPCDAR.
Summary: Danny through a glass darkly.
Danny was love.
Rusty felt the love, immediate and amazing and reciprocated. Love encouraged; love allowed them to soar; equals, exploring the universe together.
Danny was always smiling. Warm and friendly and inclusive. He made friends with unlikely people in unlikely places and that was often helpful in unexpected ways.
Bruiser, for example. Easy to overlook as a person in spite of his bulk and his height, always going to struggle to reach three figures on his IQ test but good-hearted and kind. A gentle giant who was resigned to being thought of only as an inflictor of pain. (The fact that he was very good at the inflicting was another matter entirely). But Danny took the time to get to know him, to hear about his family, to catalogue facts. These things were remembered. Danny moved to a place of reverence in Bruiser's heart.
Danny was a people person. Instinctively. Automatically. Drawn to backstories and life and personalities and able to empathise and make the other person feel a hundred feet tall just by taking time to listen.
Tess always felt special. Loved and cared for and yes, the fact that Danny had come to Vegas for her - for her - not for several million dollars… Oh, that fact helped too. Danny adored her. And Danny was adorable. Easy to return the adoration.
Danny was an ideas man. Clever and visionary and seeing shapes and colours, tumbling and melding. Drawing works of art in the air where no one could see them but him.
SaulandReubenandBobby loved that about Danny. That the impossible breathed within him. That in his head, Pegasus flew and Wonderland was a place to go to for vacation. The enchantment of unreality and he lived surrounded by it.
Danny was charming charisma in every fibre of his being. Magnetism, commanding and aspirational. Women wanted to be with him, men wanted to be him. Even James Bond would want to be Danny.
FrankandBasherandLivingston and TurkandVirgil thought Danny was the dog's. Well, Basher thought that and when he'd translated, the others agreed. Danny was incredible, Danny was the fantastic Mr Ocean.
Even Linus, with Bobby and Molly as parental role models, craved a moment in Danny's orbit. The chance for the sun to shine on him and for some of that warmth and brilliance to be absorbed.
Only Yen was immune. Self-contained and self-sufficient but he liked Danny and that was enough for Danny.
*
Things change.
Somewhere along the way, Danny lost his way.
Danny was not blind. Danny knew himself. Danny saw what others saw. Danny saw what Rusty saw even though Rusty did his best to hide it.
He was older now and more callous inside and Rusty saw the manipulative and the user and the veneer that the heroworship slid off. Rusty saw beneath. Rusty saw the constant game of dare that Danny had with himself to get another person where he wanted them.
Rusty stood up to him. In every way he could. He wouldn't leave Danny on his own because only he could keep Danny in check. A simple word, a tiny action, a little look. All designed to tell Danny that he, Rusty, had spotted the target and knew the play and that Danny's card was marked.
Rusty was weary. Not that he would ever let that slip to Danny. The hunger for conquest was constant and raged within Danny and sometimes, Danny was too quick for him and another succumbed to easy appeal for reasons they never realised. Another was used up and spat out and Danny was on to the next.
The craving was out of control. It ate away at Danny and Rusty wept to see it because once, once there had been balance and beauty and wonder and now there was hard and glass and canker rooted deep in Danny's soul.
Danny felt the liens of normality bind him and he fought against them ferociously but the world always came down to Rusty silently and forever telling him what was permitted, what was DannyandRusty and there was never a choice when that was on the table.
Determination can slip any leash.
One day, Danny dared to dream of the impossible and what, unfettered, he might achieve with a smile and empathy and charisma. Always the unexpected with Danny.
And Rusty, tired and yet trusting Rusty, never saw it coming. Not in eternity did he think of the possibility that Danny would rise up silently against him, ghosting behind him as he stood on the balcony at the Standard, hands outstretched that once had touched and talked and laughed and loved and now were silent and deadly.
You can think of many things in freefall.
Rusty wondered when the magic had died.
*
You can survive many things including freefall.
Danny found him, twisted and trembling and lay down on the sidewalk beside him, pressing his hand to Rusty's bloody cheek. Rusty looked sideways through pain and sorrow at Danny, at Danny smiling with delight that Rusty endured. Rusty's heart and mind broke.
*
Danny looks after Rusty. Only the best care for his best friend. Danny is there, looking in his eyes, when the doctors talk of paralysis, unending and overriding. When they are on their own, Danny leans across the bed and twinkles at Rusty, telling him he knows Rusty's secret, that Rusty is alive inside.
*
Saul finds Rusty. Unable and not wanting to hide his love and misery, he strokes Rusty's hair and he holds Rusty's hand and he talks of past times and triumphs.
Danny walks through the door and Rusty sees his eyes freeze when they spot Saul. Saul is watching his face. Rusty remembers a heartbeat too late that Saul is not stupid.
Danny is charm personified and yet Rusty knows Saul senses: senses but can't divine the truth.
When Danny smiles and offers to drive Saul home, the unearthly gurgle rises up from Rusty and nurses run to wipe away drool.
*
Danny is always smiling. He is older now and still has boyish charm.
Tess finds the third girl in bed with him and looks at Danny, coldly dazzling, amusement dancing beneath the skin, pleading again for forgiveness he wants but doesn't want. Apparently, she is no longer worth being faithful for. She leaves and feels his eyes following her, calculating and debating.
He lets her go.
*
All his old friends are dropped and cut out of his life. Saul and Reuben are dead anyway and Virgil has pretty much retired but Frank and Basher and Livingston and Turk and Yen all smart with the excision.
Linus has demanded reasons. Hooded eyes watch as hurt and incomprehension spill forth and then Danny smiles, beautifully and without heat, like January sunlight and tells Linus he simply doesn't want to work with him anymore.
Linus blinks and blinks back tears as he discovers he has lost his place in Danny's regard.
*
The world is Danny's oyster now. Women fall at his feet, men roll over at his command and somewhere there is the whisper that absolute power really does not have a good rep.
The whisper is there in Rusty's eyes. Every time Danny visits and tells him what he's done, what he's achieved: how many souls he's led astray in devilish Pied Piper fashion. Confidences he's won and broken. Marks who don't deserve their fate at his hands. He is a leader of men, he suggests as he brushes the hair out of Rusty's face, as he wipes the tear from Rusty's cheek. This is what he, Danny, is born to be, mighty and powerful and irresistible.
And Rusty lies, broken inside and out, listening and mourning and saying so much silently that Danny will never listen to.
He suffers Danny to lift him from the bed and wheel him round the little private garden and their little private world, conversations that only they hear and only they understand. The unspoken does not die.
Rusty suffers.
*
The nurses on the cerebrovascular ward are a little in love with the devoted friend. They sigh when he appears and swoon when he smiles at them.
His heart aching, Rusty watches Danny respond to attention with attentiveness. Every now and then, he catches Rusty's eye and Danny's lips twitch. The tears continue to flow.