A/N — in the category of "I can't believe I wrote this", I present Five Times She Let Him Go, and One Time She Didn't. Warnings for unusual pairing, crude language, and references to sex. xoxo — tmtcltb

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One

Sasha settled back against her pillows, body still relaxed and pliant, watching as Danny pulled his t-shirt over his head and then sat on the edge of the bed to lace up his boots. Too bad he hadn't done that in the reverse order, giving her a better view of the muscles that rippled along his back. Remembering how hard she had dug her nails into those muscles, Sasha wondered if she left marks.

"The team's meeting up at the Castaway tonight if you want to swing by," Danny said as he stood again, searching the room for his belt. "The weenie will be there too. Friggin' kid."

Sasha narrowed her eyes, tension creeping into her shoulders. The weenie was her replacement, the one she personally lined up to take her spot before she transferred to the Pentagon. "Akter is a highly trained intelligence specialist and you are lucky to have him."

"Blah, blah, blah. Still a weenie. And nowhere near as hot as our last IO." Halfway through buckling his belt, Danny looked up. Blue eyes meeting brown. "If you're worried about it being weird, don't. We both know what this was."

The tension disappeared. Sasha tipped her head to the side, studying Danny. "What if I meet the love of my life and spend half the night with my tongue down his throat?"

Danny laughed, eyes flashing with amusement. "Unless it's the weenie, I say go for it."

Two

Sasha was in the middle of typing up a report when Danny stumbled out of her bedroom. He had pulled on his pants but, without a belt, they were barely clinging to his hips. He made it to the island, collapsing into one of Sasha's trendy bar stools, dropping his head into his hands. "Dear god, what did we drink last night?"

Chuckling, Sasha moved into the kitchenette, pouring him a cup of coffee and sliding it across the counter, half surprised that the bar stool hadn't collapsed under his weight. "Stolichnaya Elit."

"Remind me never to drink that again," Danny muttered, swallowing the liquid in three gulps and holding his cup out for a refill. "What time is it anyway?"

Sasha suspected that the disastrous two-week mission to the Tora Bora Mountains, followed by an eighteen-hour plane ride back to the States preparing for an immediate and unpleasant debriefing by Command, was the real reason for Danny's current headache. But she didn't correct him. "Thirteen hundred."

"Shit." Danny's eyes closed and then opened, finding hers. "I didn't mean to crash here. Sorry."

Unspoken rules hung between them. No strings. No promises. And what happened in bed — or on the counter or in the elevator or, once, on the tarmac after a particularly frustrating overseas trip — stayed between them. But right now Sasha suspected that Danny needed to not be alone.

"Lucky for you, my imaginary boyfriend's out of town," she replied lightly. She took another sip of her own coffee. "There's a good Indian place down the street. You have exactly thirty minutes to be showered and dressed before I leave without you."

Danny gazed at her, and she could see the thoughts running through his head, far slower than usual due to the combination of exhaustion and alcohol. "All my stuff is dirty. And by dirty I mean that I changed clothes twice in roughly sixteen days."

Sasha huffed. "Fine, I'll run a quick load while you shower. But you better use soap. Your clothes aren't the only thing that smells."

Three

Danny passed Sasha the glass and she took it absently, eyes fixed on the television. Some nineties show that she never watched about a bunch of friends who lived in apartments across the hall from each other that they could never actually afford on their salaries as waitresses and unemployed actors. She took a sip of the drink, unpleasantly surprised to discover that it was water.

"You want to tell me why you got kicked out of that bar?" Danny asked. "Actually, want to tell me why I'm listed as your emergency contact number in your phone?"

The question was a kick to the gut, a reminder of all the reasons that she sought the oblivion of alcohol. Tears burned in Sasha's eyes and she swatted at them, hating herself for breaking down. Danny's face appeared in front of her, blocking the television where the brunette woman was now hooking up with the sarcastic man and everyone else was pretending not to know.

"You're scaring me, Zaslavsky," Danny said, voice soft and more serious than she could ever remember.

Sasha looked down at her cup, swirling it the way that she would swirl a cup of vodka. "My father died."

"Shit."

Ira had been Sasha's one and only living relative, her mother having passed when Sasha was eight. Sasha was a late life surprise baby, and her father was in his eighties. Yet, somehow the news that he was gone still came as a shock. She laughed bitterly, pretending not to notice the tears that were rolling down her face. "Remember when I made you promise to check in on him if I died?"

Danny shifted, moving to the couch, and Sasha let him pull her against his chest. Letting him tuck her head under his chin. "Yeah, I remember."

"I didn't need to worry. Dad had a ton of friends. They keep calling." Sasha waved her hand towards her phone. "Asking me about the service and sitting Shiva and talking about how much they'll miss him. Meanwhile, the only person that I can think of to list as my emergency contact is the guy that I call when I want to get laid without having to put on heels." Sasha's voice broke. "I can't do this, Danny. I can't show up there alone and listen to all of these people talk about how much they'll miss him when he was the only person who would miss me if I died."

By the time she was done talking, Sasha was sobbing so hard could hardly breath. Danny leaned back, catching her by the arms, pushing her back until he could see her eyes. "What a load of self-indulgent bullshit."

"What?" Sasha choked.

"I said, what a load of shit," Danny repeated.

Sasha scowled at him. "What the hell do you know, Green? You have a family the size of the Duggars."

But Danny didn't take the bait. "It sucks about your dad, Sasha, and I'm sorry. I honestly am. But as for the rest of that drivel, it's all crap. You aren't alone. You have us. And if being your emergency contact person means driving from Little Creek to DC and hauling you out of some dive bar, so be it." Danny shook his head, picking up his phone and hitting the call button. "Yeah, I know what time it is. Zaslavsky's father died." There was a pause. "Long Island. I'm going to drive her up." Another pause. "Hold on." Danny looked to Sasha. "Berchem wants to know if he needs a yamaka for the service."

"Berchem knows what a yamaka is?" Sasha replied without thinking.

Danny snorted. "God no. He asked if he needed one of those funny little hat things. I was trying to be sensitive. They made us watch a video about it."

"He doesn't need a yamaka," Sasha whispered. "He doesn't even need to attend."

"No, and no flowers either. I don't know why but it's a Jewish thing. You bring food instead," Danny said, moving to the kitchen to refill Sasha's water. "No, just really, really drunk. We'll see you in the morning. I'll text the address."

Sasha caught something just as Danny hung up the phone. She took the water. "Did he just ask if I was having PMS?"

"No comment." When Sasha levelled a look at him, Danny amended. "Sensitivity training, remember?"

"It clearly worked," Sasha mumbled.

"Let's get you packed," Danny announced, heading towards her bedroom. Sasha trailed behind him as he opened the closet and began pawing through her carefully arranged belongings. He held up a slinky, black cocktail dress. "This one?"

Laughing, Sasha squeezed between him and the closet, returning the completely inappropriate dress to its place and pulling a few other things off the rack. Turning to see Danny retrieving her suitcase from under her bed, she felt her throat swell. "Thank you, Danny."

"For what?"

Sasha set the clothes in the suitcase. "For being my friend."

Four

"Finally. I've been trying to catch you all night." A petite blonde who looked approximately twenty months pregnant plopped down in the seat next to Sasha. She wheezed slightly, causing Sasha to reflectively pass the woman a water, which the woman chugged in three gulps. "Thanks. I wish someone would turn on the damn AC."

Since it was December in Connecticut, Sasha doubted that would be happening but decided that sharing her view on the matter was unlikely to win her any friends. She held out a hand instead. "Sasha Zaslavsky."

"Oh, I know," the woman replied. "Danny's date. We were all so happy when we heard he was bringing someone." She paused, apparently recalling that she never actually introduced herself. "I'm Amber, by the way."

Sasha quickly placed the woman. "Eddie's wife, right? How is he doing?"

Amber smiled. "He's okay. PTSD is a life-long condition but currently we're managing well. The therapy dog helped. Thank you for helping move Eddie's name up on the list."

Sasha lifted her glass reflectively before recalling that it was empty. "How did you know about..."

"Danny said a friend at the Pentagon helped," Amber interrupted. "Not too hard to figure it out."

Curious, Sasha glanced at Amber. "What makes you think that I'm military?"

"You're sitting in the corner of the table with your back to the wall. You haven't stopped scanning the room since you arrived. And most telling, Danny let you take the seat that he usually grabs. He trusts you to watch his back, which means that you've probably been in the field together." Amber paused, considering something. "With the restrictions on women in combat roles, I'm guessing you're in intelligence. Maybe his IO. Former IO, or he wouldn't be sleeping with you."

Sasha couldn't remember the last time that she was speechless. Then something clicked. "You're a psychologist, right?"

"Guilty as charged," Amber admitted, although the grin on her face suggested that she regretted nothing.

"Want a job?" Sasha asked bluntly.

Amber laughed, patting her bump. "I'm busy at the moment but if that changes, I'll let you know." Amber's laughter stopped abruptly, eyes narrowing. "There she goes."

"Who?" Sasha began, only to stop as a willowy blonde made her way determinedly in Danny's direction. Despite the fact that Danny asked — and Frankie begged practically — Sasha to come to this wedding precisely because of the frog hog otherwise known as Rebecca Ellen Carson, Sasha was still surprised by the woman's chutzpah. "Oh." Studying the other woman. Sasha found herself wondering what, exactly, Danny found so irresistible about Rebecca. She was pretty enough and had a bit of that doe-eyed thing all the guys went crazy over but, as far as Sasha could tell, Rebecca was no different than a dozen other women Danny had slept with over the past few years without feeling any driving need to dip his pen back into the well. "Didn't she come with a date?"

"Yup. She always does and then ditches the guy for Danny." Amber reached past Sasha to snag another water. "Watching her throw herself at him is painful. But she's clearly terrified of you. I've never seen her wait so long to make her move."

Sasha raised an eyebrow. "Danny and I are just friends. He's free to make his own mistakes."

Both women watched as Rebecca reached Danny, her hand curling around his bicep. Danny turned, the two spoke, and then Danny shrugged her hand off, gesturing in Sasha's direction. He lifted two glasses, heading towards the table where Amber and Sasha now sat, leaving a pouting Rebecca behind.

Amber's eyes flashing with amusement. "Well, whatever you two are, you being here made my night." Danny arrived just in time to help Amber to her feet. She smiled her thanks before turning back to Sasha. "Oh, and I'll consider that offer. It might just be interesting."

"What offer?" Danny asked, passing Sasha a vodka tonic and taking Amber's abandoned seat. His arm settled across the back of Sasha's chair casually, one finger running across her collarbone in a way that sent pleasant shivers down her spine.

"I offered Amber a job," Sasha explained, sipping her drink.

"The idea of you and Amber working together scares me." Danny chuckled, the sound bringing a smile to Sasha's lips.

"I saw that the frog hog took her shot," Sasha murmured, ignoring the woman glaring at them across the room. "Sure you want to be here with me rather than with her?"

Danny looked over, eyes meeting hers. "If I didn't want you here, Zaslavsky, I wouldn't have asked you to come."

Five

"Why the hell did I agree to go to this?" Danny muttered around the rim of his glass as he nodded towards a passing five-star admiral and his trophy wife, if the size of the diamond and the fake boobs were any indication.

"Because you still owe me for the Louisiana fiasco," Sasha replied. Not that it was Danny's fault that the team was unexpectedly spun up twelve hours after they arrived in the middle of rural Louisiana for the wedding of a former teammate. But being forced to babysit two sulky frog hogs and one pissed off soon-to-be-ex-wife after the guys packed up was not Sasha's idea of fun. "Besides, this is good for your career."

But Danny wasn't paying attention. "Did that guy bring his granddaughter?"

Sasha didn't have to look to know exactly who he was referring to. "Nope."

"I might have to vomit. He's got to be seventy years older than her," Danny hissed. "Do you think they do it?"

She was still laughing when a voice spoke from behind. "Sasha Zaslavsky. As I live and breathe, you haven't changed a bit."

Turning, Sasha took in the man who stood before her, waiting for the ache that inevitably followed any chance encounter with Thomas William Chandler. The gnawing dread that she made the biggest mistake of her life when she said goodbye to Tom and boarded that plane for Afghanistan. But tonight Sasha felt nothing more than the pleasant glow of running into a good friend after a long absence. Tom had aged since the last time she saw him, although the silver in his hair somehow managed to make him more rather than less attractive. More importantly, he looked confident, relaxed - happy. Next to him, her hand on his arm, Darien appeared equally at ease. Their quiet contentment confirming to Sasha that she and Tom had made the right choice when they split, accepting that sometimes love simply wasn't enough.

"Tom Chandler," Sasha replied, smile curling her lips. "You always were a terrible liar. And Darien, lovely to see you. May I introduce Danny Green?"

With introductions made, Sasha asked about the kids. As Darien launched into a discussion of Ashley's soccer career, Danny leaned over, voice a bare whisper in Sasha's ear. "He's shorter than I thought he would be."

Barely containing a sort of laughter, Sasha brought her heel down on Danny's foot. Hard. He jerked, catching Darien's attention. She frowned slightly, then glanced down, her brow clearing as she realized what had happened. Darien smiled up at Tom, leaning into his side. "They remind me of us when we were newlyweds. So caught up in each other."

Before Sasha could compose an answer, one of the security guards approached. Silence fell over the group, as well as those around them, as everyone waited to discover who the guard was looking for. "Sorry for the interruption, but there is a call for you, Lieutenant Green."

Danny glanced at Sasha, eyes apologetic. Even Little Creek wouldn't have called Danny here unless shit was going down, which meant ten to one that he was spinning up. She reached out, setting a hand on his arm. "I'll wait here."

When she turned back to the Chandlers, Sasha realized that Darien was now engaged in conversation with another couple, leaving her and Tom alone. For years Sasha had avoided this very situation, yet tonight she barely noticed, too focused on watching the doorway for Danny's return.

Tom's face was solemn. "I hope it's nothing too serious."

"Nature of the job," Sasha said, attempting for wry, but the words came out flat and she quickly changed the subject. "I heard a rumor that you might be up for another promotion."

Tom's nose wrinkled. "I don't think that I'm made to ride a desk." He glanced towards the door, his height giving him the advantage. "Danny's back. I'll leave you but... It's good to see you happy, Sasha."

"You too," Sasha replied absently, before taking a moment to really look at Tom. "Darien is a wonderful woman, Tom. I'm glad that you have each other. I mean it."

Tom nodded, eyes going to Danny again. "Green is a very lucky man."

Turning, Sasha weaved her way through the crowd, meeting Danny halfway, reading his face before she arrived. "When are you leaving?"

"Five minutes ago," he replied. Then he glanced around, lowering his voice. "Any chance I can get a doggie bag? No reason to waste a good steak dinner."

Looping her arm through his, Sasha began steering them towards the kitchens. "Let's see what I can do."

Six

"Sasha! What are you doing here!"

Sasha shot Danny a dirty look before she stood, allowing her cheeks to be kissed by the perfume-drenched, miniskirt wearing daughter of the Chairperson of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Sasha disliked this particular restaurant, which was frequently filled with the powers-that-be who Sasha already spent too much time around, but Danny wanted to eat something dead and red and claimed this was the best place in Washington. Since he was leaving for a three-month deployment in the morning, he won.

Sasha turned her attention to the newcomer. "Lisa! Lovely to see you. Are you here with the family?"

"Lord no," Lisa laughed, her high-pitched squeal an assault on Sasha's ears. "Can you imagine what Daddy would say if he saw me wearing this outfit? No, I was on a date but he's such a dud." She dropped her voice, leaning closer to Sasha. "And who is that? He's yummy. And the size of his hands! Please tell me that he's your brother. Please, please, please."

Reluctantly, Sasha waved a hand between Danny and Lisa. "Danny, this is Lisa Wu. Lisa, this is my partner, Danny." Sasha swallowed, keeping her eyes fixed on Lisa as Danny stretched out a hand with a murmured nice to meet you that sounded positively indifferent.

Five minutes later, Lisa on her way, Sasha resumed her seat before her cold and unappealing salmon. She looked up to see Danny gazing at her, eyes dancing with amusement. "Partner?"

Sasha scowled, attacking the salmon with gusto. "Did you want her hitting on you? Because I can..."

"Woah, no need to take this nuclear," Danny interrupted, hands moving up. His head tipped, studying her face. "Come on Sasha, it was a joke. Hell, the guys refer to you as my wife half the time."

Sasha stopped, fork halfway to her mouth. "They do?"

"Yup." Danny popped another piece of steak into his mouth, chewing slowly. "You're the first person that I call when we hit the States and the first person they would call if there was an emergency. Hence, wife."

Sasha lifted her wine, processing that information. "I haven't had sex with anyone else in a year."

Danny grinned at her cheekily. "Once you've had the best, why bother?"

"Asshole," Sasha replied, tossing her lemon at him. "But seriously. When was the last time you went on a date?"

This time Danny was the one to set down his silverware, finishing his wine and leaning forward in his chair. "What do you think that we're doing right now, Sasha?" He waited a moment, then continued when she said nothing. "Berchem's promotion, if you must know. Although date is probably the wrong word. You've met his friends. More like sure thing."

"Berchem's promotion?" she echoed. "That was..."

Sasha stopped. They could both do the math. Danny gazed at her, then shook his head. "I don't care what you call us, or this. We have a good thing going, Zaslavsky, and if you can't see it, well, that's on you."

Sasha watched, silently, as Danny returned to his meal. Seven minutes passed before she pushed her unfinished salmon away. When he looked up, Sasha gave him a slow grin. "You're about to leave for three months, Green. If you expect me to wait for you to get back, you better be planning to give me something worth waiting for."

Danny's eyes never left hers as he signaled for the check. As they stood, he moved around the table, sliding Sasha's coat onto her shoulders before leaning forward, hot breath on her ear. "I think that can be arranged."

Four hours later, Sasha woke abruptly, her internal alarm blaring. She sat up, snapping on the bedside lamp, catching Danny in the process of yanking on a sock. He blinked at the sudden light. "Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you. Go back to sleep. I'll text you once we land, okay?"

Ignoring him, Sasha slipped her legs from the bed, moving towards her drawers and pulling on a fresh set of underwear. "I'll drive you."

"Sash." Danny stepped behind her, turning her until he could see her face, arms encircling her waist. "It's three in the morning and you got maybe an hour of sleep. Besides, you'll never get back into DC in time for work. You don't need to take me to the tarmac."

"Yes, I do." Sasha reached up, framing his face with her hands before tugging him down for a kiss. When he pulled away, eyes cloudy with confusion, Sasha smiled. "After all, that's the kind of thing that wives do."