017: A Handyman

"But I need someone to help me moving the furniture," Angela said as she pretended to bat her eyelashes.

"Uh-uh," Danny said, walking back to his desk with a folder in his hand, as they wrapped up another case. "Don't you bat your eyes at me."

"Oh, come on, Danny," she pleaded. "It'll be fun."

Danny scoffed and turned to look at her with doubt.

"Please?"

"But tomorrow's our day off," Danny tried to reason with her. "Can't we just… pretend we painted your room, and do something else instead?"

"Like what?"

"Like… stay in your bed for the entire day?"

"Danny. Come on. It won't take that long. And it'll be fun. A project."

"Wouldn't you rather just watch the Mets?"

"It's only March, Danny. Games don't even start for another month or two."

Danny looked as if he was trying to find another excuse to get out of helping Angela painting her room. She had been meaning to do it for awhile, and with Danny's help it would go a lot faster.

"And if you help me," Angela said taking several steps closer to him and slipping her hands inside his jacket to rest on his waist. "I promise that you'll be well rewarded."

This offer seemed to seriously tempt Danny as he looked at her with a thoughtful expression.

"Fine. Alright, alright, you win," he finally conceded as Angela beamed at him. "But this reward had better be worth it."

"Oh, it will be," she said with a wink. "How about you come over sometime tonight, and then we'll go to the paint store in the morning?"

"Hey, you're the boss."

Angela just smiled. "Oh, speaking of bosses, Jack said that he wanted you and Vivian to check out the CD store where the missing guy worked."

"Alright, I'll see you tonight?"

"I hope so." Angela stood on her toes and gave Danny a kiss.

"Hey, none of that business at the office," Danny said, pretending to be serious. "I know you're just captivated by my good looks, but you can't just throw yourself at me."

"Get out of here," she said, whacking him on the shoulder with the file in her hand.

---

The clock to Angela's left now read 8:16 AM. She and Danny had planned to be at the hardware store at 8:30, but it was becoming apparent that that wasn't going to be happening.

"Danny… we have to get up…" Angela protested sleepily as he pinned her down and kissed her neck early the next morning.

"No, we don't." His voice was muffled against her neck. "We can just stay here."

"Not if we want to actually get to painting."

"As I said, we can just stay here."

She laughed lightly and finally managed to push Danny away from her. "Come on. Let's go."

"Mmph," Danny groaned, as Angela slid out of his arms and onto the cold, hardwood floor.

She went into the kitchen and began making coffee and heating up some bagels, and not a long time later she heard the water in her shower running.

Sipping her coffee quietly, Angela looked at the paint samples and tried to figure out which one she wanted for her room. She had always been indecisive about these sorts of things. After about five minutes, she had it narrowed down to a muted dandelion yellow and a pale sky blue.

"I like the yellow." A pair of strong, damp arms wrapped around her as she was holding her bagel.

"Mmm… I think I do too."

"Oh, bagels!" Danny said excitedly. "And you toasted them! How'd you know?"

"Because. I'm amazing like that."

"That you are," he said kissing her on her temple. "Now go shower so we can get this over with."

---

It was a little over an hour before they came back from the hardware store even though they had only been going to pick out some paint. They had both gotten side-tracked: Angela found a ceiling fan that she really liked and Danny couldn't seem to stop touching all of the power tools within a hundred foot radius.

"I still don't see why you got to buy your paint and a new ceiling fan, and I couldn't get that drill," Danny teased as he carried the large box with the fan in it up her stairs. "Or why I get stuck carrying it."

"Hey," Angela laughed. "You were the one who said, and I quote, 'This is a man's job.' You've got yourself to blame on that one."

It wasn't long after that they arrived at the apartment that the ceiling fan pieces lay on the ground as Danny tried to figure out where piece 47B was so that he could connect it to piece 13J. Angela changed into some painting clothes as she began to pour the paint into the tray.

"Ok, are you ready?" she said excitedly as she held her paint roller a few inches from her wall. "This is going to be the first paint to touch the wall."

"The excitement is just really building in here, Ang," Danny said as he rolled his eyes with a grin. He had adopted calling her "Ang" as a pet name whenever he was teasing her, which he did quite often.

Painting did seem to lose its excitement after about half an hour later. Angela's back ached from standing and then bending down every so often to get paint on her roller. The apartment smelt strongly of paint so much that Danny had opened the window even though it was a chilly day in mid-March.

While Angela finished her first wall, Danny was nearly done putting the fan together. With a short laugh of satisfaction he stood up and examined his handiwork.

"Ha! Done!"

Angela groaned as she turned from the wall she was painting. Her face, hands, clothes, and even her shoes had random splashes of paint. "Well that makes one of us…"

"You want to trade?" Danny asked as he walked over to her over the complete mess that he had made trying to assemble the fan.

"Oh, no. Whitewashing this fence is so much fun. I'd never let anyone else do it."

"Aww, come on, Tom," Danny played along. "Let me have a turn."

"I don't know…" she teased playfully, turning her back to him.

"Hey, you know what?" he asked coming up behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist. "I'll pay you if you let me paint your fence."

"You will? Well, that's mighty nice of you."

"Yes, I will."

"And how might you be paying me?"

Instead of responding, Danny just kissed her. She wondered if he was even aware that she was probably getting paint all over his clothes.

"I don't really have any money," he said pulling away from her. "But I think we can reach an agreement."

Angela laughed. "Such a charmer."

"Well, I do try," he grinned.

"Not hard enough. You've got paint on your cheek."

"What? I do?"

"Yeah. Right there."

Angela reached up, but instead of getting the paint off of his cheek, she accidentally just smudged it with the paint already on her fingers.

"Oh, whoops."

"You did that on purpose!"

"I did not!"

"Yeah, well you have paint on your nose."

"I do not," she protested, but before she could stop him, he reached down and smudged some across her nose.

Stunned between amusement and disbelief, Angela simply stood there with her mouth open as she watched Danny try to hold back his laughter.

"I… cannot… believe that you just did that," she said slowly as she found herself shaking with laughter as well.

"Hey, what goes around comes around," he grinned. "Why don't you help me with the fan? It'll give you a break from the painting."

Angela agreed and followed Danny over to the fan. While Danny positioned it on the wall, Angela stood back and directed him where to put the hanging fixtures. Several minutes later, the fan was in place.

"Tada!" Danny said as he hopped down from the ladder. "It won't really work until we get the electrical stuff all figured out, but we can do that next weekend. Or sometime later."

"But it looks nice."

"Yeah, it does."

"I'm going to go get some light bulbs from the pantry and screw them in."

"But I just told you that they weren't going to work!" Danny called after her. "You just don't want to paint anymore!"

"Am I that obvious?" Angela grinned over her shoulder.

When she came back, Danny had taken it upon himself to finish her painting job. She smiled to herself as she climbed the ladder and began to screw in the light bulbs. They were a little awkward to get in at first and she had some trouble. It was a full five minutes before she got the first two in.

As she began on the third bulb, she realized that something was missing. The wind was still blowing from the window… the music was still on softly…

Angela turned and saw that Danny had abandoned the paint roller and was simply standing and watching her.

She tilted her head and grinned. "What? I know I have paint on my face. And nose thanks to you."

He paused for a few seconds with a calm, careless look about him.

"I love you."

He said it quite casually. His hands were resting in his pockets lazily and he was just watching her as if she was some kind of interesting bird in a tree. There was a small trace of a smile on his face, but the look he had was one that she had only just begun to see. It was calm, very relaxed, but there was something that Angela couldn't quite pinpoint. He wore that face when she woke up next to him to find him already awake, though he had watched her sleep. Sometimes he wore it when she was making dinner, and she was ranting about her day. Sometimes he wore it at the soft, quite parts of their evenings when they were simply sitting in one of their apartments reading.

She cast her eyes down to her hands which held the other light bulbs before meeting his eyes again with a soft smile.

"I love you too."

They stood there for a long time, simply gazing at each other, not really wanting to move, not wanting anything to change or a moment to slip by them.

A/N: Aww. Cute.

It was really WEIRD because ten minutes after I finished writing this chapter, I went out to get something to eat or something, and I walked through the living room and my dad was sitting there on the floor putting together a ceiling fan. It was SO WEIRD. I was like "WHAT. WHERE'S DANNY?!"

Ok, so. You wanna know something uber scary? Exams are the week after next. How INSANE is that?! I mean, Thanksgiving break was like last week! WHAT.

So this weekend is basically FULL of writing papers and studying for tests. I think I have four papers and two tests next week. Crazy, much? Oh yes.

ANYWAYS. I hope that anyone taking exams does well! And I hope that you don't die from the pressure like I might! I hope I make it through!

Have a marvelous weekend everyone!

-Laura

PS- Twist next chapter. Get excited.

PPS- The whitewashing/Tom reference is from Tom Sawyer… just in case someone didn't get that reference. Haha.