Chapter Text
The next time Walker comes in, it's not Danny behind the bar, but the owner himself. “I wasn't aware you made your own drinks,” he finds himself saying, having a seat with a quiet, tired grunt.
Masters smirks slightly with better humor than he and pulls a glass out. “On the contrary, Warden, I find the experience of serving my patrons quite humbling,” he purrs, though his tone suggests otherwise completely. He was all suit and tie and shaded grins even in this safe space he had concocted himself.
“I'm sure,” he says blandly, ordering and taking a sip when Masters nudges a glass to him. Truthfully, a part of him despised Masters. He knew the man was new money, a modern American success story, but the way he talked about himself and to others suggested he'd never had to clean a toilet in his life. In his opinion, success was only successful when you remember every day where you’ve come up from.
Masters eyes him calculatingly, stormy grey-blue like the sea before the storm. “Just to get my ducks in a square,” he drawls, leaning forward toward Walker. Unwilling to back down, the Warden squares his shoulders and gives his most bland glare that he can. “Be good to Daniel, won't you?”
That makes him pause. “I beg your pardon, Masters?” he asks slowly.
Masters continues wiping the counter. Things are certainly more organized than Danny keeps things. He thinks Masters separated the liquor by brand, expense, and type. There's a defined system. “He quite likes you, I've noticed,” he drawls on, uncorking a bottle of wine for himself. “Just be nice to him, yes? He can be a bit of a brat when he can't get what he wants,” Masters suddenly snorts before continuing, “I suppose we have that in common, but where we differ is Daniel is an absolute bleeding heart”. The mayor rolls his eyes, sipping his drink. “That boy is painfully soft and I'd be rather inclined to make your life harder than it need be if you hurt him”. It's all said with a kind of loftiness that burns Walker’s blood in his veins, but there's a familiar stoniness to his eyes and a stiff set to his jaw that the warden could respect.
“Threatening me, hm? You must be desperate. How much does he mean to you?” he asks with a thin, casual tone, swirling his brandy.
Masters narrows his eyes and watches him from his periphery. “...He's a good kid. He reminds me of myself, before… well, you don't need to know all that ,” he says chuckling. “Just be good to him and there won't be problems”.
“Wasn't planning on it,” he says honestly.
“I know,” Masters agrees, “But he's the type to take things personally”. He eyes him accusingly, steely blue boring into his own with contempt. “You stormed off and didn't spare him a glance, never mind come back”.
Walker frowns. While he wouldn't say he was avoiding the bar, he wasn't exactly making an attempt to come back and patch things up either. He felt clumsy for it, and had been doing a bit of overtime at the penitentiary just to keep his mind from wandering south.
He supposed in a way, he was avoiding Danny by avoiding thinking about him. A very small part of him wished he hadn't met the boy and he could go back to repressing himself and jerking off alone in bed with the thought of good-looking strangers in his head to mind his thoughts.
The door opens with a bang before he can answer. “Sorry, Fruitloop!” Danny calls, stumbling in from the door. “I had detention again! Fucking Lancer and his hard-on for making me misera- oh!” He cuts himself off, pausing when he caught sight of the two. “Uh… hey”.
Considering Master’s concerns, Walker realizes he hasn't made a move and neither has Danny. And it had been a while. Not long, but too long to be comfortable.
“Not to worry, Daniel,” Masters says, smoothly lifting up the counter-door to the inside of the bar. “Everything is in order”.
Danny gives Walker shifting glances and anxiously wrings his dress shirt in his hands, a maroon sweater vest over his arm and a blue tie was undone around his neck, a few buttons popped as he usually did. Walking inside, however, immediately stole his attention. “You ass! You fucked up my whole system!” he screeches, hands digging into his hair in exasperation.
“I just reorganized; don’t be dramatic”. Masters rolls his eyes, sipping the last of his wine and leaving the empty glass on the bar’s countertop.
“Everything’s a mess!” Danny shot back, shoving his school things under the counter and out of sight, already rearranging bottles in a surprisingly dextrous fashion for being so frantic.
“Excuse you, I cleaned. You’re making a mess!”
“Who the hell alphabetizes liquor?!”
“You’re the one that had vodka and schnapps next to each other!”
“They’re the same color! It’s aesthetically pleasing!”
Master’s hands flew up in exasperation, grumbling under his breath about badgers and “being difficult” and sauntered off, presumably to threaten someone else, or make their lives miserable.
Danny blusters about behind the counter and Walker watches with fascination as Danny reconstructs his system of organization. While he can agree that it is aesthetically pleasing with the liquors making a slightly colorful gradient of labels from one side to the next. As soon as he finished he stood back with a small moment of satisfaction and then chanced a look over to Walker. He immediately looked away, face pink and anxious with embarrassment. He opens his mouth to speak but is immediately overrun with Danny’s slightly too loud, “I’m sorry!”
Walker closes his mouth into a thin-lipped frown, furrowing his brow. “What for?”
Danny ruffles his hair anxiously, running his hand through it to smooth it back. It does not work but it does give Walker another urge to touch him. “I don’t know, are you mad at me? Because if you are, then I’m sorry about whatever I did or said and I’m going to try not to do it again”.
Walker’s confusion gives way to slight amusement and pity, though he’s sure to never change his face. “Oh?”
Danny nods fervently, wringing his hands anxiously.
Walker chuffs, finishing his drink and pushes it towards the young man meaningfully. “I wasn’t mad at you”.
Danny blinks. “You weren’t?”
“No. Why would I be? You didn’t do anything wrong”.
Danny’s surprise slowly melts like acid into caustic irritation. “Then what the hell were you avoiding me for?” he accuses. Hands slamming onto the bar on either side of the empty rock glass as another patron comes close.
“Hey, Danny, can I get a-”
Danny whirls around, eyes fierce and snaps, “Fuck off, Writer, I’m in a conversation! Don’t be fucking rude!”
The thin man’s expression darkens and opens his mouth before catching sight of Walker. His already pale skin blanches even more and stiffly walks away.
Danny turns back to him with arms crossed and an expectant if irritated expression on his face. “Well?!”
Walker feels distinctly like he was being chided and it’s a strange feeling, getting it from a young man nearly a foot and a half shorter than himself. “I wasn’t avoiding you. I had other things to do. Work got exceptionally busy”.
Danny sneered but it was losing a bit of fire. “Oh really?” he asked in a way that was clearly meant to say I don’t believe you but the warden could hear a bit of genuine curiosity behind it.
“Yes,” he asserted evenly. “A good number of my guards were gone as the state needed to borrow some for the protest at the university. With so few guards around, they needed me to walk the halls and keep a closer eye than normal”.
That got an odd reaction from the young man, who deflated nearly instantly and his arms swung down from their crossed position to lay at his sides limply. “Oh”. There was a slight frown, an avoidance of his eyes, and a biting of a plush bottom lip. Guilt. Either he felt guilty for accusing Walker of avoidance, or…
“Were you there?”
Danny starts. “What?”
“Were you there?” he asserts.
Danny frowns again and recrosses his arms. “So what if I was?”
Walker cocks a brow. “So nothing”.
“Wait, what?” Danny startles again. Walker begins to sense a theme.
“Were you expecting otherwise?” he asks, a bit confused himself.
“Well, yeah!” he asks. “Aren’t you like a cop?”
Well, that was a bit insulting. “I’m not like a cop, I am a cop”. Walker sighs and pinches his brows. “It’s- It’s complicated. I’m an active warden. That is mostly the management of the workers and prisoners inside the state penitentiary. I am also a technically inactive officer of the law. I’ve worked with the county multiple times. Protesting is not illegal was very much a formative part of the beginnings of this country. I personally dislike the chaos it brings and things can very quickly spiral out of control into a coupe”.
Danny stares at him.
“I don’t enjoy the law, I just uphold it,” he states with finality, a bit embarrassed for going on a tangent.
Danny continues to stare. “You are… something else, Mr. Walker”. He takes Walker’s glass and sets it below the counter in the sink. “Hey, since you aren’t mad at me, can you make sure no one comes up to the bar?”
Walker’s brow furrows. “Why?”
Danny slumps slightly, the tear of a zipper sounding with the ruffle of fabric. “I gotta change my pants,” he says, sheepishly grinning, cheeks pink.
Walker’s brain screeches to a halt. “What?” he hisses from his teeth.
“Please! I didn’t have time to change! No one will notice if I’m quick!,” he pleads, pulling black slacks into view, still fumbling out of sight. Walker knows he would be able to if he leaned a bit forward, and tried not to sit up and search for the soft, creamy flesh of muscular legs he imagined so many times. He remains firmly seated and glares daggers at the boy, frowning. “Pleeeeeeeease?!”
Frowning, sighing, the warden turns his glare on the bar, trying to both ignore and imprint the memory of the swish of fabric in his brain. His glare seemed to be working, everyone catching his eye immediately turning away.
“So if you weren’t avoiding me… and you’re not mad… then how was your day?” came a strained sentence from slightly lower than usual, Danny fumbling between fabric swishes.
“Please don’t try to hold a conversation with me until you have pants on”. Walker’s lips are in a thin line and someone he barely registers as a person pales and scampers away from the bar.
“Okay! Okay! ...Alright, I’m done”. Danny straightens up. “You know, usually people are begging me to take them off,” he teases fluttering his lashes when Walker turns back to glance in his direction.
Walker frowns again.
“What? No comeback?” he teases, leaning forward.
“I wasn’t aware I needed one. Do your job, punk,” he replies tersely.
“I think you did too good a job. Nobody’s even looking at us now”.
“Ah. Apologies”.
The silence came between them, though this time, not nearly as tense as usual. Danny got him another drink and he slowly relaxed in the atmosphere. “Masters threatened me before you got in,” he says idly.
A faint smile quirks his lips. “Oh boy, what did he want?”
“Oh, he gave me a bit of a shovel talk about you thinking I was upset with you”.
“That son of a bitch,” Danny grumbles. “He needs to learn to mind his own business”.
Walker sips his drink and eyes the young man thoughtfully. “He probably thinks you are his business with the way he talked to me about you”.
Danny frowns fiercely to himself in annoyance. “Yeah, well… I’m not,” he resolves, cleaning a glass furiously. He rubs streaks long gone and soon burns himself out, looking up apologetically. “Um… Sorry for assuming you were mad at me”.
Walker frowns, feeling an annoying niggle of guilt rise in his gut. “You have nothing to apologize for,” he replies firmly. “You did nothing wrong”.
“But-” Danny attempts, guilt still weighing heavily in his soft blue eyes.
“Nothing,” he restates. “You did nothing wrong. I will not accept any apology. An apology is an admittance you have done something wrong, which you have not”.
Danny pauses, quieted. “You’re right. I have never done anything wrong or illegal ever. Definitely".
Walker frowns at the exaggerated tone and cheeky grin Danny shoots him. “Please don’t phrase it like that”.
“Oh, I am just so sorry!”
“You are not”.
“You’re right! Because I did nothing wrong!”
“This situation is wrong, punk. Don’t make me arrest you”.
Danny gasped dramatically. “What for?”
“I’m not sure how to tell you this Daniel,” he says, taking a sip, and only alcohol could be blamed for his relaxed demeanor when he says, “but cops lie. I'll make something up”.
Danny gapes at him a moment before breaking into hysterics. Walker hears his laughter long after he goes home.