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It was late in the evening, just before he was out the door to meet Alice - a business major he ended up swapping numbers with during his latest effort in making portfolio additions - when Dad called, and didn't even let him say hello.
"Danny is dead."
Linus hears his own brain screech to a halt as his hand pauses, halfway to the doorknob and as frozen as he was just now.
"What?"
"Danny Ocean. He's dead. I'm leading the investigation, some bad dealings in bonds that got flagged for urgent, and I've seen his- I'm sorry, Linus."
He sounds breathless, like he'd just stepped out of the morgue and had to call his son to know that he's okay, cause this was his Dad. Cause to him, Danny was supposed to be immortal, and if he wasn't-
"Son?"
"God, Dad. That's-"
"Yeah." He clutches his phone to his ear, ignoring the burning in the corners of his eyes, thinking he'd been hung up on. He wasn't. "I need you to tell the others."
There was a weight to it that he picked up on immediately, and a whole other shockwave started from his spine and shot everywhere.
"Dad, I can't-"
"Please, Linus," Bobby Caldwell says, and he barely ever had to say it as seriously as he did now. "I don't want to tell him over the phone."
Linus nods to himself, and says his goodbyes.
The door and Alice and normalcy lay forgotten with his coat that he threw over the sofa in search for his other phone. He digs it out of the bathroom cupboard and stares at the contact list till his breathing calms down, till the lump in his throat melts away.
He had to do this.
He had to lock himself in his bathroom and cry his throat hoarse for an hour, first.
-
"Rusty?"
He spins around a picture of casual, unbothered - hands resting in his pocket and some friendly, inquiring concern on his face. Linus knows it’s going to be a while till he’s met with that sight again.
"You're gonna tell us why you called us all here?"
Linus opens his mouth - he swears he does. But nothing comes out, no sympathetic words, no ushering him to sit down, no agonizingly diluted speech he practiced to perfection in the mirror while he waited for them all to come around to Reuben's place - of course Rusty had arrived first - and tried to ignore the waver in his voice that hadn't come from anxiety for once.
By the time he's out of his own head, Rusty is staring at him hard, his eyes miles away.
And then, his expression darkens.
"Linus?"
"Danny is- he's..." Linus begins, manages to say, and hates that his eyes are welling up, hates that Rusty isn't getting it on purpose. Making him say it. "Dad called to tell me. Danny is dead."
"Oh."
That was, well, surprising. It stunts him for a moment.
"Rus… it's-"
"No." He says it and it sounds far away, meant for someone else. Linus feels a pang in his heart, knowing exactly who the someone is. (Was, his mind corrects, and he hates that even more.) "No. I- yeah. Okay."
And then he sits back down on the armchair, nodding and rubbing at the corner of his mouth, and Linus sighs. The one person he would call when he was out of his depth was the same one that needed help. It would be stupid to use Rusty’s own advice on him, and this was unlike any other issue any of them had. He rubs his face and turns to leave Rusty’s motionless display behind, dialing Saul's number.
-
It's as much of a wake as any of them can muster to handle.
And everyone is here, and dull, like the air and everything about it had him wiping at his eyes five times per hour, for the two days they'd been here.
"It's not even a proper wake," Turk says into his brandy, and for once Virgil doesn't quip back.
Linus hears Reuben's sharp intake of breath and hopes his heart handles this, cause even Linus' one felt trampled.
"What do you mean?" Livingston finally asks, pouring himself a glass as well and that was just disturbing to see, to realize the implications of.
"Like, man. Where's his body? He's supposed to be here, right?"
Virgil nods, gravely serious, and backs his glass at the thought - no one looks too happy, imagining Danny as anything but animated and magnetic and in his own, irresistible way.
Linus sighs when it's clear that everyone in the room is not-staring at him.
"I called Dad about it, for tonight, but he's- Dad says it's- not much of him that's left, and-"
And then he notices that the looks weren't directed towards him before, because now that they actually were, every one of them looked alarmed, horrified, desperate.
There's a dull, resounding clink of heavy liquor bottles behind him, from the direction of the entrance.
And there's Rusty standing with a heavy plastic bag, when he turns around, panicked - and he looks, he -
His jaw is clenched tight shut when he finally moves a muscle, to walk over to the bar, and Turk looks guilty for asking for once, and Reuben's mouth is hanging open, and Saul is reaching for his pills because Rusty is sat there and in a swift, fluid motion, opening what looked like malt you should measure in fingers and pouring a highball glass of it to the brim.
"Robert…" Saul says quietly, clenching the orange bottle enough for it to rattle, and Rusty doesn't even look at him when he downs the whole glass and, after a frightening lack of a reaction, goes to pour another.
-
Hours later, Linus is still sober and avoiding even thinking of - his - name.
Yen looks haunted, where he is, perched on top of the ledge meant for artistic takes on ceramics and not for grieving over a criminal friend with a bottle of wine and that look - haunted look - in his eyes.
Turk and Virgil are whispering between themselves and not angry, or spiteful or mocking. Virgil's hand is on Turk's shoulder and it's not a sight Linus wants to linger on, to think about for long.
Reuben is wiping his glasses every few minutes, half-smoked cuban left to burn itself out in the ashtray, and Basher isn't even here to dub it blasphemy, and sacreligious, cause he's in jail for a month more and just for a second Linus is glad for him, relieved that he isn't here and seeing this and having to hold it together, for them.
Having to look at this and not scream.
Rusty is leaning onto Frank and dead drunk and not carrying himself well and that's just jarring, like everything is, about them since he'd- since-
He'd drank more than Linus wanted to know and Linus wished he could join him. Like Livingston joined them, and looked lost to the world and didn't even react when Linus nudged him and asked if he's okay.
He's hanging off of Turk who looked equal parts sad and sadder, coaxing him up the stairs.
Rusty missteps halfway up and Turk swears and he's just as drunk as Rusty is and Linus stops short before deciding whether to help or pretend he didn't see.
But he did see. And it was... harrowing.
-
Biting his tongue in shock at sudden commotion in his room at one am - it’s all he can do not to scream, when he sees a silhouette by his luggage, shoving things - his shirts, nothing valuable - into a duffel bag
“Rusty?” he asks and squints, when his brain makes an appearance.
“Wanna go on a road trip with me?” he asks and flashes him a smile, and this is too much, he remembers at once why they’re all here and the smile looks like anything but that and he hates that his eyes are burning again. It’s not like he can excuse it easily, in a dark room.
“I don’t-”
“Bash isn’t around. And I don’t think they’ll be happy if I go alone.”
Oh. Oh, God. Rusty was asking him for help. Rusty was asking him for help.
It takes more than he wants to admit, out of him, not to start crying all over again. He steels himself and pretends that Rusty isn’t standing at the foot of his bed, with two duffel bags and an air of desperation. It would be too much of a shock for, for forever.
“Go where,” he asks when he’s sure his voice would stick, and Rusty smiles like he’d just been offered a lifetime supply of counterside snacks. Linus notes the relief, too, and wants to go back to sleep and wake up in the normal world again.
“To find Danny,” he says, casually. Like two days ago.
"Rusty...”
“-trust me. Okay. Just trust me,” he asks, pleads, and Linus looks at him and sees the dark circles around his eyes and the tension in his neck and nods a little bit, and then full on.
Rusty would leave either way. This way, though, Reuben won’t kill him for letting Rusty go alone. Go play out his denial fantasy, alone. Rusty, who hated drugs because he’d known everything there was to know about reality, now wanted to escape it. And wanted Linus along for it.
“Let’s go.”
It’s the least he could do, even if it hurt his heart just as much as the phone call did.
-
They walk out back and find Rusty’s convertible and he almost demands he drives instead but then he figures, what’s been bugging him out since back in the room.
“You weren’t drinking, were you?”
He distinctly didn’t smell of alcohol. No one tried to steal a drink off of him earlier, and even if they did they were all too out of it to notice. Linus wasn’t even drunk, and it took him this much to… Sometimes, working with conmen was exhausting.
But then again, he’d heard enough stories from D- from, the others, about Rusty handling drinks better than water. It wasn’t entirely stupid to ask and check.
“Nope,” Rusty chirps back and sits in the driver’s seat, hands drumming against the steering wheel. “Nothing alcoholic, anyways.”
Meaning, Rusty wasn’t inebriated and hallucinating. He was sober and hallucinating. Linus wishes he could call someone who’d know how to help. And then he wished he never had to think about the someone that first came to mind.
And despite his lingering drowsiness and the blue-gray haze that his mind was reflecting from their immediate surroundings, Linus notices about ten minutes into this, that they weren’t exactly moving.
"Rusty?" he asks for the second time that night and wonders for that same amount of times, whether he should’ve put up more of a fight in the hotel. But then, no one would be here to look after him. He sighs. "Where are we going?"
"I don’t know," he replies, and doesn’t sound bothered by it at all.
Linus bites his lip to stop himself from asking something stupid again, like, are you okay. And Rusty, as if he heard him, shrugs uneasily.
"Don’t mean we're not going," and drives off.
-
He decided somewhere between Reno and here that this could be just like another con. Outwardly, at least.
Because Rusty was talking to himself, about some clues, and Linus wasn’t quite sure a man to man would get him far here.
After they’d gotten to Reno and Rusty sorted through the ID’s to find one he’d use and discarded every remaining one, Linus wondered just how much time this road trip would take.
The one time he asked instead of wondering, trying his best to make it sound off-handed, Rusty didn’t try at all to hide how his face crumpled. Linus didn’t ask, after that.
-
Turns out that looking for clues meant, in every crazy sense of the words, looking for clues.
They’d hit a random bar along some road Rusty’d look happy to find. They’d drink a few, and wait seated at the corner table, and Linus would watch Rusty as he watches everyone else, and then they would leave.
There’d been a theatre four towns over, where they waited for an hour for a cleaning lady’s shift to start. And by the looks of it, Rusty knew by heart when she’d waddle in through the front door. By the looks of it, the world was melding into the insanity the way Rusty’d wanted it to.
There's been a few motels, that they’d hit and at ungodly hours of the night. Linus would wince a sympathetic smile at the front desk worker, and Rusty would ask something nonsensical, like the code the two of them would speak in to annoy Linus off, and every time it would be met with the same lack of comprehension as Linus used to display, before he’d given up on it, back when.
As they let the greyhound bus driver off with a drink and an apology for the hold up - Rusty was Dean Feldman, a customer feedback middle manager - Linus finally felt himself losing the bit of patience he scoured for this morning in the bathroom mirror.
“So, what was all that for?”
“Information,” Rusty says patiently for the fifth time, and it explains nothing for the millionth.
He smiles at him easily, but his eyes aren’t on Linus at all, or on anywhere physical, really. Which had to stop, now, some day, eventually. Linus wanted it to end now. Like it would hurt less if he’d ended it now.
He is about to gather his wits, looking down at the desk in between them to find the words that would be kind enough but just as firm, that would snap Rusty out of this. But the lack of anything but a cappuccino on his end of the table was what disturbed him even more than Rusty’s glazed over look did.
He frantically racks his brain for all the stops they’d made, and there’d been a ton, and even the street vendor with his hotdog cart and yet, Linus realizes with terrifying, absolute surety that Rusty didn’t eat once since they’d left.
He was here to help, to look out for him, and all he’d been doing was getting annoyed with a grieving friend for having unconventional methods of dealing with it. It’s only been five days (God, it’s already been five days since he’d last eaten), and Linus was already acting like this wasn’t a long overdue favor that Rusty deserved. At the least. Hell, they’d spent over a month once just looking for Linus’ dog, which, while important, didn’t really measure up to losing, Danny. Losing him forever.
Didn’t measure up at all.
This was a con, like any other. And Linus decided then and there, in that rickety barstool of the stickiest dive in all of Nevada, that he won’t leave until Rusty does. He’d let Rusty do his... whatever it is. And Linus will make sure he’s fed and okay. As okay as he can be, given everything.
He sighs. His eyes burn a little, and familiar, and guilty. And then he goes tracking down the nearest, greasiest kebab place that doesn’t shy away from onion and salt in their menu options.
Rusty stares at him upon return, and Linus stares right back, unwavering.
“If you don’t eat when I ask you to, or at least try and eat it all, I’m leaving. And I’m telling Saul.”
He stares some more, some dangerous look to his eyes flickering once before he slumps forward a little, in defeat. He knew just as well as Linus knew that they’d all go looking for him if he’d left alone. And Linus knew, like any seasoned conman would, that leverages come with the price you don’t end up having to pay.
“Okay,” Rusty says, his eyes too bright. “Okay.”
-
A day after that, they’re sat on the terrace of a student-ridden coffee shop that Alice would’ve loved, if he hadn’t broken up with her over the phone yesterday while Rusty slept. Now he was drawing something out on napkins, staring at them for a while and then setting them aflame with a lighter and a discrete wave or two at the smoke, and Linus understood now why they’d been seated outside. He knew Rusty’s memory had to do with seeing things that stuck like pictures, and guessed that this was him making sure he doesn’t forget something. And the lighter was there to make sure no one else finds it out. Absently, Linus wonders why he’d had a lighter on his person, and if this was something he would’ve been used to seeing all the time.
Absently, because most of his focus was on the unfinished turkish roll forgotten on Rusty’s plate.
-
Linus wished he’d talk to him but he also didn’t know what he’d say if Rusty ever did. He wasn’t good at this on a good day, let alone… Linus couldn’t even imagine how losing someone like that would feel. He’d never had anyone like that in his life, to begin with. He still selfishly wished that Rusty would talk, about anything, like he’d always used to when they’d get stuck in traffic like now.
He reminds Rusty that the light had gone green, and ignores the pit at the bottom of his stomach that opens when he watches as Rusty realizes what that meant.
-
He gives up on knocking after the third attempt because there were other guests on this floor beside them, and remembers why God had given him steady hands, and why… he... had given him Rusty’s old lockpicks two years ago.
Suddenly, the knob twists, crushing the pin inside it, and Linus backs away.
In time to see how desperate the swing of the door was, how Rusty’d flinged it open and stared at him for a few seconds, an incomprehensible look on his face that deflated as shortly as it had appeared.
He steps away from the door and it’s as much of an invitation as Linus would get. By the time he gathers the rest of his picks, Rusty is at the far end of the hotel room, staring through the open balcony door with a bottle of something he could smell to here and a flash of red light between his fingers. Rusty doesn’t smoke.
Rusty is smoking. And drinking something. And the balcony door is open and they’re on the 47th floor.
He hurries over to the sofa and ignores the confused look he can feel the weight of on the side of his face.
"Hey."
Rusty stubs the cigarette out, because Linus scrunched his nose about it.
"Do you want to talk?"
“What about?” Rusty asks, staring forward again, at nowhere.
Linus doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t know if there’s words, any of them, that would make the air easier to breathe, as fresh as it was. Rusty would know what to say, he thinks and hates again, everything about this. He should’ve broken Basher out of prison. Should’ve asked Saul to come along. Something, someone but Linus. Anyone but Linus.
Rusty leans back on the couch and his head falls back, ceiling the new target of his silent appraisal.
“He’s not dead, Linus,” he says then, quietly, with utter conviction. Like letting him in on one of their jokes. Like Linus was missing something. “And I thought- the lock. Thought it was him.”
And then he smiles, all tired, after he’d said it. It was the saddest thing Linus had ever seen.
“He isn’t dead,” Rusty concludes, but his voice is tired too and Linus wants to scream because it’s been almost two weeks and Rusty’s been chasing ghosts out of dark corners of random rooms and people and Linus was indulging him, this insanity, it couldn’t have been healthy. They’d missed Danny’s funeral, for God’s sakes, right about the time Rusty was subtly questioning a street vendor about acrylic paint.
It’s like he believed - and Linus wanted to believe too - that he could solve death and con hell into being a holding cell just for him, just for today, if only he turned the right rock. Like their philosophy of anything being possible was, much more, than just a tagline.
But what was the alternative?
Linus looks at him: Rusty is sleeping, like that. He pries the bottle neck gently out of his fingers, like stealing a wallet, so he doesn’t feel it. It’s with the same gentleness that he pulls at his tie to let it loose, and he carefully leans Rusty back into the pillows so his neck doesn’t hurt tomorrow.
The balcony... Linus shudders, and not for the cold air that kept swirling into the room at this height. The only smiles he’d seen from Rusty these days were when he’d found 'clues' - a strewn about paper clip, and this and that... Jerry Hoester... Michael Lancaster... Al O’Connell... a rental suit with a paint splatter on the lapels... fifteen hundred and forty seven dollar tips in dives... as long as this lasts, and as long as he’s eating, Linus would keep up with it.
Cause if this was the alternative...
Linus closes the balcony door tight shut and breaks off the handle, taking it with him when he left.
-
They’re at a bar again, and pointedly not talking about three nights ago, either. Not even when Linus booked them a room to share, on their current stop.
Which was good, that Rusty barely even reacted to that. Linus didn’t- couldn’t think about it, not now, not ever.
This one was an irish pub, or just irish themed, and Linus hated Guinness but apparently that was the entry level demand for walking inside of here.
He forced a disinterested face as he looked over the crowd from their corner desk, and didn’t see a single encouraging thing about this establishment or anyone in it. But Rusty insisted they had to be here tonight because... because. And Linus doesn’t have the heart anymore to even show discontent, let alone to tell him no. Because he has even less of a heart to tell him why it wont do them any good.
Rusty doesn’t seem much aware of his inner turmoil, and orders a cuba libre when the gruff waiter comes by, making it two when Linus nods. He gives the ID he’d been using for two weeks now - the same one everywhere except for the greyhound, which was a rookie move if they’d been on an actual job but they weren’t. No matter how much Linus pretended they were. So he doesn’t bring it up. Whatever helped Rusty not think about him. Not think about him being dead. Not think about him being dead, regardless of everything they’d been doing now, whatever it was. For once, Linus wants the drinks to hurry up and be good at it.
Rusty looks slightly dazed when Linus steals a careful glance his way, staring at some sign on the wall, advertising some getaway with orange trees and the sea, or something like that. He’s still staring at it when the waiter stops by again with drinks that were too small and too non-dark to be rum and coke.
"This is not what you ordered," Linus says lightly, inspecting his glass with a frown. Somehow he wasn’t surprised they’d get treated badly here, and if it were any other occasion he’d insist it’s because of Rusty’s shiny shirt. "This looks like it’ll taste of rubbing alcohol." He says, and sets it back on the table.
Rusty looks down slowly, and his eyes keep on the drink for a long while. And then he looks back at Linus and smiles, something of a finality about it.
“It’s moonshine,” Rusty explains patiently, and the smile is genuine this time. "Thank you."
Linus stares, and wonders if he should gung ho the antiseptic shot to handle what this could turn into.
“What for?”
"Looking out for me."
Linus backs the drink down because he doesn’t want to clear his throat, because the lump that formed in it at the sincerity in Rusty’s voice isn’t something a forced cough could fix at all, because Danny was still dead and Rusty was here and he wasn’t okay, and Linus didn’t know if he’ll ever be able to help him.
"Least I could do," he says, and pretends his eyes are welling up from the shot.
Rusty nods, smiling still, and orders drinks again that come correct, this time.
At some point there’s commotion - billiard always got heated around one oclock, Basher insisted it was the sixth fundamental law of thermodynamics and Linus was somewhat afraid of asking him what he’d say the fifth one was - he turns to ask Rusty if he knows, because it’s the first question he genuinely thought of asking him that wasn’t related to Danny or this. But Rusty's not in his chair anymore, and the bills he’d set on the tabletop before he left look like the most of an apology that Linus would accept.
He sighs, grimly backing the new drink, because now he needed it even more.
He doesn’t bother looking for Rusty in his hotel room. And with a silent apology to someone that wasn’t around to care about it, he goes back home.
-
-
-
It’s not by chance that it was Reuben’s birthday in four days and they’d all promised to fly in. And all now meant two less, and Linus didn’t care to think about it now, not when Reuben was still quiet and Saul looked older somehow, as if that was possible.
Yen wasn’t there yet, and Livingston either, even though the latter used to come in early for these things, when Rusty used to come around too.
They never missed things like these, the two of them - Basher assured him. The last he heard of Basher was a phone call after Danny’s funeral, and at least he kept out of jail now. That was just this new brand of unsettling that Linus wished he didn’t have to start adjusting to.
He was going to walk down the stairs and get himself a drink because that’s just another new that he didn’t want to think about further, and he’d gotten to the last step when he saw... he saw...
"Jesus, kid," Danny says, frantic, and Rusty’s at his side, cradling his head with one good hand before he manages to split his skull open on the edge of a marble step.
"You alright?" Rusty asks when the world isn't all black spots anymore.
"But you... you... Dad..."
"Drink this," Rusty says, after the quick glance the two of them share, and hands him the water bottle that Danny opened for him.
Linus splashes some of it on his face before squeezing his eyes shut and drinking the rest of it. When he opens them back up, Danny is still standing there and slightly less concerned than amused.
Danny was there. Rusty was there, and his right arm was in a sling. Linus really, really needed that drink.
-
“It was a set up,” Danny says to a room of people that buried him three months ago. “We knew there would be one, we just didn’t know which one of us would have to walk in on it.”
Rusty nods, and Linus vaguely remembers their talk on some art theft that left a loose end or two. He makes a tired note to ask more in the future, and doesn’t object to a refill when Turk offers it by raising the bottle a little.
“If we didn’t fall for it--” Rusty begins and looks rested, more than he was when Linus had last seen him.
“--they’d do something worse. And if we didn't keep it in the dark and they found out, they would've gone after you.”
It's an apology, Linus realizes. Everyone else seems to as well, because Reuben looks like he wants to slap them both.
“I just didn’t think--”
“--it was rushed, and--”
“--the yacht prison was just overkill--”
“--and Greece is just obviously the worst--”
“--so I rerouted, to Algeria, when I ran. And I’d left enough hints with our people as to where I’d be.”
Rusty nods, and Linus avoids his eyes when he smiles almost imperceptibly at him. Algeria. Moonshine, and oranges. He hated to admit that he could see the sense in it, now. In hindsight.
“It worked. We went back to Greece, but together and with a plan. Turns out the crooked do a lot to remain free, and it goes both ways.”
Danny grins, and Rusty mirrors it, and there’s nothing warm about it. That alone is enough for Basher to not ask any questions, regarding this particular thing, ever again. Linus is inclined heavily to agree with the sentiment, what with having the worst time of his life during it.
Basher walks up to Danny to hug him again, and punches Rusty’s good arm when he turns.
“Ow."
Rusty rubs at his bicep and Danny gives Basher a warning look.
“What? It’s the third funeral of yours that I’ve been to. Run the next gag,” he says and looks irritated, but Linus sees relief for what it was and sees the apology when Rusty punches him back, lightly.
“Third? Well I’ve been to two of Rusty’s. Danny got plastered for both of those,” Frank butts in, laughing, and Danny gives him a nasty look with no heat behind it.
“So did he this time," Turk sniggers, pointing at Rusty. Linus remembers the fakeout stumble on the stairs, and the nine hour drive that followed it, and shakes his head.
“No, he didn’t,” Linus says, and Rusty shoots him an apologetic smile. “He drank apple juice the whole time.”
“I did try and tell you he was alive.”
He did, three times. Two of which were very clear. But he also sounded- Linus looks now at Danny beyond the mediterranean tan, sees the faded bruises and cuts on his hands and cheeks for what they are and understands. Rusty sees him understand.
“Yeah.” Sorry, he doesn’t say, and knows he’d been heard regardless, by the both of them.
Virgil looks to be finally inebriated enough to start letting emotion into his voice. “I just can’t believe you went to Greece without me.”
“See how Rusty went to hell to retrieve him? You’d never do that,” Turk says, and the world is back to spinning normally again when Virgil calls him an idiot.
“Well if Greece is hell--” Danny butts in, after some time they'd spent arguing just that.
“--right, right, if that's your angle. But economically?,” Rusty adds thoughtfully, and Turk gives a triumphant yell, agreeing immediately.
Linus knows they were doing it on purpose even before they'd exchanged a quick, conspiratory glance, and doesn’t find it in himself to mind it this time.
-
"Dad called me," Linus asks after the debate, and Rusty tilts his head to the side when he looks at him.
"Cause he wouldn't be able to let me know otherwise, that Danny was in trouble. Our phones were being tracked."
"And we had to play it like we didn't know anything," Danny clarifies, and Rusty nods gravely.
"Bobby would've called me if…"
Danny squeezes his hand - almost imperceptibly, as well - and Linus is so glad to be so horribly wrong about something.
Rusty smiles at Danny and then he turns back to Linus, grimacing.
"Sorry, Linus."
But they were already through the disbelief, and the clue searching, and Rusty's apology was redundant. Unless… Linus mirrors his grimace. God, that. It did feel good to be wrong there, too.
"The balcony door?"
Rusty winces, shakes his head.
“No. Alice.”
“Oh." So he'd noticed that, despite worrying about Danny. Linus didn't want him feeling any more guilty than he already and unreasonably was. "We've been dating for a week. Don't worry about it."
By the time he's convinced Rusty believes him, they both realize Danny had been staring at Rusty, long, his face blank.
"He was smoking?" he finally asks, his voice monotone, eyes never leaving Rusty's face.
Rusty is looking anywhere but Danny's way, probably working out his design ideas for Reuben's ceilings, and Linus takes his cue to leave when Danny's face switches from demanding to concerned.
Danny would know what to do, he thinks to himself, relieved, and lets the door fall closed behind him.
-
-
-
They're sitting in Reuben's garden at round stone tables, sans Turk and Virgil and those that haven't arrived yet.
Rusty is eating his second serving of waldorf salad happily, his cast on the table and riddled with signatures and indecent drawings that Saul was eyeing with no small amount of disapproval.
Danny was sat next to him with their chairs drawn closer than needed, passing him the exact dressing he'd been missing as he talked Saul and Basher through the plan for when Rusty's sketching arm is healed.
Rusty reminds him in between forkfuls that he's ambidextrous, and wipes the salt off his lip with his thumb.
Danny reminds him in turn and a second later than necessary, that he can always start wearing velcro shoes and forget about Danny tying his shoelaces for him.
But moments later they're looking at each other like there's no one else around, and they're grinning and alive and here, both of them, the pool water reflections dancing golden on their faces, and Linus is now convinced they'll outlast death, together as they are, that logic is beneath them, somehow. Now, he gets it.
One look Saul's way, and the knowing smile he gets for his trouble lets him know that he's not alone in thinking that.