Fic: That's The Magic Number (Danny/Rusty/Linus)
Title: That's The Magic Number
Author luzdeestrellas
Summary: Meeting in a hotel room just has so many advantages.
Rating: Adult
Notes: For KamaKazee Kami_brennan, who requested that Danny and Rusty pick up Linus for another con. I hope this suffices.
Thanks to musesfool for saving us all from my mistakes, and for doing it so quickly.
“You know why we don’t work Chicago this time of year?”
Danny had the decency to look like he was really thinking about it. “I have no idea. Tell me, why don’t we work Chicago this time of year?”
“Because, Mr. O, let’s just drop in on Linus, because obviously phoning him would be a stupid idea, it’s so fucking cold I think I am in danger of losing a couple of vital body parts.”
Danny stopped abruptly, grabbing Rusty’s arm to pull him round to face him, and looked him up and down with the careful scrutiny he normally reserved for difficult jobs. Around them people continued to hurry by, bundled up against the snow that was beginning to fall ever more thickly, and looking as though they were full of anything but festive cheer.
“Everything appears to be intact,” he said finally. “All limbs present and correct.”
“It wasn’t my limbs I was worried about.”
“Ah.” Danny smirked and looked as though he were actually about to lick his lips. “Unfortunately that would require a much more thorough investigation than I have thus far conducted. If you would just step a little closer, maybe I -“
He was cut off by a woman and a box, which looked big enough and heavy enough to contain a few small children, nearly ploughing into him. The woman looked like she might be about to start yelling at Danny, until she got a better look at him, standing there all easy casualness and with the snow gathering in his hair like some kind of crazy halo. Rusty smiled, although whether his face moved he couldn’t tell, since his ability to actually feel it had disappeared about half an hour ago.
He raised his eyes at Danny, and quickly jerked his head in the direction of the bar. It was fairly obvious that the woman, of indeterminate shape under her bulky coat, and looking as though it had been more than a few decades since she’d been excited about Santa Claus coming, had decided that outrageous flirt was the order of the day. It was too damn cold to stand and watch Danny extricate himself from her grip, and he had no doubt Danny would do it all the quicker with Rusty out of the picture, rather than standing as his captive audience. In the meantime he’d get on with doing what they’d come here for. A quick brush past Linus was all he needed, and this way they were saved the dispute over whose speciality this really was, so that Danny wouldn’t have to tell him again of the time Rusty had tried to make a pass to him, only to slip on what was clearly unidentified wet flooring and throw the envelope that had taken them days to get a good ten feet away from Danny.
“Now, as I was saying …about that inspection.” Danny’s voice was the only warm thing in the world, Rusty was sure of it, because even the arm that snaked its way round his waist was shaking.
“Your lack of shame disgusts me. Trying to seduce me when poor Betty isn’t even a street away.”
“Annie, actually,” he said, falling into step beside Rusty. “And only trying to seduce you?”
“Too cold for real seduction.”
“We can fix that. Less than an hour and then there’s a hotel room with our name on. Did you do it?”
“Obviously. And no one saw, before you ask. This hotel better have a mini bar.”
“You might not need it.”
***
Danny locked the door and slowly approached Rusty, who was debating the merits of crawling under the covers without getting out of his clothes. “Now, I think we should check you out. Can be a terrible thing, frostbite.”
“I don’t know that I shouldn’t have someone more professional in that case.”
“I’m the most professional there is. In fact, it’s what I do best,” Danny said, leaning close to Rusty, and reaching out to feel his cock through his pants, already expectantly hard.
“We both know that’s a lie.”
Rusty’s laugh only ended up as an inarticulate serious of moans when Danny’s mouth covered his, and his arms wrapped round him, possessive and steady and reliable, and all the things nobody ever thought Danny Ocean was - Rusty included, sometimes.
Half pushed, half falling, Rusty landed on the bed, and then stretched languorously as Danny stared down at him, always with that look on his face, no matter how many times they’d done this - his idea look - just as if fucking Rusty was the best idea he’d ever had, and like it was the first time he’d ever had it. Rusty throbbed with need every time at the very sight of it, and was eternally thankful that Danny always believed in acting on his ideas.
It wasn’t long until his fingers were working the buttons on Rusty’s pants, slipping them down and exposing Rusty’s bare skin to the air, which even in here was chill, and then heating him up with moist, warm kisses along the insides of his thighs, while his hand found Rusty’s cock and stroked it slowly.
“It looks all right, and it feels all right,” he mused, looking closely at it, so that Rusty could feel his breath slip across it.
“I’m not sure that a little attention wouldn’t still be a good idea. I’d hate for anything to happen to it.”
“So would I.” And Danny smiled before he took Rusty in his mouth, and Rusty forgot to care about anything else.
***
Linus checked his pockets and found the key five minutes after Rusty slipped out the door, and he hadn’t thought twice about taking off there and then. He hardly needed a bar job, and the deal had only ever been that he’d stay until after Christmas anyway; he doubted that anyone would really be upset by a couple of weeks’ shortfall. He certainly wasn’t, was, in fact, more excited than he had been for weeks.
He understood the logic of taking this job; his father was no idiot, and his advice had always been good. It’d kept him out of trouble, or, more importantly from Bobby Caldwell’s point of view, had kept temptation out of his way, and no one would dispute that reading people wasn’t Linus’s strong point. Making the lift, as he’d been told since he was eight, was nothing; people were the hard part. He doubted the truth of the first half of that, but it was certainly easier than knowing what a person was thinking, and practising that didn’t come much better than working in a bar seven days a week.
Except maybe working with Rusty and Danny. Use your assets, whatever you’ve got, was rule number one, and Rusty and Danny were just about the best people to have that Linus could think of. If there were reasons other than the cold that made him walk faster in search of a cab to the hotel, he pretended he didn’t notice, and just kept walking, head down against the wind and snow.
By the time he arrived at the room matching the number on his key, he’d become so good at not noticing that he barely even registered how abnormally fast his heart was beating, and he was almost certain he hadn’t heard anything at all unusual from the other side of the door. Obviously he hadn’t, because, if he had, he certainly wouldn’t have slipped the key card in its slot and pushed the door open. Even he knew about Rusty and Danny, after all.
When the door opened, though, he didn’t regret that he’d done it; he never denied that, because there on the bed, looking like some kind of god instead of the porn star he should have, was Rusty, and kneeling before him and between his knees was Danny. Rusty’s head was thrown back so that Linus could see every vein and muscle of his throat as he moaned and pleaded with Danny for more. And, even though he knew he should have left, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the mesmerising line of that throat, or stop thinking about how his mom always said Danny Ocean had the tongue of the devil, and how now he thought she might have been dead right and dead wrong.
He was still thinking about it all when Rusty, who even then seemed to know and see everything, found time to suggest that either he take a seat or go back out, but, for God’s sake, close the door.
Linus had a horrified moment where he wondered if perhaps Danny wouldn’t be a little surprised to find out he was being watched, and had visions of explaining to Tess that, yes, cause of death was correctly recorded as choking on another man’s cock, but Danny just kept doing whatever he was doing to Rusty, until Rusty finally thrust more wildly than Linus had ever imagined possible and then flopped back on the bed, looking as though the world could end then and there and he’d still be perfectly happy.
Linus still hadn’t moved, which, he suspected, might start to get awkward pretty soon.
He cleared his throat, and then regretted it because it sounded so loud in the silence. “I’ll, um, I’ll leave you two alone. Come back later -“
“Isn’t that a little like closing the barn door after the horse has already got in and screwed half your mares?” Danny asked as he stood up. He didn’t look at all pissed, but then you could never really tell with Danny. Not unless you were Rusty, which Linus wasn’t, so you could still never tell.
“It’s escaped, idiot, and, Linus, seriously, man, close the door. There isn’t much point in us going through all this secrecy to get you here without anyone noticing, only for you to stand there in the door where anyone can see you.”
“Anyone can see me?” he began to retort, until he saw Rusty looking at him, and closing the door meant he got to make a big deal of turning round to do it. He’d rather hoped that miraculously when he turned back Rusty would be fully clothed again too, but instead he was wandering around searching for whatever he’d been wearing, and seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was hanging out everywhere.
Linus was considering the beginnings of some mental prayer about how he would never be curious again (he had thought about never stealing again, but opted for realism, which he was sure God would appreciate) so long as Rusty stopped leaning over things and stretching to pick things up, and Danny stopped just sitting in that chair like that, as though this were all perfectly normal, when Rusty found his pants, and made an unnecessarily grandiose twirling movement to show Linus.
“I’ll just be in the bathroom. Shall I leave the door open, or are you good for a while?”
He smiled and didn’t wait for an answer, for which Linus was profoundly grateful, although that lessened slightly when he realised he was now alone with Danny, who was watching him steadily and looking like it was costing him a great deal not to laugh.
“Take a seat,” he said.
Linus looked desperately round the room, but no other secret place to sit revealed itself, and he made his way cautiously to the bed, as though it might spring to life and attack him. Danny’s mouth twitched, but he made no comment.
“So, what’s the deal? You’re runnin’ something, right?” Lesson number three from Bobby: when you’ve screwed up, pretend like you haven’t.
“Yeah. Reuben wants a vase back.” He only shrugged at Linus’s questioning look. “Apparently he’d paid the asking price and everything was arranged - legitimately, or so he swears - and then some guy stole it from right under his nose. He’d like it back.”
“Also, Danny would like one last play before he settles down for good,” Rusty shouted from the bathroom. “Before respectability makes an honest man of him, if you will.”
Danny’s jaw might have tightened just a little, but Linus wasn’t sure. “Your last time, for a …a vase?” he asked.
“A nineteenth century vase, I’ll have you know,” Rusty informed him as he emerged, looking as smooth as ever, and made himself comfortable on the arm of Danny’s chair. “And worth a packet. Given by Queen Victoria to Zachary Taylor. He was one of the Presidents,” he added as an afterthought.
“I knew that,” Linus protested.
“Danny didn’t though.”
“So what do I do in all this?”
“Tail him. And don’t look like that; he doesn’t know who you are, so he won’t connect you with Reuben. It’s the smart plan.”
Linus nodded. “Fine. Why all the secrecy? Why not just call me and tell me to meet you.”
Rusty shot Danny a look that Linus thought meant, “I told you so,” and which Danny ignored.
“You should always be careful what you say on a phone, Linus. People who aren’t probably get caught. Not to mention that your father is a very reasonable man, who believes firmly that you should do everything on your own without his interference, until there’s danger of you getting hurt. I don’t want to be running from both Benedict and him.“
“I have no argument with that part,” Rusty agreed. “And anyway, I think we all found this arrangement much more satisfactory. Don’t you think?”
Linus swallowed hard and pretended Rusty wasn’t leering at him. “So what’ll you guys be doing while I’m tailing him?” Natural was good. He liked natural a lot.
Rusty just shrugged. “Waiting for you to tell us where he’s got the thing, and then working out how we get it home to Reuben.”
“We may indulge in other activities while we wait,” Danny elaborated suggestively, and reached up to drape his arm round Rusty’s shoulders.
Linus watched as Rusty lay back against him, and Danny’s fingers stroked over his collarbone, drawing patterns Linus couldn’t see but wished he could.
“You know,” Rusty said after a second, “that could be more of a group thing.”
Danny hmmmed somewhere in his throat. “It might have some merit. But it would, of course, depend on whether we had other people willing to play.”
They both looked at him, and he wondered if they’d always been planning this and for how long. But then, when Rusty lifted up Danny’s shirt and slid his hand under the waistband of his suit, and he saw the way Danny’s face went slack at the touch, he thought that maybe he didn’t care. And when Danny started working kisses down Rusty’s neck, and he remembered what that mouth had done to Rusty earlier, he decided he definitely didn’t.
He never forgot his uncertainty, or his shame at admitting to them both that he’d never gone all the way, not with a guy at least, or forgot how impossibly scared he’d been when he realised that it was really going to happen, because never forget anything was lesson number four, but he didn’t remember it either. Instead he remembered Rusty spreading his knees apart, and telling him to let him know if it hurt, and he remembered that moment when Rusty was finally inside him, and all the gentleness he had used to get there disappeared, so that Linus was aware of only fierce waves of motion that coursed through him and left him broken and whole at once. And he remembered Danny, who didn’t seem to mind that Linus’s grip on his hair got tighter every time Rusty thrust into him again, and who made him think that worshipping the devil might not be at all as bad as it was cracked up to be if that was how his tongue moved. And he remembered how the whole time Rusty and Danny found ways of touching each other, of making sure that they were the centre around which the whole thing revolved, even though he was the one in the middle of it all. He thought that maybe he should have been jealous, except he wasn’t, because some things were meant to be the way they were, and what else could you do but hope they stayed that way?
And when it was over, they went to dinner, just like nothing had happened. They talked about the job, and mostly Rusty and Danny finished each other’s sentences, but sometimes there were no sentences at all, only broken pauses and beats of time which meant the world to them and were only silence to Linus. After dinner they invited him back with them, but he refused, because they didn’t really need him there, and he was happy to have done it once but only once. Rule five: know which lines to cross. Some things were the way they were, and what else could you do…
He watched them walk away, Danny reaching out to steer Rusty in the right direction before he could possibly have known he was going in the wrong one, and then letting his arm linger round his shoulders. He wondered if they even knew the real con here, or whether they had talked themselves into believing that there were other combinations just as good as the two of them. And then he thought maybe he was getting better at this reading people thing, but that maybe this wouldn’t be the story he’d tell his father to prove it.
Author luzdeestrellas
Summary: Meeting in a hotel room just has so many advantages.
Rating: Adult
Notes: For KamaKazee Kami_brennan, who requested that Danny and Rusty pick up Linus for another con. I hope this suffices.
Thanks to musesfool for saving us all from my mistakes, and for doing it so quickly.
“You know why we don’t work Chicago this time of year?”
Danny had the decency to look like he was really thinking about it. “I have no idea. Tell me, why don’t we work Chicago this time of year?”
“Because, Mr. O, let’s just drop in on Linus, because obviously phoning him would be a stupid idea, it’s so fucking cold I think I am in danger of losing a couple of vital body parts.”
Danny stopped abruptly, grabbing Rusty’s arm to pull him round to face him, and looked him up and down with the careful scrutiny he normally reserved for difficult jobs. Around them people continued to hurry by, bundled up against the snow that was beginning to fall ever more thickly, and looking as though they were full of anything but festive cheer.
“Everything appears to be intact,” he said finally. “All limbs present and correct.”
“It wasn’t my limbs I was worried about.”
“Ah.” Danny smirked and looked as though he were actually about to lick his lips. “Unfortunately that would require a much more thorough investigation than I have thus far conducted. If you would just step a little closer, maybe I -“
He was cut off by a woman and a box, which looked big enough and heavy enough to contain a few small children, nearly ploughing into him. The woman looked like she might be about to start yelling at Danny, until she got a better look at him, standing there all easy casualness and with the snow gathering in his hair like some kind of crazy halo. Rusty smiled, although whether his face moved he couldn’t tell, since his ability to actually feel it had disappeared about half an hour ago.
He raised his eyes at Danny, and quickly jerked his head in the direction of the bar. It was fairly obvious that the woman, of indeterminate shape under her bulky coat, and looking as though it had been more than a few decades since she’d been excited about Santa Claus coming, had decided that outrageous flirt was the order of the day. It was too damn cold to stand and watch Danny extricate himself from her grip, and he had no doubt Danny would do it all the quicker with Rusty out of the picture, rather than standing as his captive audience. In the meantime he’d get on with doing what they’d come here for. A quick brush past Linus was all he needed, and this way they were saved the dispute over whose speciality this really was, so that Danny wouldn’t have to tell him again of the time Rusty had tried to make a pass to him, only to slip on what was clearly unidentified wet flooring and throw the envelope that had taken them days to get a good ten feet away from Danny.
“Now, as I was saying …about that inspection.” Danny’s voice was the only warm thing in the world, Rusty was sure of it, because even the arm that snaked its way round his waist was shaking.
“Your lack of shame disgusts me. Trying to seduce me when poor Betty isn’t even a street away.”
“Annie, actually,” he said, falling into step beside Rusty. “And only trying to seduce you?”
“Too cold for real seduction.”
“We can fix that. Less than an hour and then there’s a hotel room with our name on. Did you do it?”
“Obviously. And no one saw, before you ask. This hotel better have a mini bar.”
“You might not need it.”
***
Danny locked the door and slowly approached Rusty, who was debating the merits of crawling under the covers without getting out of his clothes. “Now, I think we should check you out. Can be a terrible thing, frostbite.”
“I don’t know that I shouldn’t have someone more professional in that case.”
“I’m the most professional there is. In fact, it’s what I do best,” Danny said, leaning close to Rusty, and reaching out to feel his cock through his pants, already expectantly hard.
“We both know that’s a lie.”
Rusty’s laugh only ended up as an inarticulate serious of moans when Danny’s mouth covered his, and his arms wrapped round him, possessive and steady and reliable, and all the things nobody ever thought Danny Ocean was - Rusty included, sometimes.
Half pushed, half falling, Rusty landed on the bed, and then stretched languorously as Danny stared down at him, always with that look on his face, no matter how many times they’d done this - his idea look - just as if fucking Rusty was the best idea he’d ever had, and like it was the first time he’d ever had it. Rusty throbbed with need every time at the very sight of it, and was eternally thankful that Danny always believed in acting on his ideas.
It wasn’t long until his fingers were working the buttons on Rusty’s pants, slipping them down and exposing Rusty’s bare skin to the air, which even in here was chill, and then heating him up with moist, warm kisses along the insides of his thighs, while his hand found Rusty’s cock and stroked it slowly.
“It looks all right, and it feels all right,” he mused, looking closely at it, so that Rusty could feel his breath slip across it.
“I’m not sure that a little attention wouldn’t still be a good idea. I’d hate for anything to happen to it.”
“So would I.” And Danny smiled before he took Rusty in his mouth, and Rusty forgot to care about anything else.
***
Linus checked his pockets and found the key five minutes after Rusty slipped out the door, and he hadn’t thought twice about taking off there and then. He hardly needed a bar job, and the deal had only ever been that he’d stay until after Christmas anyway; he doubted that anyone would really be upset by a couple of weeks’ shortfall. He certainly wasn’t, was, in fact, more excited than he had been for weeks.
He understood the logic of taking this job; his father was no idiot, and his advice had always been good. It’d kept him out of trouble, or, more importantly from Bobby Caldwell’s point of view, had kept temptation out of his way, and no one would dispute that reading people wasn’t Linus’s strong point. Making the lift, as he’d been told since he was eight, was nothing; people were the hard part. He doubted the truth of the first half of that, but it was certainly easier than knowing what a person was thinking, and practising that didn’t come much better than working in a bar seven days a week.
Except maybe working with Rusty and Danny. Use your assets, whatever you’ve got, was rule number one, and Rusty and Danny were just about the best people to have that Linus could think of. If there were reasons other than the cold that made him walk faster in search of a cab to the hotel, he pretended he didn’t notice, and just kept walking, head down against the wind and snow.
By the time he arrived at the room matching the number on his key, he’d become so good at not noticing that he barely even registered how abnormally fast his heart was beating, and he was almost certain he hadn’t heard anything at all unusual from the other side of the door. Obviously he hadn’t, because, if he had, he certainly wouldn’t have slipped the key card in its slot and pushed the door open. Even he knew about Rusty and Danny, after all.
When the door opened, though, he didn’t regret that he’d done it; he never denied that, because there on the bed, looking like some kind of god instead of the porn star he should have, was Rusty, and kneeling before him and between his knees was Danny. Rusty’s head was thrown back so that Linus could see every vein and muscle of his throat as he moaned and pleaded with Danny for more. And, even though he knew he should have left, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the mesmerising line of that throat, or stop thinking about how his mom always said Danny Ocean had the tongue of the devil, and how now he thought she might have been dead right and dead wrong.
He was still thinking about it all when Rusty, who even then seemed to know and see everything, found time to suggest that either he take a seat or go back out, but, for God’s sake, close the door.
Linus had a horrified moment where he wondered if perhaps Danny wouldn’t be a little surprised to find out he was being watched, and had visions of explaining to Tess that, yes, cause of death was correctly recorded as choking on another man’s cock, but Danny just kept doing whatever he was doing to Rusty, until Rusty finally thrust more wildly than Linus had ever imagined possible and then flopped back on the bed, looking as though the world could end then and there and he’d still be perfectly happy.
Linus still hadn’t moved, which, he suspected, might start to get awkward pretty soon.
He cleared his throat, and then regretted it because it sounded so loud in the silence. “I’ll, um, I’ll leave you two alone. Come back later -“
“Isn’t that a little like closing the barn door after the horse has already got in and screwed half your mares?” Danny asked as he stood up. He didn’t look at all pissed, but then you could never really tell with Danny. Not unless you were Rusty, which Linus wasn’t, so you could still never tell.
“It’s escaped, idiot, and, Linus, seriously, man, close the door. There isn’t much point in us going through all this secrecy to get you here without anyone noticing, only for you to stand there in the door where anyone can see you.”
“Anyone can see me?” he began to retort, until he saw Rusty looking at him, and closing the door meant he got to make a big deal of turning round to do it. He’d rather hoped that miraculously when he turned back Rusty would be fully clothed again too, but instead he was wandering around searching for whatever he’d been wearing, and seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was hanging out everywhere.
Linus was considering the beginnings of some mental prayer about how he would never be curious again (he had thought about never stealing again, but opted for realism, which he was sure God would appreciate) so long as Rusty stopped leaning over things and stretching to pick things up, and Danny stopped just sitting in that chair like that, as though this were all perfectly normal, when Rusty found his pants, and made an unnecessarily grandiose twirling movement to show Linus.
“I’ll just be in the bathroom. Shall I leave the door open, or are you good for a while?”
He smiled and didn’t wait for an answer, for which Linus was profoundly grateful, although that lessened slightly when he realised he was now alone with Danny, who was watching him steadily and looking like it was costing him a great deal not to laugh.
“Take a seat,” he said.
Linus looked desperately round the room, but no other secret place to sit revealed itself, and he made his way cautiously to the bed, as though it might spring to life and attack him. Danny’s mouth twitched, but he made no comment.
“So, what’s the deal? You’re runnin’ something, right?” Lesson number three from Bobby: when you’ve screwed up, pretend like you haven’t.
“Yeah. Reuben wants a vase back.” He only shrugged at Linus’s questioning look. “Apparently he’d paid the asking price and everything was arranged - legitimately, or so he swears - and then some guy stole it from right under his nose. He’d like it back.”
“Also, Danny would like one last play before he settles down for good,” Rusty shouted from the bathroom. “Before respectability makes an honest man of him, if you will.”
Danny’s jaw might have tightened just a little, but Linus wasn’t sure. “Your last time, for a …a vase?” he asked.
“A nineteenth century vase, I’ll have you know,” Rusty informed him as he emerged, looking as smooth as ever, and made himself comfortable on the arm of Danny’s chair. “And worth a packet. Given by Queen Victoria to Zachary Taylor. He was one of the Presidents,” he added as an afterthought.
“I knew that,” Linus protested.
“Danny didn’t though.”
“So what do I do in all this?”
“Tail him. And don’t look like that; he doesn’t know who you are, so he won’t connect you with Reuben. It’s the smart plan.”
Linus nodded. “Fine. Why all the secrecy? Why not just call me and tell me to meet you.”
Rusty shot Danny a look that Linus thought meant, “I told you so,” and which Danny ignored.
“You should always be careful what you say on a phone, Linus. People who aren’t probably get caught. Not to mention that your father is a very reasonable man, who believes firmly that you should do everything on your own without his interference, until there’s danger of you getting hurt. I don’t want to be running from both Benedict and him.“
“I have no argument with that part,” Rusty agreed. “And anyway, I think we all found this arrangement much more satisfactory. Don’t you think?”
Linus swallowed hard and pretended Rusty wasn’t leering at him. “So what’ll you guys be doing while I’m tailing him?” Natural was good. He liked natural a lot.
Rusty just shrugged. “Waiting for you to tell us where he’s got the thing, and then working out how we get it home to Reuben.”
“We may indulge in other activities while we wait,” Danny elaborated suggestively, and reached up to drape his arm round Rusty’s shoulders.
Linus watched as Rusty lay back against him, and Danny’s fingers stroked over his collarbone, drawing patterns Linus couldn’t see but wished he could.
“You know,” Rusty said after a second, “that could be more of a group thing.”
Danny hmmmed somewhere in his throat. “It might have some merit. But it would, of course, depend on whether we had other people willing to play.”
They both looked at him, and he wondered if they’d always been planning this and for how long. But then, when Rusty lifted up Danny’s shirt and slid his hand under the waistband of his suit, and he saw the way Danny’s face went slack at the touch, he thought that maybe he didn’t care. And when Danny started working kisses down Rusty’s neck, and he remembered what that mouth had done to Rusty earlier, he decided he definitely didn’t.
He never forgot his uncertainty, or his shame at admitting to them both that he’d never gone all the way, not with a guy at least, or forgot how impossibly scared he’d been when he realised that it was really going to happen, because never forget anything was lesson number four, but he didn’t remember it either. Instead he remembered Rusty spreading his knees apart, and telling him to let him know if it hurt, and he remembered that moment when Rusty was finally inside him, and all the gentleness he had used to get there disappeared, so that Linus was aware of only fierce waves of motion that coursed through him and left him broken and whole at once. And he remembered Danny, who didn’t seem to mind that Linus’s grip on his hair got tighter every time Rusty thrust into him again, and who made him think that worshipping the devil might not be at all as bad as it was cracked up to be if that was how his tongue moved. And he remembered how the whole time Rusty and Danny found ways of touching each other, of making sure that they were the centre around which the whole thing revolved, even though he was the one in the middle of it all. He thought that maybe he should have been jealous, except he wasn’t, because some things were meant to be the way they were, and what else could you do but hope they stayed that way?
And when it was over, they went to dinner, just like nothing had happened. They talked about the job, and mostly Rusty and Danny finished each other’s sentences, but sometimes there were no sentences at all, only broken pauses and beats of time which meant the world to them and were only silence to Linus. After dinner they invited him back with them, but he refused, because they didn’t really need him there, and he was happy to have done it once but only once. Rule five: know which lines to cross. Some things were the way they were, and what else could you do…
He watched them walk away, Danny reaching out to steer Rusty in the right direction before he could possibly have known he was going in the wrong one, and then letting his arm linger round his shoulders. He wondered if they even knew the real con here, or whether they had talked themselves into believing that there were other combinations just as good as the two of them. And then he thought maybe he was getting better at this reading people thing, but that maybe this wouldn’t be the story he’d tell his father to prove it.