Leave Emotion @ The Door
The silver streaks in Danny's hair are thicker now than when he went away, and even under the soft backroom lighting Rusty can see the deeper lines on his forehead and around his mouth. One of the kids is talking to Rusty about something, but he might as well be speaking Hindi, because all Rusty can see is Danny fucking Ocean; and he looks pretty good. Actually, he looks great. Not everybody comes out the clink looking like they just had a vacation, but Danny's never bothered to do things like anybody else, so there's no reason for him to start now. And suddenly Rusty really doesn't feel like playing cards, but cons are never about what you feel like doing. Every time people start throwing feelings in the mix that's when the scam gets messed up.
The lighting at Frank & Musso's is so dim that if Rusty weren't sitting across from Danny he'd never be able to see him, but he would still feel his presence, which is just a little too gay for comfort. They don't do the gay thing. They do the 'them' thing, because just being with Danny is like living in the biggest scam ever. Every thought and every breath is about the next move and the next plan, and what they're doing and how it might go wrong or get messed up. Tess was a bigger mess up than most, because Rusty really didn't see her coming, and scamming is about awareness. It's about adaptability, and Danny and Rusty are about bending and fitting and modifying. Living with Danny is about evolving, and Rusty has to be fluid and flexible. He has to believe that he'll win in the end.
Cons have to have confidence. Thinking too hard about the specifics will only lead to trouble - it always does.
Rusty got his fire tattoo after he met a guy named Seth near the border. Rusty wasn't particularly in the market for a tattoo at the time, but he had a little time to kill and Seth looked so much like Danny that it was hard for Rusty to say no; so now he's got a fire tattoo that ends around his elbow and memories of not doing the gay thing with someone else, too.
When Danny gets a good look at his tattoo the morning after the night before, he just raises an eyebrow and the corner of his mouth twitches in amusement.
"Get bored while I was away?" he asks, kicking his legs free from the 250-count white sheets provided by the Hotel Roosevelt and clambering out of bed.
"You know how I like to keep myself busy," Rusty answers before going back to the full breakfast he'd had delivered.
Rusty was seventeen the first time Danny kissed him. They had been scamming together for three years at that point, doing card games and small-time heists, and Danny had never shown the slightest hint that he'd realized that Rusty'd had a crush on him that entire time.
The kiss was the first time that Rusty truly realized that nothing ever got past Danny Ocean, because Danny was drunk and Rusty was high, and afterwards, Danny passed out while Rusty spent the rest of the night staring at his swollen mouth in the bathroom mirror and wondering what the fuck had just happened to his entire life.
They don't talk about the jail thing, because there's not a whole lot to say. It wasn't an Incan matrimonial head mask thing, it was a them thing. It was a them problem. It's why Danny went to jail and Rusty just let him because just this one time Rusty decided to let his emotions have the final say. He could've kept Danny out of jail. He could've taken the fall, and he would have, but Danny was safer in jail. He wasn't with her in jail, and if Rusty couldn't have Danny then Tess sure as hell couldn't either. There was no way that some amateur art-critic was getting one over on Rusty.
On the flight out of Vegas after visiting Reuben, the flight attendant makes eyes at Danny, but Danny doesn't notice or doesn't care, and since Danny notices everything, Rusty's pretty certain that he just doesn't care. Which is good. Which is as it should be. As it used to be. Danny's only ever had eyes for two people. Which is one too many in Rusty's book.
"What are we going to do with Rueben's remaindered furniture?" he asks as Danny reclines his seat another 5 degrees and closes his eyes in some approximation of sleep.
They used to live together. Before Tess. Obviously nobody told Reuben about Tess, not that Rusty could blame them, because he doesn't like to talk about Tess if he can help it either.
Danny cracks one eye open and looks at Rusty as though it's obvious. "Keep it it'll probably match that orange and purple suede sofa that he sent last time."
"What exactly is remaindered furniture anyway?"
Danny opens his other eye. "I have no idea."
The second time Danny fucked him was just after Rusty's twenty-first birthday, which they had celebrated by knocking over a small jewel supplier on the Lower East Side. There had been girls and champagne and really good Indian food, and then Rusty was on his back on the futon and his legs were up on Danny's shoulders, and Danny was talking about this entry guy that he'd heard of, Phil, who was almost as good as Basher, who of course, was having availability issues again. The fact that Danny talked about scamming during the entire act of sex was clearly his way of leaving his emotions at the door, but it was really kind of hot.
Just being in the same room as Tess makes Rusty feel raw, like he went six rounds with a cheese grater and lost; but he can fake it better than anyone else he knows, so he chews thoughtfully on his shrimp while Linus chatters on about Benedict like he's the man who knows it all.
Sometimes there's nothing better than conning a con, and for the entire 74 seconds that it takes for Tess to walk down the stairs and through the lobby, Rusty thinks about sabotaging the plan because he's not going to give Danny to her again. He's not being emotional, not really. He's being smart. He's looking out for his interests, their interests. Emotion only gets in the way.
So tonight Rusty is going to pay Linus a little visit after hours and let Danny see what it's like to be on the wrong side of the scam.
Danny's sitting on Rusty's bed when he creeps into his suite at six-oh-eight after another night in Linus' bed, and the stubble burn on Rusty's jaw makes it kind of hard to smile, but Danny's always been worth the effort so Rusty goes along.
"Having fun yet?" Danny's tone is harsh, and Rusty's smile falls away in an instant.
"I'm just playing the game you made," Rusty points out.
The door handle sends a sharp pain up Rusty's spine when Danny slams him against it. Danny's kiss is harsh and dry, and his mouth tastes like whiskey and peanuts. "Never con a con," he whispers against Rusty's mouth.
Rusty closes his eyes as Danny yanks his shirt out of his trousers, and he rests his head against the door at an angle that makes his neck complain. "You started it," he says quietly. "Are you going to change the plan halfway through the game? That's no way to run a scam."
Danny's teeth are sharp on Rusty's jaw. "Didn't anyone ever tell you that cons have to be flexible?"
The first night they're together after Danny gets out, they just sleep. No fucking, no touching, just sleeping. Somewhere in his four years inside, Danny started snoring like a 500 lb. Sumo wrestler, and it takes Rusty a lot of poking and prodding and almost suffocating Danny to get him to rollover and shut up. On the morning of the job, Rusty wakes up to Danny staring at him with something very very close to affection, or worse, love. Rusty's just opening his mouth to say something smart when Danny leans over and kisses him softly on the mouth.
Rusty's brain is still misfiring while Danny's heading for the shower. "You wouldn't like it as much if I did it all the time," Danny says with a smirk before shutting the door behind him. "You'd get spoiled."
Rusty goes to Chicago and looks up Linus while Danny's serving his six to eight months. Linus isn't Danny, which means that Rusty doesn't have to worry about caring too much, or at all. He's just killing time and waiting for his next job. The day that he opens the door and finds Tess on the other side, he actually smiles. Not for her, but for what she signifies.
They make it as far as Newark airport before everything starts to fall apart again, and Rusty really doesn't have the inclination to stick around while Tess and Danny argue about who's supposed to change for who and why being is a con is or isn't a real living. This isn't his marriage, this is his living, so he picks up his suitcase and heads for the boarding gate for the flight to Monaco like they arranged with Reuben and Saul.
It only hits Rusty once he gets on the plane that if he leaves Danny behind now he may never have him again, but he slips into his business class seat and fastens his seat belt anyway. He takes a deep breath and looks out the window at the gray Jersey skyline.
He's kind of hungry and he's kind of empty, and it's weird to think he might never scam with Danny again. He can't really grasp the idea that the longest running confidence scheme in his life might come to an end like this, without fanfare or jail time or anything special to mark the occasion. He can't believe that he might have nothing to show for the last twenty-odd years of his life besides thirteen million dollars that he can't figure out how to spend.
He's never been in this for the money, it's always been about them, except that Rusty can't figure out if he's scammed Tess, or Tess has scammed him, or he's scammed Danny's, or Danny's scammed them both, which would really be a serious con. And Rusty would almost have to respect that. Almost.
He's flipping through the safety information and thinking about Hindu cows, when a body plops down next to him and a deep voice says, "Oxygen gets you high, you know that, right?"
Rusty only looks up when a bag of airline pretzels drops onto his lap, and the wink Danny gives him makes him smile. "You didn't really think I'd let you do this on your own, did you?" Danny shifts in the seat next to him.
"I thought you were going to stay with your wife."
"My ex-wife," Danny corrects.
Rusty opens his mouth, but for second time in recent memory nothing comes out. Danny smiles. "Are you telling me that you fell for it? I thought I'd taught you better than that."
"Yeah, but you and Benedict and Tess" Rusty's mind is all mixed up.
"You sound like Linus."
"What?" Rusty's distracted when his stomach growls, but the incredulous look he sends Danny says it all.
"Cons don't work unless people believe them, you know," Danny says, fastening his seatbelt and reclining his seat. "They're called confidence scams for a reason, and if I couldn't sell you on it then there was no way I could sell it to Tess or Benedict."
Stunned is a serious understatement for what Rusty's feeling right now, but his gut knows that there's no way Danny's lying; naturally, honesty has always confused the hell out of him.
"I did it for us," Danny says.
"You conned me," Rusty protests.
Danny smirks. "You were expecting something else?"
Rusty actually thinks about it for a minute. "No, not really."