sluttylyingliar | For Danny

For Danny

"Ow, motherfucker!" Rachel exclaims, waiving her mutliated and burned hand away from the hot oil popping out of the pan. "This is so stupid. I hate homework."

Rachel had signed up for the cooking class because it seemed like a mom should be able to cook meals for her family. Is it her fault that she grew up with a cook? Her mom sure as shit never cooked a thing and she's determined to be different. Yeah, they have people to do that shit around here, but she can't drag her kid up to the compound every time she wants a meal. She's going to learn how to cook and she's going to do it in her own home. Well, once the weird half kitchen thing is finished. God bless Raylan.

Until then, she's using the compound kitchen and cheating a little. Enlisting some help. Stir fry is hard.

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Danny strips off his shirt and folds it neatly beside the tie, unbuttoning his trousers and doing the same with them. It's a sign as to how much he loves Rachel in a platonic way that he's doing this in front of her. "I do not have body issues, not anymore. I know Steve likes this, I know that I bend over and he wants me," he clarifies as he picks up a pair of khaki shorts and a long-sleeved baseball jersey, putting them both on and gesturing to the door. "Come on, I wanna go see the old hut before you start stripping."

"Yeah, but I don't think you believe me when I say that I'd pick you over Steve," she counters, looking him up and down before following him back outside.

"Yeah, because if nothing else, he has that tramp stamp," he says as he hooks his arm in hers, dragging her along to his old destroyed hut which has started to look really good and improved and nice in a way that he wonders who's there.

He peers into the window, wondering who the hell is in there. "I never see anybody coming and going."

Rachel just rolls her eyes at that and pushes up onto her toes to peer in with him. "And you seriously haven't seen anyone going in there? That seems weird. I went and told the council when I moved in with Raylan but I don't think anyone's moved into my old place."

"I do work," he points out with a huff. "I work two jobs and then I come home and do dinner with Steve every night. I am busy, I am run off my ass, I don't have time to sit here and stalk my new neighbors so I can go 'hi, how are you, I hope you don't mind the loud sex we have'."

"You're stalking them enough to notice the house and to notice that no one lives here," she points out, turning and stripping off her shirt. "I'll give you five more minutes and then we're going to the beach. The longer you wait, the more naked I get."

Danny sighs and peers into the window for another moment before easing away, giving Rachel a dubious look. "I cannot wait until you have the kid so that I can play with him or her while you do your stripping act," he says, heading back for his hut and grabbing a Grisham novel before dragging one of the wooden chairs out to the sand (a shade-tree above him).

"Maybe having a kid will get me to tone down the stripping act," she points out as she shimmies out of her shorts. "Maybe I'll be super conservative and wear turtlenecks and shit. I'll be like the girl version of you."

"Actually, the girl version of me wears ties and shirts and pants," Danny corrects as he kicks up his feet and smirks up at her. "Remember? Because I was a girl version of me for like, three days. And you mocked me for it."

"You were a hot girl underneath all those stupid clothes," she remembers with a sigh, marching up to him and pointing at her still relatively flat belly. There's maybe the hint of a curve down low that you'd only catch if you spend a lot of time looking at it. "What do you think?"

"I was pretty hot, if a bit...you know," he says with a gesture to his body to indicate that he'd been a bit heavy in the shoulder and hips -- not that Steve had cared. He leans over and peers at the line of her stomach, shaking his head. "Sorry, babe, but I don't see it yet. One day, it'll come. One day."

She can't help but be a little disappointed at that. As much as she doesn't want to get fat and lose her figure, she thinks maybe if she starts showing, she'll feel like more of a mom. "Okay," she mutters, sitting down in the sand. "Whatever. I don't want to be fat, anyway."

"You won't be fat," he says, muttering 'jesus christ' under his breath. "You're going to be gorgeous. No one will think you're fat, they'll just know you're pregnant," he says, poking her in the thigh with his toes. "Huh? Huh? You copy?"

She smacks his foot and looks determinedly out at the ocean. "I kind of want to look pregnant," she admits. "I think if I start to show it won't seem like this huge joke. Or maybe I'll feel like a mom."

"Or you won't feel like a mom until you're holding the kid in your arms. My Rachel didn't," he confesses. "Jesus, Rach, you should've seen her. She was this upper-crust gorgeous British woman, elegant as hell, and she didn't know what to do with being pregnant. It figures she'd turn into mother of the year the second Grace was born. Rachel was bad at doing anything less than perfectly."

"Oh my God if I have to wait for like, seven more months before I feel like a mom we are going have issues," she snorts, poking at her belly. "What about you? When did you feel like a dad?"

"Me? Babe, I got a brother and three sisters," he reminds her with a bemused look on his face. "I've been feeling like a Dad since I was nine years old and cuffing my brother to the monkey cages at the zoo."

"I think it would have been nice to have a brother," she muses, settling back down. "You'd have had a heart attack with me as your sister. That or I wouldn't have gotten into half as much trouble."

"Are you kidding me? You're a goddamn walk in the park," he scoffs. "Imagine three of me. Younger, blonder, bigger hair, gorgeous. Now imagine the kinds of Jersey guys I had to beat away just to make sure honor stayed in the Williams family."

"Dude," she snorts, twisting to face him. "When I was in high school I had a pregnancy scare, drove a limo off a bridge, was indirectly responsible for a school shooting, had sex with everyone and got expelled. You would have flipped."

"Okay, well, yes, but there's one of you," he says, thinking through whether or not he could handle that (he decides that yes, yes, he can). "I have three sisters," he clarifies with a pointed look at her. "Three. And my little brother is not exactly..." he trails off, a pang of pain gripping him because of what Mattie goes on to do.

"What? Not exactly a super cop?" she asks, slathering on sunscreen. She wonders if the baby is affected if she gets a sunburn.

"Matt? No," Danny says, quieter now. "He was a Wall Street trader. Respectable, got to work in the city, and he saved me from really falling into a hole when the marriage went south. He used to bring a six-pack of beer to the motel room when me and Rachel split."

"Why the past tense?" she asks, looking firmly out towards the ocean, in case pity isn't really what he's looking for.

"Why? Well, because, apparently after I leave for this godforsaken island, my brother goes and gets himself in trouble and runs. So, you know, I lose him. I've lost Grace, I've lost any sign of home, and I've lost him," he says, his voice clipped. It means he doesn't want to talk about it.

For Danny

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