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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"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.

"Jesus," she mutters, reaching behind her to squeeze his leg. "How do you know about that? Did it send you something like it did with Raylan?"

"Nah, there's these reels," Danny explains with a wave of his hand. He feels exhausted, suddenly, like all the energy has been sucked from his body. "And Steve and I, we watch them now and again. Which is how I know that Mattie runs, I get back with my pregnant ex-wife, and Steve's in jail."

"Holy. Shit," Rachel boggles, rolling onto her belly to look at his face. "What the fuck? Do you mean that even with all the gay flying around between you guys, you don't get together?"

Danny gapes slightly. "Okay, I'll bite," he finally manages to say when he's pretty sure his horror is subsiding. "...all the gay? Just...excuse me? What? No. Please, we're both very straight-acting," he scoffs.

"Oh honey," she says kindly. "Do you remember when we met? I told you that night that Steve was making sex eyes at you. Just...please. Please. You two are super obviously gay for each other."

Danny lazily drapes his arm over the chair and looks at her dubiously. "Look, I know that now Steve and I are practically bound together, but that wasn't Steve's sex-eyes. That was his aneurysm face because he thought I was abusing the cannoli. Trust me. Sex face is very different," he says, smug and knowing.

"You two might as well have fucked on the party table," she snorts. "But I'm sorry about the stuff from home. That sucks. Maybe you guys still work it out."

"Yeah, well, I don't think there's hope," Danny says, a bit glumly. "Not with Rach pregnant. That's...I'm gonna try and be the best father I can to that kid, that's all there is to it."

"I'm sorry," she says again. She can't imagine what it's like. In one place you get your lover and in the other you get your kid. "Sorry I made you tell me."

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haolehothead - 2011-10-10 21:17 (UTC) - Expand

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