when it was always you

by Damkianna

Summary:

Cole was being stupid, and he knew it.

He'd known it the moment he'd gotten on the plane. Hell, he'd known it earlier than that—when he'd bought the ticket, that had been the real kicker. That had been the moment it had turned from a stupid idea he'd had, which was nothing new, to a stupid thing he was doing for real.

But it wasn't like he could turn the plane around now. And maybe this was exactly what he needed to get his head on straight, to teach himself a lesson that was going to sink in at last: that whatever the fuck was wrong with him, there was no way he could expect Dani to fix it, not anymore.

Notes:

• For galerian_ash.

♥!

 

 

Cole was being stupid, and he knew it.

He'd known it the moment he'd gotten on the plane. Hell, he'd known it earlier than that—when he'd bought the ticket, that had been the real kicker. That had been the moment it had turned from a stupid idea he'd had, which was nothing new, to a stupid thing he was doing for real.

But it wasn't like he could turn the plane around now. And maybe this was exactly what he needed to get his head on straight, to teach himself a lesson that was going to sink in at last: that whatever the fuck was wrong with him, there was no way he could expect Dani to fix it, not anymore.

 

 

---

 

 

They'd made it back to South America on the Gunmen just fine.

They'd found the nuns, the kid, that Dani had wanted to give the money to. They hadn't given away all of it, obviously—for one thing, they had no way to know who else might have heard about it, who else might be out there looking for it, and the last thing they ought to do was give some poor bunch of nuns an amount that matched the rumors about Loomis's stash exactly. It would be nice to think nobody would come after a convent for a thing like that, but you couldn't count on it these days.

And for another thing—well.

Cole had been okay, pretty much. There was no reason he couldn't go back to New York, keep working for the agency just the way he had been already. And they were going to owe him a pretty decent payday for his work on this case, even after they'd pulled the plug on him like they had.

But Dani? Dani was a wanted criminal who'd been rotting in prison before Cole had shown up. And Karl Servigo was gone—which Cole had been pretty fucking pleased about, except that it had left Dani in kind of a tough spot. He'd worked with Karl, followed him around on jobs; Karl was the one who'd had all the connections in the business. And without him, Dani wasn't—Dani wasn't mean enough to keep it going. It had turned Cole's stomach just trying to imagine what might happen to him, down there all by himself, not even his asshole brother around to have his back.

So they'd kept some of the money. A lot less than they'd given the nuns, but some. Enough. Cole had had to go along with splitting it, obviously, because there was no way to get Dani to take more than half without Dani getting it into his head that Cole felt sorry for him or something. And—

And Dani had looked so fucking happy about it. Fifty-fifty, he'd kept saying, smiling that smile he had, like the sun was coming up. Fifty-fifty, like partners. The best.

But after that—there was no reason Cole couldn't go back to New York. There was no reason he shouldn't, either, or at least not one it had felt like he could say out loud. The adventure was over; that was how this worked. The adventure was over, and it was time to go home, time to start living his regular life again. He couldn't just throw all that away, abandon it, to—what? Bum around South America with half a dozen crates of stolen drug money and Dani, until they got sick of each other, until they ran out and they were stranded there with nothing, until it was ruined—

No. He was going back to New York, and it wasn't like Dani could just hop on a plane and come with him, even if he'd let himself think Dani might want to. Which he hadn't.

So Cole had bought himself a ticket, and they'd hung out for the last couple days before his flight doing almost nothing at all—stupid shit, eating junk food, lying on the deck of the Gunmen in the sun, drinking beer. Dani had bragged about everything he was going to do with his half of the money that was left, wild ridiculous stuff, buying a Ferrari and a jetski and a yacht, lying on a beach while somebody fed him grapes; Cole had laughed and shaken his head every time, which of course had just made Dani keep going, spinning it out even further.

And then Cole had left.

It had been easy. Looking back, that was what he hated the most about it. It had been easy. He'd had the ticket. All he'd had to do was go along with it; go to the airport, right date, right time, right gate. It was the reasonable thing to do, the sensible thing to do. It would've been so much harder to stop it than it had been to let it happen.

Dani had—Dani had hugged him, before he'd boarded. They'd both sucked at saying goodbye, talked past it in stupid sidelong ways instead. They'd shaken hands—like partners, a team—and then they'd just been standing there, staring at each other from a foot away, some kind of announcement in Portuguese or something blaring out over the airport intercom. And Dani had hugged him, sudden, one arm tight around his shoulders, just hanging on like that.

I'll miss you. I'll miss you more than anything.

That was what he'd said. Quiet, right into Cole's ear, but it had felt louder than the intercom, to Cole.

And then he'd let go. Let go, turned around, left, before Cole could even—do anything.

He hadn't known what. Not then, when he'd been standing there, throat tight, watching Dani walk away from him. He'd felt it, the clenching ache in his chest, the wordless driving certainty that there was something missing, something he needed, and that Dani had it; that every step Dani took had been taking it farther away from him, whatever it was—

But he hadn't known what, back then. And Dani had vanished into the crowd, and Cole had turned around and gotten onto the plane.

 

 

New York had been fine.

Cole's leg had healed up without any trouble. It had left a scar, at least; he'd gotten into the habit of reaching for it, touching it, rubbing his fingers through his jeans over the spot where the skin got stiff, the sensation in his leg flickering in and out, half-deadened. He'd liked that. At least that meant it had happened.

Because it hadn't felt like it had, sometimes. Nobody had asked him too many questions about any of it, or at least not ones he couldn't answer. Nobody had made him write up a report; officially, they had most of what they needed from the DEA agents who'd been down there, and unofficially, nobody wanted to know as long as Loomis was gone for good.

It was fine. Nothing had changed. The job was the same, New York was the same.

It was great. It was—it should've been great.

It was just that he hadn't been able to stop thinking about it, was all.

He'd dreamed about it. Just the airport, at first. That moment. Dani's arm around him, Dani's body against him, Dani's voice in his ear; how warm Dani had been, how solidly alive.

But the airport hadn't been the only time that had happened—Dani holding him, Dani against him. So really, he probably should've expected to start dreaming of the jungle, too.

And it got mixed up in there somehow, the airport and that night. The sleep-talking thing, the trick he'd played with Dani wrapped around him. It had only been a joke, when it had happened. It hadn't mattered to him at all. But in New York, alone, it had been—he couldn't make it stop. He couldn't get rid of it, the idea, having both things at once: Dani reaching for him, but not to try to get anything out of him; Dani with those big eyes all earnest, looking at him; being able to say things like—hold me, please and—

—give me a kiss, one kiss—

Jesus, it had felt unreal, how easily it had come out of his mouth that night when it had been bullshit, how fucking impossible it was to imagine saying it to Dani again now that he'd have meant it.

Nothing he had in New York had mattered to him anymore. He couldn't talk to anyone about Dani, about any of it, and he couldn't fucking stand it.

He'd already talked himself out of going back at least a dozen times, the day he'd bought the ticket at last. Because he couldn't stop thinking about it, about Dani saying it: I'll miss you more than anything. He couldn't stop thinking that maybe, maybe, there was a chance it had been true.

 

 

---

 

 

He was an idiot, obviously. Jesus, he was acting like—like Dani had said something else. I wish you weren't leaving and I'll think about you every day and I'll be waiting right here just in case you ever decide to come back. Then, maybe, it would have made some kind of sense to be putting himself through this.

But I'll miss you? Come the fuck on. As if that wasn't the bare minimum you could say to somebody who'd saved your life and then shot you in the leg and then saved your life a couple more times. More than anything, sure, but that was just Dani, wasn't it? Hyperbole everywhere, spinning stories the way he did, making lavish promises he didn't have any way to keep.

He'd probably just meant—he'd think of Cole sometimes, that was all. Now and then, in passing, revving one of those Ferraris, coasting along on that yacht; in the space between two grapes, as somebody fed them to him on a beach somewhere.

Cole bit down on the inside of his cheek, and glanced out the window. The plane was starting to land. It wasn't like it was going to be a big deal. He'd disembark, grab his shit from baggage claim, waste a couple of weeks sniffing around for a trail that had probably gone cold months ago. Just the reality check he needed, and then he'd get a goddamn grip and go home.

 

 

He did it. Made it off the plane, out of the airport, in one piece. He went ahead and rented a Jeep, too, because he might as well. No point leaving any nagging doubts lingering. He'd commit, whole-hog, to looking for Dani; that way, when it turned out Dani was long gone and he'd been fucking kidding himself, he'd have to accept it, get his head on straight for real.

He drove through the city for a little while. It was a sunny afternoon, warm, the air sticky around him—a whole different quality to it than humidity ever had in New York, one more reminder of where he was. And it was nice just to drive, without fleeing for his life or chasing anybody, without having to plan a prison break or throw himself out of a helicopter. Maybe he was an idiot, but he was an idiot who was probably going to have a pretty decent couple of weeks down here. Practically a vacation, except for the part where he was going to spend it teaching himself to quit hoping for shit he was never going to get, but—

But his stupid hands, his stupid feet, had already brought the Jeep right to the street that ran down alongside the largest marina this place had. He huffed out half a laugh, shook his head at himself and kept driving. He wasn't going to let himself look. There was no point.

He passed it. Drove along further, until the road had gotten narrower—until what it was winding its way beside wasn't the marina anymore, not really, so much as scattered uneven docks here and there along the shoreline. That just made it worse. His hands tightened around the steering wheel. It had been somewhere down here where he and Dani had come in; tied up the Gunmen, laughing, triumphant and a little tipsy, ready to go find Dani's nuns.

And then, abrupt, helpless, heart pounding, he jerked the wheel sideways, hit the brake hard—pulled over, sharp, off the side of the road.

It was there. It was right there.

He couldn't see the name on the side. It didn't matter. He sat there staring at the boat, frozen, stunned.

And then he threw the door open, scrambled to get his seatbelt undone—practically fell out of the car, and stumbled his way over the rocks, the brush, until he'd reached the dock.

It was still there. It hadn't vanished, rippled away like a mirage. The wood was hot under his shoes with the force of the sun, creaking a little beneath his weight, relentlessly real.

One step at a time, he walked out to the end of the dock until he'd reached the boat.

It wasn't exactly the same, he understood dimly. That crappy uneven frame over the deck, strung with canvas—somebody had redone it, so it wasn't poles tied together with a tarp over them but an actual shade, waterproofed and everything. The deck itself was cleaner, sanded, and the wood wasn't the same color. It had a couple coats of sealer on it now, if Cole had to guess. And the paint, it was—somebody had touched that up, too, except they hadn't managed to match the shade of it, splotches of too-bright robin's-egg over the old china blue.

Somebody. As if he didn't know who, when asleep right there on the deck, on a rusted folding recliner under that brand-new sun-shade, was Dani.

Cole swallowed, reached out and touched the wale of the boat—tipped himself over it easily, nothing like the way he'd had to use his hands to lift his leg, thanks to the gunshot wound, the first time around. His feet came down gently, quietly; Dani shifted a little, sniffed and twitched, but didn't wake.

Cole crossed the deck in a stride and a half, sank into a crouch and touched Dani's shoulder. "Dani," he said, breathless, hoarse and ridiculous, but there was nothing he could do about it.

Dani's eyes came open. For a second, they were soft, unfocused, aimed nowhere in particular. They shifted, roved one way and then the other, and then settled on Cole's face, and Dani—smiled, slow and wide and impossibly bright, beautiful.

And then he blinked, once, twice, and jerked up onto his elbows. "Cole?" he said blankly. "Cole, you—but you went home to New York."

"Yeah," Cole said, on an exhale, half a laugh. "Yeah, well, I came back."

Dani blinked again. "You came back," he repeated. And then something happened, some kind of light flickering tentatively to life in his face, and he said it again, strange and strained, uneven: "You came back."

Cole managed half a shrug. "Guess New York ain't all that after all. And you, you, uh." He lifted a hand, rubbed at the back of his neck. Jesus, his heart was hammering, he was sweating; he couldn't think. "You're not on a beach eating grapes, huh?"

Dani's gaze had turned searching, flicking back and forth across Cole's face. "Yeah, well," he said slowly. "I guess—grapes aren't all that, either." But he hadn't looked away, and he'd said it in that way he said things when he was totally full of shit.

And god, Cole wanted to shout at him, did he even understand what he was saying? What Cole had been trying to say, what it had felt like to be going through the motions up there alone, in a city that might as well have been empty because it hadn't had Dani in it—

Dani lurched up, sudden, startling; gripped Cole's arm, half off the recliner, and blurted, "It didn't mean anything to me anymore. The money, or anything. Anything I was going to do with it, it wasn't—I didn't care, not without—"

He stopped short, bit his lip. His eyes were huge in his face. It was just the way he'd looked that night in the water, shouting at the sky: I don't care about the money! Please, make him come back.

He was never the one who hadn't been able to say what he meant, what he felt. Not really. He'd been shouting it the whole time. He'd said it, in the airport. And he was saying it again, now, just by being here. Waiting, all this time, on the Gunmen; hoping, for shit he thought he was never going to get.

"Yeah," Cole said unsteadily. "That's pretty much what I was hoping you'd say."

And jesus, this was fucking terrifying, he didn't know how Dani had ever managed to do it—but he reached out, gripped the nape of Dani's neck, slid his shaking fingers into Dani's hair, and Dani stared at him, throat working, and said, "Cole—"

Cole kissed him. Only for about half a second before he was—he had to break away, suck in a shuddering breath against Dani's mouth; and then Dani made this noise, grabbed blindly and wound his fingers into the front of Cole's shirt, shoved Cole backwards so they both tumbled down across the deck in the hot afternoon sunlight, and kissed him back.