Chapter Text
Danny always felt eyes on him in New York. He didn’t like being in the city for long. He felt the prick you get on the back of your neck when someone’s behind you anytime he was walking on the street, even in the black cornered recesses of bars, with a wall to his back—he felt it. No one was there of course, even if he wanted there to be. Really, it was the paranoia of guilt. He’d worn it for almost a decade, now. A branding that only seemed to burn in The City That Never Sleeps.
He kind of loved it though. Kind of hated that he loved it. It felt like sending a postcard (“wish I was here?”), like paying someone a visit, stepping right up to their front door without notice. The biggest city in the country, just a doorstep. It felt rude, in that way. Maybe he should’ve sent a postcard.
All 470 square miles were marked territory. That might have been an exaggeration—he wasn’t sure—but there was one borough he liked walking in the least. If there were two eyes on him in Queens, there must’ve been fifty in Brooklyn.
But a job is a job.
When a friend who wasn’t really your friend asked you to stiff an establishment in South Brooklyn, near Park Slope, you said yes. Maybe for the money, and maybe to feel those fifty some eyes on the back of your neck. Feel the brand getting deeper, hotter. Either way, you said yes.
Pulling a job was really the one scenario he actually felt safe in New York. Private. Like the eyes were closed.
The friend had his eye on a necklace for his wife (eight thirty carat yellow diamonds, nothing to scoff at) but was quickly and extensively outbid by another gentleman (27.2 million dollars, nothing at all to scoff at). So they were there to get it to him cheaper, 7.2 million dollars cheaper. Two-and-a-half day’s notice wasn’t a lot of time, from the Friday auction to the office opening Monday morning. But it was a standard get in, get out gig. A nice pop quiz for the kids.
Day one recon showed motion sensors and an alarm system. Nothing to be nervous about, nothing Charlie couldn’t take care of. Bosco scored keys right off the belt loop of an employee—he was getting cleaner—two to the building, one to the storage room behind the office space. You couldn’t make an easier twenty million dollars.
So Charlie had worked the alarm and sensors, and Bosco was driving in circles around the block, waiting on a say-so. Danny fixed a more discreet way out in one of the offices (he was just a chaperone on this one, really) while one door down the hall, June and Charlie searched boxes of merchandise for the proper label, the cool glow from their flashlights bleeding out into the yellow hallway, shifting as they moved around.
And then Danny heard a door open. He froze. He heard a door shut. He stepped into the hall and whispered for them to turn their lights off. In two moments, it was dark. Danny crept up the hallway. Heard footsteps, jingling keys, from the main auction hall. He slid his back against the crook behind the closed door, standing between himself and the sound. Danny flexed his fingers. Except:
The same creak as a door opened again, then slid closed. “Excuse me, sir. Security. It’s almost three.” A voice. Low, a little gruff, but a familiar timbre. The eyes on Danny’s neck blinked open.
Hesitation; another voice, unfamiliar and a little congested. “I work here.”
A polite sigh from the first. “I’m aware. Not usually so late.”
A pause. “You’re new?”
“Yeah, with the new shipment coming in. Upwards of a hundred million. Just temp work.” Silence. And then, “You’re heading home?”
“Uh, yeah, just was.” Silence.
Pointed, “You do that.”
Footsteps moving in the opposite direction. Keys jingling with them. A door opening, then closing. Silence. Footsteps moving closer, lighter on the ground. Danny stepped out from the nook in the wall. Flesh melted between his shoulder blades.
He pulled open the door. Couldn’t help it. Couldn’t wait any longer.
The eyes that were always on the back of his neck stared him dead in the face. Jack stilled on the other side of the doorway. Moonlight snuck in from the auction hall windows, two diamonds appearing to glow in his eyes. When he blinked, they danced.
“How did you—What are you doing here?”
Jack sighed. His words rose back up to his normal speaking voice. Higher, scratchier. Like a match being lit, dragged rough against the striker on the side of the box. “Hey, Danny.’
“Danny, are we good?” June hissed in the dark behind him.
Charlie flicked their flashlight on, beaming down the hallway at them. Danny turned his face towards Jack to shield from the light. “Who is this? Danny, you know this guy?”
He tilted his chin downwards, then up again, thumbs finding his jacket pockets. What an introduction. “Folks, this is Jack Wilder.”
One eye closed against the light, he made out some faces from the kids in the dark—furrowed brows, wide eyes, words cut short.
But Jack pushed in front of him and stepped down the hallway. Danny followed. It was narrower now, with Jack a shoulder ahead of him.
The flame flickered to life, almost invisibly bright in the darkness. “Alright, finish what you have to do. Quickly,” Jack said, “Who knows how long he’ll buy that there’s security he doesn’t know about.”
Wide eyes, silent questions. Danny joined Jack at the end of the hall. He nodded. “He’s right. Go.”
The two ran back into the dark room, June’s flashlight coming on.
Danny shouldn’t ask. “You still do voices?”
Jack held his jaw tight. “No, not really. Only on clean-up jobs.” Shouldn’t have asked. Still, something in him wanted to smile at the answer.
“Here it is!”
Danny rushed in, Jack not a moment behind, following the LED shine from the far corner of the storage room, passing uncountable shelves of boxes and drawers, corners illuminated blue in the dark. June was slipping the mark—sparkling yellow, its silver almost violet in the light—into their slim, black velvet box when they found them. “Got it.”
“Alright, give me the understudy. There’s a window open in the first office on the left, call Bosco and go,” Danny told them.
June slid the box into the inner pocket of her leather jacket, and pressed another one, just like it, into Danny’s hand.
“You’re okay on your own?” Charlie asked.
Eyes. On the back of his neck. “I’ll see you soon.”
Charlie nodded, tossed Danny their light, and the two were off, June’s flashlight going dark as they ran into the hall.
“Mind holding this?”
Jack tipped his head to the side, looked away. He still did that when he was frustrated, Danny realized. He wanted to laugh, he hadn’t seen it in so long. But Jack took the flashlight anyway, held it over Danny’s shoulder. Danny didn’t try too hard to hide his pleasure.
A second slower than June would have done it (and a few long seconds slower than Jack would have done it), Danny removed their lovely understudy, a less-shiny, silver-ish necklace with eight yellow gemstones whose weight he couldn’t speak on. He arranged it into the square, velvet-lined faux-wood jewelry box of the original and clapped it closed, setting it into the small, labeled drawer and pushing it flush with the rest. Perfectly unnoticeable.
Danny led the way to his exit. He stood at the doorway and had Jack run into the room first, leap out the window first. After climbing out himself, he slid the window closed and they were gone.
They slowed to a charged walk on the dark street, tungsten lamps shining dimly every thirty feet or so. Jack still wore leather jackets, Danny noticed. This one was more mature, more timeless. Maybe vintage. Simple byron collar, relaxed boxy shape. Jack didn’t look at him, as they walked.
They must’ve been past their third streetlamp when red and blue flashed up ahead of them.
“Shit, this way!” Jack broke into a run and turned down an alleyway. Danny had to follow.
“Guess he didn’t buy it,” Jack said, a few feet ahead. Danny glanced behind them just in time to catch a striped white cop car speed down the street.
“The subway?” Danny asked him.
“Gotcha,” Jack said. He turned out onto another street, ran a little faster. The distance between them grew, and Danny had to wonder if it was intentional. He saw the ease with which Jack’s shoulders shifted through the leather as he ran, felt his own heart pounding, and thought it was likely.
Five more streetlamps later, and they were rounding the green metal railings of a subway entrance. Jack grabbed the post and whirled himself down the stairs, a promising glow in their descent. Danny’s palm slid down the smooth, steel beam on the wall, until they were on the floor. They hopped over the turnstiles, Jack more gracefully, and were in the station.
In the bright, abrasive fluorescents, Danny got his first real look at Jack. Well, of his back, anyway. Below the black leather were dark blue, grainy jeans. His footfalls were heavier, now, the thick soles of his black combat boots making a rubbery thudding sound with every step. He seemed stylish—the back of him did.
Their strides fell in sync as each foot placed on the tile floor. Jack let Danny catch up, at least a little. It had to be intentional; Jack could run faster than this. Commuters were sparse, compared to in the daytime, but there were still enough people passing through for them to need to cut and weave through the lingering bodies.
Jack swiveled around a clueless guy with a big hiking pack. Danny ended up just pushing past him.
Danny watched Jack in front of him. Couldn’t keep just watching him. “I saw the little job you pulled in Newark,” he said, “With the Museum of Art. It was cute.”
Jack’s legs fell out of sync. The distance between them shrunk by an inch. “...‘Cute.’ Thanks, Danny.”
Danny squinted. “Weird how that O’Keeffe showed up across the Hudson at the Met a month later. Was worth, what, 1.8 million dollars?–”
Jack’s face tilted to the side, almost so Danny could see. There was one less inch between them. “Oh, you’ve really done your reading,” he said. And then, “1.9.”
Danny’s lips curled into a smirk. Happily, he marched on. “–You always liked O’Keeffe. Why not just sell it? Or better yet, keep it. Hang it up in your studio apartment in Brooklyn–”
“Following me, Danny?” Another tilt backwards, another almost-glance. Another inch lost.
“That one was a guess,” Danny told him.
They ran. Danny always liked to step on the cracks. Then, “A studio apartment, really? With the kind of money we made? Anyway, must have been a stressful month for the museum’s director.”
Jack’s body lost its sharpness, its focus. He was only a shoulder ahead of Danny, by now. Jack didn’t look back at him, but finally he could see the curve of Jack’s jaw, the bridge of his nose, the corner of his lashes, the beauty marks on his neck. Even without Jack’s face, Danny could see something boiling beneath him, the tension in his shoulders, the near-invisible pout on his lips. Bingo.
“Henley likes O’Keeffe–”
“And she seemed to convince you enough, in Chicago. It was her…” Danny pretended to search his mind, “–Landscapes you were particularly fond of, right? More esoteric than her flowers.”
Jack blew out a sigh. “Yes, Danny, I like Georgia O’Keeffe. Just as much as any New Yorker.”
“Then why steal it? Why give it back?”
They had lost a lot of speed. Danny didn’t care. Jack said nothing, for a moment.
Friction against the matchbox striker. “I had an... interpersonal disagreement with the Newark director.” Bingo, bingo, bingo.
Before Danny could claim his prize, his feet dragged to a walking pace, an impulsive hand on Jack’s arm slowing him down to the same. Cops. Two of them, up ahead in the crowd, speaking on walkies, eyes completely peeled. Danny could tell Jack saw them too, in the way he fell in time with Danny again, let Danny slow him down.
Air whistled, metal screeched, and a train pulled to a halt to their right. A door swiveled open ten feet behind them, and Danny (in for a penny, in for a pound) tugged Jack by his forearm onto the train.
They stood, shoulder to shoulder, and watched the doors pull closed again. Jack held onto the stanchion as the station floor began to move outside the ovular door windows. Danny’s hands found their way into his pockets, already studying the feel of Jack’s leather, the smooth grit. They caught their breath in the half-empty train car. According to the red LEDs at the front of the car, they were headed for Ridgewood.
Danny didn’t pretend to not look at him. Jack’s profile was straight and stoic like a coin, dark stare pointed out the blurring windows, like he didn’t want Danny to have the whole thing. Still, Danny couldn’t look away.
Until, “You slept with him?” he asked, eyes finally tearing away to see the subway tunnel speed through their windows. He could only look at something other than Jack for so long, though.
Jack scoffed through a smile, not at all pleased. Still, he kept straight. “Not sure that’s any of your business, Danny.”
“Must’ve really liked him.”
“‘Liked’ is a word for it, sure.”
Danny watched the tension in Jack’s brow, in his curved lips, the intensity with which he stared straight ahead. “You wouldn’t have pulled that job nine years ago.”
Jack turned. Gave Danny the full thing. Something almost like a laugh—tired, barely amused, a little pissed—broke through his lips. The diamonds in his eyes didn’t dance. They held fast, piercing. “Yeah, Danny, nine years ago.”
He didn’t pretend to not look at Jack. Here he was, all of him. After nine years—almost a decade. Eight percent of a man’s life had passed since he saw him last. And here he was. A Jack nine years in the future, a time traveler. The crinkles at the corners of Jack’s eyes were a little deeper than they used to be. His eyes themselves held a fatigue Danny had never been familiar with, no matter how hard he and Dylan worked them all back in the day. His shoulders were broader, but more relaxed. Less square, less pronounced. But he looked good. Looked like he had been good, for a while. You could see—in his posture, in his gaze, in the twin shrinking diamonds there—that he was soon approaching forty, an existential line that Danny himself had already crossed.
Jack shifted, smoothened out. The sharpness in his eyes eased, rounded out, and he looked to the windows again. Danny joined him.
When the windows stopped moving, and the doors opened, Jack pushed out onto the station floor, headed straight for the exit. Danny caught up quickly and fell in next to him. He wondered if he was allowed to.
They moved through the hardly present crowd, Jack’s heavy boots falling stiffer and faster than Danny’s sleek derby shoes. They stepped quickly up the staircase to the surface, Jack taking left of the middle railing and Danny, with no room elsewhere, took the right, the glow of the station falling away behind them as they ascended. When he reached the top, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jacket, Jack stopped, right as the railing ended. Danny did, too, and decided to wait and see.
Jack turned to face him, hairlit by yellow light falling out of the subway tunnel; dipped halfway in gold. He didn’t seem to know.
“We were together, Danny. Almost two years. He wasn’t faithful, I found out–”
Danny muttered an, “Of course,” his shoulders straightening.
“–And I left him. And stole a two million dollar Georgia O’Keeffe from him.”
Danny was still, in the cold. Jack shifted his weight this way and that.
“I’m sorry,” Danny said.
Jack looked away, staring off at the corner of some Ridgewood street. Danny watched him, located the beauty marks on his neck, then above his jaw. After all this time, they were the same.
Eventually, “...How did you know it was me?”
Danny cocked his head sideways. “New York City, an early O’Keeffe, a museum with no signs of a break in, a single painting stolen and returned oh-so-kindly in perfect condition...” He couldn't help the ghost of a smile that crept its way onto his face. “Who else could it be? What other thief would return what they’ve stolen?”
Jack’s face turned towards the stairs below them. He watched as people milled around the station floor like mice, moving in and out of their line of sight.
Jack set a hand on the railing, eyes finding Danny’s again, blond diamonds big and bright at their corners. “...Art is for everyone, Danny. No one benefits from it going away forever.”
Danny just looked at him, not noticing the small way his own shoulders relaxed, how they fell slightly lower. “I know.”
Jack’s gaze held him.
“Go home, Danny.” Eyes lingering for a moment longer, Jack turned on his heels and walked. Danny watched him, felt his world shrinking with each step.
“Hey.”
Jack stopped. Turned an ear over to listen to him.
“Thank you,” Danny told him.
Jack tittered. He turned away and kept on walking. But Danny saw.
He watched with majesty as Jack fell farther away, like a dream disappearing from your mind as you woke up. It wasn’t until Jack was almost gone completely from his view that Danny turned in the opposite direction, and did as Jack told him to.