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Daniel Atlas’ love language was, objectively, acts of service.
Well. No. That’s inaccurate. If Daniel wasn’t well, well, aware that love languages were total bullshit pseudo science created by some Baptist dickhead misogynist, one could, perhaps, say that his love language was acts of service.
But since he is aware of that, then probably the simplest way to put it is: J. Daniel Atlas likes doing things for the people he loves. A physically pin-down-able expression of how much he cares without having to ruin it with something as complicated and ineffective and easily misconstrued as words.
It’s something he plans for, he’s got a spreadsheet of potential birthday presents for each member of his family that gets updated every time he finds something they might like or they mention something they need. He picks up Jack from school without telling him when he’s got a day off classes. He offers to walk with Lula to the Garment District and then pays for whatever she wants while she’s still getting the fabric cut. He keeps an eye on movie schedules to see when the next absurd, made-for-Henley action movie is playing. He brings Dad take-out when he’s been at work too long and then bullies him into eating it.
He sets up what he can ahead of time, and grabs opportunities when they present themselves. It’s something he likes doing, something he’s good at doing, and it helps the people he loves, so he does it. Simple as that.
He’s in a café, this time, when one of those aforementioned opportunities grabs him by the fucking collar and screams in his face that it’s got a job for him.
(Or, more aptly, he’s in a café, when he glances at the counter, and boom. Opportunity. Right there. Just waiting for him to do something about it.)
Retrospectively, he's not entirely sure why he looks up. Though that’s not something he’d admit.
Usually, once he’s sat down, plugged in his laptop, and actually gotten started, he’ll forcefully lock himself into several hours of only doing exactly what he needs to. It’s the only way he’s going to get shit done he doesn’t actually care about.
Maybe he’s just bored, uncompelled by the mind numbing uselessness of writing his Gen-Ed English credit midterm paper. Or maybe he’d been reaching the tail end of his coffee and was mentally preparing to have to go get a refill. Or maybe, possibly, some latent part of him had heard the too-close-timbre of Merritt McKinney’s voice, just slightly off, and it’d set off one million red, blaring alarms inside his head of Merritt sounds wrong, Merritt sounding wrong means something is wrong, something is wrong, something is wrong something is wrong something is wrong--
And then he looks up and realizes. Oh. No, actually, it is not just a distinctly wrong, almost-Merritt’s voice, it’s an entire distinctly wrong, almost-Merritt.
Huh. Hm, even.
And then it all clicks into place in sharp, technicolor awareness. Chase. Oh. Okay. Okay.
Here’s the thing. Daniel is entirely aware (even if it is something that, in concept, really annoys him) that he doesn’t know Merritt’s entire… former situation.
He’d told them some of it, sure, with more detail than he probably really wanted to, back when he’d first found them. After he’d chased Daniel down, clearly intending to get his stolen shit back, before falling for the oldest trap in the book; ‘aw fuck I can’t hit a kid in front of a bunch of even smaller kids’. (Y’know. Like a total sucker.)
Sharing his ‘story’ had been an obvious play to earn their trust, but it’d also, in general, been an obvious play that had worked. Slotted himself easily down with the rest of them, with an (infuriatingly) Merritt-level convincing that he wasn’t about to fuck them over, because it’d just be fucking him over too.
But, even then, Daniel hadn’t been stupid. He knew Merritt was polishing off the corners and softening the blows. He knew the fact that what he’d described his brother doing to him still felt so blatantly messed up, even with the modifications, meant that whatever actually happened must have been really goddamn bad.
And now that very brother, the brother that got Merritt disowned and kicked out at thirteen, for something he did, is standing eight feet away from Daniel in a coffee shop.
It’s almost laughable. Or. No. It’d be laughable if Daniel wasn’t so angry.
Merritt had still been thirteen. Thirteen. Thirteen and put into a position where, just a year later, he’d been made to feel responsible for protecting four much younger children. (Or, no. Three. Daniel’s younger but he could handle himself. Obviously.) At fourteen.
Christ, fourteen is so young. It hadn’t felt that way at the time. Fourteen had felt frustratingly mature, even if Daniel hadn’t been willing to admit it at the time. But it’s not. It is just objectively not. (And even if he’d turned fifteen while they’d still been out on the streets, that isn’t much better.)
Jack is three goddamn years older than that right now, and even trying to think about him in that situation, as a hypothetical, makes Daniel go kind of shaky and terrified in a way almost nothing else manages to. And Daniel doesn’t shake easy. It’s bad for card tricks.
Merritt had said the two of them had been identical twins, and he can see it (enough so that it’s still a little disorienting if he looks too closely), but there's differences. Obvious differences.
Chase McKinney has obnoxious teeth and an ugly grin and stupid hair, cut way shorter than Merritt’s, and either much curlier or badly permed. (He likes to think badly permed. There’s a level of karmic vindication to it.) Chase McKinney is wearing an ugly, paisley patterned button up with half the buttons undone in a way he clearly thinks is sexy, and badly flirting with the barista who couldn’t be less interested, and his face is so much fuller than his identical twin brothers because, even after years of being properly fed, Merritt’s cheeks still stay stubbornly carved in after three years of not having enough to eat.
Because of this fucker who caused it.
“What’s your favorite cookie, my Cookie?” the worse McKinney brother asks, leaning into the barista’s personal space, just slightly over the counter, and letting his voice drop a little. Daniel probably wouldn’t have heard him if he wasn’t suddenly paying very close attention.
His delivery is sleazier than Merritt’s is when he’s flirting (regardless of how much as Daniel resents knowing what his older brother sounds like while flirting with someone in the first place). Something about Chase’s voice is all expectant and gross; his C’s clipped weirdly glottal.
The minimum wage service worker takes a shifting, half-step back, and rolls her eyes, “I don’t really have one.”
“Aw, c’mon. You can pick one for me, can’t’ya?”
It’s good he already hates this man. It lessens the blow of all the extra, new details he’s finding to hate as he eavesdrops.
She shrugs, “The salted caramel pretzel cookie is pretty good.”
“Mmm, mmm, mmm,” Chase makes some sort of obscene noise that’s entirely uncalled for, situationally, “Sounds perfect. One of those, then, too.”
“Yeah, okay. Your total is gonna be $13.47.”
The plan forming in the back of Daniel’s head isn’t all that specific. He doesn’t think it needs to be. There’s nothing big he can do here, nothing that’s going to fix the way Merritt still looks fucking suprised when Dylan doesn’t get mad at him for making mistakes, or how vehemently he’ll only avoid asking for help when he actually needs it.
And, sure, that bothers him. Yes. But he is trying to be realistic here. There is nothing he can do right now that can possibly even the score, the timeframe is too limited, and, admittedly, it’s probably not even Daniel’s score to decide needs settling.
But he can’t do nothing. Not even, entirely, for Merritt’s sake, or anything. Ruining Chase McKinney’s day might be in his brother’s honor, or whatever, but mostly, the satisfaction, the need, is exclusively for Daniel.
Despite the way he feels like jumping out of his own skin every time he remembers the fucker who ruined Merritt’s life is in the same room, he just bites down hard on the inside of his cheek and takes his time, unplugging his charger from the wall and packing his bag and throwing away his own cup.
Casual. Inconspicious. Looking nothing like a person who is about to do something that at least looks, to an outside observer, terribly uncalled for.
He waits for Chase to get his overpriced coffee, and, even though it feels, to be hyperbolic, like fucking torture, waits some more for him to settle down at a table.
And then he makes his move.
Pickpocketing is not something Daniel necessarily still practices. He doesn’t have a need to, so the risk isn’t worth it. (Especially when the last time Dylan found out he’d done it, on instinct more than anything, really, he just looked sad, which is, unfortunately, far worse than angry or disappointed.)
But, Daniel is still good with his hands, better with them now, honestly. And Chase is obviously the kind of cocky, arrogant idiot that he would have picked as a good mark when he was eleven, even without the context for it to be a revenge thing. He’s lifted the guy’s phone into his pocket before he even noticed him walking up to his table.
(It’s a ridiculous, top-of-the-line, massive iPhone, with one of those idiotic, thief’s-paradise-style wallets stuck to the back of it for credit cards or IDs. The kind that weighs down Daniel’s inside-jacket-pocket with the heft of everything that, if lost, would fuck its owner over completely. It’s like he’s trying to make this easy.)
“Chase McKinney, right?” Daniel asks, bright and cheerful and hopefully selling his vague attempt at ‘friendly old classmate or coworker he must have just forgotten the face of’ con better than he feels he can at the moment. Anger squirms through his gut like he just swallowed a box of lit matches. This is Merritt’s brother. This is Daniel’s older brother’s brother who ruined his fucking life for no goddamn reason. If it weren’t for him, Merritt never would have been fucking homeless in the first place.
“Yeah? What’s it to you, kid?” Chase scoffs, leaning back in his chair a little, guard not entirely down, but not up nearly enough either. He says ‘kid’ like he’s trying to be a dick about it. It’s the wrong move, even if Danny didn’t need him to make it to do what he’s about to.
“Just checking!” He grins, letting it split through his fake, closed-mouth-courtesy smile from before with all his teeth.
And then he decks Chase McKinney right in the fucking face.
Daniel has never been the fighter of his family, at least, physically. Mostly due to the nature of running faster than he can throw a punch, along with the unfortunate reality of Merritt being bigger and Henley being scrappier and Lula seemingly having exactly zero regard for her own safety. (Hell, Jack is more prone to getting into physical altercations than he is. Even if none of them actually like that fact, and have been trying since he was eight to stop it with varying levels of success.)
But Daniel’s not incompetent. Obviously. He knows to keep his thumb out of his hand, and keep his elbow down, and go with the motion of his breath for momentum. He knows enough that it only hurts a little when his knuckles connect to the bridge of Chase McKinney’s nose with a disgusting, wet crunch.
(Well, only hurts him a little. If the way Chase chokes and stumbles back clutching his face and shouting ‘what the fuck, dude?!’ is any indication, the actual ‘hurting’ was more than effective for its intended target.)
Daniel’s whole body feels buzzy and wired, like after he’s completed a really good trick. It’s the same way applause makes everything inside him light up like a circuit board, clear and bright and get-out-of-here-while-they-still-want-more.
Of course, in this context, the ‘get out of here’ has more to do with ‘while everyone is still too shocked to be calling the cops’, but the principles are the same.
He jams Chase’s stupid, wax paper wrapped cookie into his pocket, just to be petty, just because the idea of it makes him laugh, and gets the fuck out of dodge before the suprise wears off and anyone thinks to follow him.
He’s on the subway to Merritt’s apartment before he slows down, allowing the jittery, soaring arcs of energy twitching through his fingers to focus, just enough to pull out the phone he took.
Chase McKinney’s lockscreen is a picture of himself. Because of course it is.
He half considers getting off the train right then to go dump the whole thing into the Hudson, credit cards and all, over and done with, but that feels like the kind of decision he should leave to Merritt.
Both for the reason that, maybe, he should let the guy whose actually impacted decide how to deal with it (if the satisfaction that Daniel feels at the idea of Chase McKinney’s entire life sitting waterlogged at the bottom of a polluted river is anything to go by, he can only imagine how it might feel for Merritt), and because, well, Daniel likes the idea of coming in with proof. It’s more substantial.
Either way, he easily bypasses the lock-screen passcode and turns off any tracking software. He’s not stupid.
(The password is Merritt’s birthday; something that momentarily confuses him, momentarily, before he remembers how twins work. And then that just pisses him off. Merritt’s birthday is Merritt’s, and it’s bullshit that he has to share it with some random asshole.)
(Daniel is aware he’s being a little unreasonable, a little ridiculous. He doesn’t particularly care.)
He’s got the key to Merritt’s apartment, they all do, but he knocks on his apartment door anyway. His key ring is somewhere in the bottom of his bag, thrown under notebooks and his laptop and at least two packs of cards during his controlled rush back at the coffee shop to fuck shit up and then leave, and he doesn’t feel like digging around for it.
And, anyway, knocking is more dramatic. Sets this particular scene better than if he just let himself in.
“Danny!” Merritt answers the door, grinning, and some sort of tension he hadn’t realized was locked in his shoulders loosens, “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Shut up,” He scoffs, allowing Merritt’s hand to land on his hair for exactly point-five seconds of ruffling before slapping him away and ducking out from under his arm. Normally, it’s not something he’d tolerate in any capacity, but sue him. He’s feeling particularly indulgent towards Merritt in particular today, for no reason whatsoever.
Jack pops his head up from behind the couch, “Hey, Danny.”
He ruffles Jack’s hair for much longer than point-five seconds. Mostly because Jack lets him, leaning his head up into his hand like a fucking cat, and partially because he’s a hypocrite who believes it’s his right as an older brother. (But, hey, Jack is the baby. Hair ruffling is part of his job description. Daniel only has an older brother because he happened to be born later than Merritt. He’d argue there’s a difference.)
“I thought you were going to work on your paper today,” Merritt comments, in his idle, ‘I know something you haven’t told me yet’, kind of way. There’s an unspoken question there. A casual, nonaccusatory ‘so what the hell did you do instead’, that still makes Daniel bristle a little bit, regardless.
“I got bored,” he shrugs, shoving himself over the back of the couch, and sitting where he’s almost certain Merritt had been sitting before, because there’s a half-finished soda on the side table and his laptop is precariously balanced on the arm.
Based on the huff it gets him, as Merritt flops down between the two of them, he’s decently confident he got that right.
He allows the slightly-crushed bag of cookie to appear in his hand, then, so no one can ask him any more questions about the paper he may or may not end up actually writing at this point. And once the very simple trick is suitably acknowledged, he tosses it at Merritt’s stomach.
“We’re splitting that, by the way.”
“Yeah, okay.” Merritt rolls his eyes, but he breaks the cookie in half and hands him the bigger piece almost on autopilot. Like he would have even if Danny didn’t clarify. Because, almost certainly, he would have.
“Aw,” Jack laughs, with the most exaggerated pout Daniel thinks is possible to manage. “You didn’t get one for me?”
“Nope.”
(Neither he nor Merritt acknowledge themselves doing it, but very quickly afterwards, two halves of their own halves end up in Jack’s hands.)
(Jack barely acknowledges it either, just rolls his eyes, and, somehow, within the next minute, they’re all holding multiple crumbly fourths of caramel and pretzel.)
“Oh, and I broke your brother’s nose, by the way,” he says, pointedly casual, balling all his crumbs up and swallowing them in one bite, “So, you’re welcome.”
The barista had been right, it’s a pretty good cookie, if not exceedingly sweet. He’s suddenly, vindictively glad all over again that Chase will never get to eat it.
“Did you, now?” Merritt’s eyebrows screw together, and he glances over at Jack, who prods at his own nose experimentally, and then shrugs.
Idiots. Daniel thinks, with a damning level of fondness, before clarifying, “Did I say our brother? No. I didn’t. I broke your brother’s nose. Probably.”
(He’d felt something smash under his knuckles, but, once again, Daniel’s never been the punching kind of guy. Either way, part of Chase McKinney’s face was fucked, and that’s good enough for him. ‘Broken nose’ just sounds better.)
“Wait,” Merritt’s whole body goes ramrod straight next to him, his voice coming out the tiniest bit strained when he asks, “Are you talking about Chase?”
“Do you have another brother I don’t know about?”
Jack’s mouth physically drops open with a baffled little laugh, “Wait, no, really?”
“No, I made it up for some reason-- yes, really.”
“Nice!”
He returns the offered high five happily, both reaching completely over Merritt’s head to slap their hands together.
He glances over to Merritt as he pulls back, though, trying to read his expression. It’s pointedly blank, the way he gets when he’s trying to figure somebody out. His eyes flick down to Daniel’s knuckles, and he resists the urge to jam his hands into his pockets. Worry, slight and uncomfortable, begins to crawl its way up his throat that, maybe, possibly, just slightly, he’s overstepped.
And then, all at once, the blankness breaks into a laugh.
Merritt’s got a good fake laugh, far more convincing than Daniel would like it to be, but, luckily, this isn’t that. When Merritt’s actually laughing, it takes up his whole body, head thrown back into the couch and hands brought up to completely cover his face. “How’d you even know it was him?”
“He has the same fucking face as you. It wasn’t rocket science.”
(Jack’s responding, displeased little ‘huh’, as though he’d also never really considered that before, does make Daniel feel just slightly better for how much the same thing had thrown him in the café)
“Come on, Danny, you didn’t.” Merritt huffs, finally dragging his hands down back into his lap to stare at him, wide eyed and half-smiling.
“Check your pocket.”
He presses his lips together to keep himself from grinning outright as Merritt blows a fake-frustrated raspberry through his lips, retrieving Chase’s phone from the pocket he’d planted it in during the high five.
“Jesus, that’s nice,” Jack whistles, grinning enough to make up for Daniel’s hidden one.
Merritt just studies the phone, still looking a little bewildered, and he can’t help but be a little proud of himself for throwing off the generally un-throwable Merritt McKinney.
He clicks the phone on, and snorts, “Yeah, that’s Chase, alright.”
Jack scrambles awkwardly over Merritt’s shoulder, the way he used to do when he was small enough for it to actually work, trying to look at the screen in what is, quite possibly, the most inconvenient way possible. “Gross.”
“What the hell is he doing in the city?” Merritt mumbles, staring into the disgusting, smolder-y eyes of Chase’s ridiculous selfie.
“Oh, well, New York City? I dunno, probably, literally anything at all?”
“Brat,” He huffs, softly jostling his shoulder into Daniel’s.
“I am, what I am, Merritt.”
“Oh, but, hey! Now you guys can back me up when I tell people I was the hotter twin!” He brightens a little too fast, teasing, as though that’s something he’s ever said to anyone in front of them before.
He doesn’t, generally, bring Chase up unless one of them does first, or he’s really out of it; unprompted, light hearted joking is something not entirely on the table there.
(Honestly, Daniel hadn’t even been totally sure Jack would even remember who the fuck Chase was. He’d been so little when they’d first been told about it, and they don’t tend to do ‘serious, tragic past’ type conversations with him present. He shouldn’t have doubted it. They’re all good at holding grudges on the others' behalfs and Jack has never been the exception to that, despite having the excuse to be.)
Oh, Daniel realizes, as Merritt wiggles his eyebrows semi-unsuccessfully in his direction, This is, suddenly, a performance. Why?
“That’d be weird.” Daniel tells him, instead of calling him any of that, though.
“Mmm, probably,” he concedes, before holding the phone, still opened on the lockscreen, up next to his face, “But, come on. I wear the nose so much better.”
Jack pats him concedingly on the top of his head, staying half curled on the back of the couch and half curled on the back of the Merritt.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re very pretty.” Daniel rolls his eyes, “Thank you, Daniel, for defending my honor, Daniel.”
“Why?” Merritt laughs, instead, and it’s still just-slightly-fake, as he tosses the phone around in his hand to look through the wallet in the back.
“Why, what?”
“Why’d you ‘defend my honor, Daniel.’” He badly mimics Danny badly mimicking him, so the resulting voice comes out sounding like exactly neither of them. And he’s still smiling, but there's genuine bewilderment to it. Like, somehow, Merritt ‘read minds for a living’ McKinney can’t puzzle out why Daniel would want to punch the man who made him homeless.
“Because the guy’s an asshole?” Jack supplies, which is sufficient enough that Daniel just sort of gestures vaguely in his direction and doesn’t deign it with any type of verbal response.
“Well, yeah. I dunno if you noticed, but lots of people are assholes, bud.”
“They’re not all assholes to you, though.” Daniel corrects, probably a little too sharply. It’s the closest he thinks he’s going to get to ‘we care about you’ right now without showing more of his hand than he’s comfortable with.
“Oh.” Merritt blinks, smile wobbling a little. As though that is not something he considered.
Oh. Daniel realizes, for the second time. That’s why.
“Lula is gonna be so pissed she wasn’t there.” Jack informs them, helpfully. He wriggles his phone awkwardly out of his pocket, presumably, to inform her, without moving from his perch, “Actually, so is Henley. Actually, so am I. Can I tell the family group chat?”
Daniel shrugs, looking over to Merritt for permission, which just gets him more confusion and an eyebrow raise, “What? I’m not the one who's gonna have to explain to Dylan why I assaulted someone in a coffee shop.”
“It’s not, technically, assault if the person deserved it.” Daniel protests, even though that is categorically untrue, “And, also, there is no way he’s going to be upset about that.”
There isn’t. Daniel is so certain of that fact that he’s not even, like, annoying-trauma-response level worried about it, which is usually a pretty solid personal weather vane. Dylan rarely sets that off anyway, at this point.
“You’re acting like Dad’s not going to also be mad he wasn’t there.” Jack says, for him.
“You think our FBI agent father is going to be mad he wasn’t present to punch a random twenty-something?” Merritt laughs, tilting his head back to aim his skeptical smile at Jack.
“Absolutley.” Daniel says, instead of calling Merritt out for saying ‘twenty-something’ like he doesn’t know his dickhead twin brother’s actual age.
Jack nods, “One hundred percent.”
“You’re all ridiculous. Just, FYI,” he groans, but it’s dripping with an almost nauseating level of mushy affection.
“Yeah, well, you’re stuck with us anyway,” Daniel scoffs. “So, if you haven’t gotten used to it by now, then that sounds like your problem.”
Something in Merritt’s expression shutters, slightly, more genuine than it has been for the past minute or two, and for one horrifying moment, Daniel is terrified he’s about to cry.
But he doesn’t. He just smiles, all soft and real, the kind that makes his eyes crinkle in the corners, and gently knocks their heads together, “... thanks, Danny.”
“Whatever.”
And if he slumps over a little, so he’s leaning more against Merritt’s arm than he was before, then that’s no one’s business but his own.
Lula and Henley are in class and Dad’s at work and Jack is right here. Merritt is right here. All of Daniel’s people are exactly where they’re supposed to be, safe and accounted for. And, somewhere else, he thinks brightly, Chase McKinney is having exactly the kind of day he deserves, while the three of them use all the cash folded up in the back of his phone to order a pizza. They’re okay. Merritt’s okay.
And, of course, that means that Danny’s okay, too.