Page 30 of Second Chance

His mouth is parched dry, and he’s wrung out. Blissed out. Fucked out.

“Wow,” Daniel says.

They separate in clumsy increments. Tony can barely support himself on his wrists anymore. Daniel hisses at the stretch in his thighs when Tony puts them down.

“Here.” Tony grabs his T-shirt off the floor and wipes Daniel’s stomach down with it.

Daniel’s gratifyingly shaky on his feet when he gets up. “We’ll have to clean the couch.”

“I’ll do it.” Tony remembers seeing some fabric cleaner somewhere on the shelf under the kitchen sink. He doubts Daniel would go that far, but a damp towel will not solve this problem satisfactorily.

Daniel gives him a look. “Tomorrow. Come on. I want to shower.”

They don’t talk under the water, leaning into each other’s space as they get clean. Only after Tony has rescued his hair tie from the cat again, when they’ve lain down in bed, front to back facing the wall, and Worf has hopped up and made a space between their legs like a fuzzy paperweight, does Daniel talk.

“Hey,” he says. “I…I don’t wanna push, but if your sister needs someone…”

Tony makes a noncommittal sound. Gianna wouldn’t admit it if she did. “Are you okay about what Colette said? About going back to France?”

Daniel shrugs. Tony feels the movement more than he sees it, cocooned as he is in Daniel’s arms. “She says that, sometimes, when she’s upset. It probably doesn’t mean anything.”

“What if she—”

“She won’t.”

His voice is firm, but Tony’s not convinced. He wonders if he should tell Daniel what he and Colette talked about in the kitchen earlier, how much she’s struggling. He could get them to compare notes on how Lily and Sean are doing, at the very least, which would calm some of Daniel’s nerves about Lily.

Then, Tony remembers the hint of vulnerability Colette let him see and reconsiders. If he shares that with Daniel now, breaks that trust, Daniel will probably want to talk it out with Colette, and Tony can’t see the conversation going any other way than her shutting down entirely.

Daniel bats at Tony’s shoulder until he twists to look at Daniel. “I’m serious though. If Gianna needs someone, or if you need someone, that’s okay.”

Tony swallows against the burning behind his eyes, in his nose.

“You should get to need someone more.”

Daniel’s hand is a warm comfort on his hip, even through the blankets. “It’s not a competition.”

Tony falls asleep before Daniel takes his hand away.

Chapter Five

The detective rings the doorbell less than a minute after Daniel gets up to make his tea.

Tony, who hasn’t made it out of bed yet, groans when he hears the buzzer. Daniel’s going to be grumpy. He likes his calm mornings.

When he hears the knock at the door, quickly followed by her voice, he struggles upright and rummages for whatever clothes they left on the bedroom floor last night. If he leaves Daniel to his own devices, he’ll spend the entire conversation glowering at her, in part because she couldn’t have waited ten minutes for the kettle to boil.

The other part is that he hates her.

Daniel would never say so, of course. He’s very polite, even when she isn’t there, and they’re talking about last year’s events in the privacy of the few people who witnessed the full story. Daniel always makes sure to mention she was just doing her job. That’s how Tony knows Daniel really, truly hates her. He says meaner things about Colette than he ever would about Detective Taylor.

“We had nothing to do with Professor Lawrence,” Daniel says before the detective can get a word in edgewise.

Tony, still in his glasses and the basketball shorts he wore over earlier this week, peers around the corner. “Hi, Detective.”

“Mr. d’Angelo. This is a surprise. May I come in?”

She doesn’t wait for an answer. Tony can practically hear Daniel grinding his teeth.

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