[for Mindy]

[so_catholic]

It’s nearing 6pm and thanks to a surprisingly discreet Amelia, Danny knows Mindy isn’t scheduled to be at the hospital tonight. So aside from a couple of sentences in the break room, that would mean they had gone a whole day without speaking to each other, even at work, and knowing that gives him an uneasy feeling that he can’t shake off.

It’s amazing how quickly Mindy can move when she really wants to. Danny’s been busying himself with paperwork for the past half hour, waiting for the sound of her office door closing, and as soon as he hears it, he’s up and out of his chair, satchel slung across his chest. He’s surprised that he gets out only just in time to catch a glimpse of her leaving the lobby. Usually she stops to regale the entire practice with stories from her day – the patient who she’s 99.9% confident will take her advice and name their son Thor, the injustice of receiving her lunch delivery addressed to Mr Lahiri simply because she’d ordered the 16oz steak, picketing Dr Fowler to change their wifi password to something she finds easier to remember (what’s wrong with taylor4harry4ever?! It has NUMBERS, Danny!) or her futile attempts to sell on whatever weird object she couldn’t say no to at the latest flea market she never meant to go to.

He misses it, all of it, and it’s why he races after her, calling out before she can disappear.

“Hey, hold the elevator.”

Comments

[beyoncepadthai]

Mindy rolls her eyes as she does so, but sticks an arm out to hold the elevator door before it slams shut nonetheless. She's been making a pretty good effort to stay out of Danny's way and can't figure out why the hell he doesn't give into his fitness freak neurosis and take the stairs. Whatever. A few floors of awkwardness and they can go their separate ways for another day. She's not even scheduled at the hospital, thank god.

"You're in a rush," she remarks casually, not even turning to meet his eyes. "Plans with Amanda?"

[so_catholic]

Danny’s shoulders shift uncomfortably in his coat, like he’s shucking off the mere mention of the woman. “No, my receptacles need organizing tonight. It’s a big responsibility, recycling,” he explains, slipping his hands in his pockets and moving next to Mindy. “You’ve got your glass, your paper, your plastic. If you don't nail down a good system from the start all hell breaks loose."

[beyoncepadthai]

"Recycling? That's your plan for the evening?" Mindy asks critically, judging him pretty hard as she presses the button that will take them to the ground floor and free her from this temporary hell. She couldn't care much less about recycling, a fact that's probably earned her a place in actual hell. "I'm practically dead of boredom just from you telling me that."

[so_catholic]

Danny considers explaining that all he's doing tonight is establishing the recycling system for his new apartment rather than the actual recycling itself but he knows any elaboration would fall on disinterested ears. As tempted as he is to deliberately niggle at Mindy, he doesn't want to waste a natural opportunity to find out what she's up to outside of work.

So he shrugs, slow and casual, casting her a sidelong glance that lingers. "Are you saying your plans are better than mine?" he asks, in a tone that suggests he's just proposed the impossible.

[beyoncepadthai]

"I would tell you," Mindy says, meeting his gaze though the gist of her plans are to catch up on TV and sleep — he doesn't need to know that. "But that seems like the kind of thing friends talk about, does it not?"

And for whatever reason he's chosen to draw the line between professional and personal at a point when she'd only just realised how much she missed him after almost a year apart. According to him, they aren't friends.

[so_catholic]

Danny remembers well enough what he'd said - work should be work and their personal lives should be separate. But the line in the sand that had seemed so clear ten days ago is already growing messy for him.

Deflecting Mindy's pointed tone, he turns in towards her a little, laying down an unconscious challenge. "Technically we're still inside the building where we, as co-workers," he gestures between their chests, "both work, so... I don't see a problem with it."

It's not like they're gossiping over mojitos in a bar; they can talk about non-work plans in a professional manner, right? It's not breaking the rules when he's the one that set them.

[beyoncepadthai]

"So if I told you I had a hot date that wouldn't be totally inappropriate?" Mindy asks, tilting her head as she gauges his reaction. Admittedly there is no date and there hasn't been for a while, but since Danny's always fixated on her revolving door of suitors, one more can't hurt. "If I told you he was cooking me dinner in his apartment, that wouldn't cross any boundaries, right?"

[so_catholic]

Danny sets his jaw, his gaze diverting temporarily. Mindy usually pays zero attention to whether or not something is inappropriate to share, so he ought to feel a sense of familiarity in this. It's part of her charm, though he'd never admit it.

"Nope," he replies in a non-committal tone, stretching across her personal space to jab at the elevator button a few times in a futile attempt to get them to the ground floor faster. "Like I said, we're still in the building."

He supposes bordering discomfort and a shade of annoyance is pretty familiar.

"I hope he knows how to use more than just a panini press," he adds under his breath, still jabbing.

[beyoncepadthai]

"What?" Mindy asks in response to his incoherence, but she ends up just waving her hand as if to dismiss whatever he's said anyway because, knowing Danny, it won't have been nice. "It doesn't matter, anyway. I don't think we'll be too focused on the food, if you know what I mean."

Which, again, she doesn't even have a date, but if Danny's going to force his way into her business then she's going to pretend that she has some. Business that goes beyond PJs and true crime documentaries and homemade cocktails, at least.

[so_catholic]

While finding out what Mindy's up to was the whole reason Danny had followed her out of the office, he's not exactly enthusiastic about the topic of choice.

"I am getting nothing from this conversation," he tells her bluntly, giving the button panel a frustrated thump when he deems it to be lingering between floors for too long. "Okay? This isn't Dawson's Creek, I don't need to know the gory details."

A dying whir of machinery interrupts him, followed by a shuddering and flickering of lights that make Danny instantly alert. With his head tipped back and ears pricked, his hand slowly falls from the panel. "....What did you do?"

[beyoncepadthai]

Mindy's about to reprimand Danny for making such an outdated reference when the elevator pulls to a slow stop and all of the memories of how she met Tom come flooding back. God, she'd felt like Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock all rolled into one.

Then that damn Serbian bagel vendor had come along. "What did I do? What did you do?! You kept hitting the buttons like a five year old!"

Mindy starts banging her hands against the metal doors to no avail before she slumps back against the wall, resting her face in her palms. So this is how she dies.

[so_catholic]

"Like this isn't part of your plan!" Danny erupts, gesticulating at her like it's the only reasonable explanation. She's Mindy Lahiri, she always has some wild plan in play.

The buttons receive another battering, each one as unresponsive as the next. "Gimme a break with this!"

[beyoncepadthai]

"You think I planned this? You think I wanted to get stuck in an elevator with a sweaty Italian who won't even call me his friend?" Mindy demands, knowing that in actuality it's as much his fault as hers. This is just their damn luck, the universe raining down on her total lack of parade because she ate beef one too many times, or something. She groans. Thank god she's not claustrophobic, because nothing about this is romantic enough to distract her from how close the walls and doors are.

[so_catholic]

"We're friends," he corrects her, as firm with the word as he is loud, a finger pointed at her in an accusatory manner. Which is pretty apt, he thinks, since it's her fault they became friends in the first place. "We're just taking a break."

He holds the alarm bell for way longer than necessary and is manifestly annoyed when there's no response. "And yes, I think you planned this. What did you do, tip the janitor? Everyone knows Dick's having money problems, you take advantage of an old man like that?"

[beyoncepadthai]

"Why would I plan this?!" Mindy yells much louder than she should in such a confined space. She's pretty sure he'd blame global warming on her if he could, it's just a knee-jerk reaction to point his finger at her whenever something goes wrong by now. "And what do you mean we're on a break? We're not Ross and Rachel, Danny!"

The lack of response through the elevator's speaker makes Mindy sigh audibly, giving up and slumping down on the floor with her back against the wall. So much for her Deadly Wives marathon. So much for the wine chilling in her fridge. So much for the hot, fictional guy who's supposed to be fixing her dinner.

[so_catholic]

"I don't pretend to know why you do things," Danny answers in a standoffish tone, trying to pry open the elevator doors with his bare fingers. As soon as he says it he feels like he's short-changed both himself and Mindy. He actually thinks he knows her pretty damn well but pride stops him from admitting that he could be wrong about this. She's got James Vanber Dyke just waiting to pounce on her in her apartment, so it might be possible that the elevator breaking down is as much of an inconvenience for her as it is for him.

Admitting defeat with a grunt, he turns around and folds his arms across his chest, leaning back against the doors. "Don't sit on the floor. It's dirty and that's a nice skirt."

[beyoncepadthai]

"Why do you care so much about my skirt, you weirdo," Mindy practically snaps although she knows he's right and she reluctantly gets to her feet, brushing off the fabric. She kicks off her heels, though. No amount of Danny's insistence that the floor is filthy is going to keep her feet in those for another minute. Not when she had her slippers all ready to go back home.

[so_catholic]

"You treat your clothes with respect. First rule you learn as a kid." It's the first rule he'd learned anyway. Mostly out of necessity since he'd known whatever he wore was going to have to end up on Richie's back some day. Danny might not be into fashion like Mindy but he does lament the loss of his pressed jeans and shirts back home. He's tried to replicate as much of his closet as possible but no amount of searching is going to find him the same top Ramon had just given him for Christmas.

"Second rule? Don't be friends with girls. It's hard work."

[beyoncepadthai]

"Oh, so you can't be friends with them, but you can sleep with and marry them?" Mindy says with a roll of her eyes, pressing the emergency buzzer several times and offering an angry tirade at whoever's on the other side. Still no response. "God," she says under her breath. "Kill me now."

[so_catholic]

"Those are very different things, Mindy," Danny says after a minute of jaw clenching and silence. It's a distinction he feels she should know. Maybe then she'll realize how huge a thing like friendship is to him. "Sleeping with someone and marrying them, they don't require you to be friends first. I know." He shrugs halfheartedly. "I was never friends with Christina."

[beyoncepadthai]

"You were never friends with your wife?" Mindy asks, turning to meet his eyes. It shouldn't surprise her, and it doesn't, really, but there's still cause for clarification since it's, to her, such a messed up thing to say. "Did you ever consider that maybe that was why it didn't last?"

[so_catholic]

Maybe if they had been friends first they would have known better than to marry one other. Christina's job took her away so much and he worked long hours to build his career, so they'd never truly gotten to know each other or learned to deal with their flaws. All of their arguments had taken place after they'd said 'I do'.

It's never occurred to Danny that things could turn out differently if he's friends with a woman first, and even after Mindy suggests the same, he still shrugs it off. He's too cynical, too convinced he messed things up because he couldn't change, to even contemplate the idea that he and Christina were doomed from the start.

"I think monogamy comes a little higher up the list of things that could've saved us, Mindy."

[beyoncepadthai]

Very rarely does Mindy know she's crossed a line, but Danny's response is enough to shut her up and stop prodding him about the downfalls of his marriage. At least he's been married. Her own dating ventures have been spectacular failures, much as she'd try to shift the blame, and it isn't as if she's getting any younger (again, a fact she'd never speak aloud.)

"I'm sorry," she says, rare and sincere.

[so_catholic]

"Forget about it," Danny brushes off, scuffing a foot along the floor a couple of times before giving the doors behind him a sharp kick with his heel. It releases a little of his tension, enough for him to surrender some of the defensiveness in his posture.

"I'm sorry for saying you had anything to do with this," he utters, lifting his eyebrows to indicate the elevator around them. His gaze lands on Mindy, the corner of his mouth betraying him. "I mean, if this was one of your nutty plans, you'd have brought snacks."

[beyoncepadthai]

"I actually do have a snack, singular," Mindy says, but it's the usual Kit Kat she keeps in her purse and clearly not enough to fuel her for any kind of long stint stuck in an elevator. "And I actually didn't have a date tonight, while I'm confessing things. I don't know why I told you I did."