[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]

"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."

[so_catholic]

Danny's smile grows with amusement and for a second it dimples both his cheeks. "One? That's it? Just one?" If he'd needed any more proof that Mindy isn't behind this, he's just gotten it.

"I get it. I'm not actually recycling tonight," he admits, his voice smoother, less clipped. "I'm just gonna drink and draw a few plans of my apartment and figure out the optimum refuse storage system for the space I've got. Recycling sounded more exciting though, so I let you think I was doing that. But that's not til Thursday. Friday for glass. Which is really dumb because then I've got all my bottles from the weekend lying around for the rest of the week." He sucks in a slow, deep and steadying breath. "What I'm trying to say, Min, is it's okay." And waves a dismissive hand. "I've sent in a letter of complaint already."

[beyoncepadthai]

That sounds so mind-numbingly boring that Mindy wants to groan out loud, but she manages to internalise it because for whatever reason, even stuck in a goddamn elevator, things are okay with Danny right now and that counts for a lot.

There's still a strangeness to his calling her Min, but it's a nice strangeness. A strangeness that makes her smile in turn. "Thank you, Danny," she says, light but sincere. "I can always count on you to set the system straight. Do... you want half of my Kit Kat?"

[so_catholic]

Danny's almost expecting Mindy to throw her hands in the air and call him the lamest thing since whole foods, so when she smiles instead, it catches him by surprise.

"Woah." It's a nice moment, one he's hoping will stick around, and not just because it feels good to have been the one that put the smile on her face. "Are you feeling okay?" It's asked in jest, his eyes glinting.

[beyoncepadthai]

"Do not mock me, or I will have to revoke my spur of the moment generosity," Mindy tells Danny with a gentle roll of her eyes, though she fishes through her purse for the candy bar anyway. People mock her insistence on carrying around emergency sustenance, but this isn't her first time stuck in an elevator. "God, Danny, what if we die in here?"

[so_catholic]

"Okay," Danny concedes, pushing away from the doors and unzipping his jacket to cool down. "That's unlikely. It's barely been ten minutes." Despite his comment, he gives his shoulders a roll and stretches his neck from side to side to fend off the onset of restlessness. "Just relax."

[beyoncepadthai]

"Ten minutes and no one's come looking for us," Mindy echoes dramatically, fiddling with the corners of the wrapper of her candy bar but telling herself she can't open it, not yet. "We could be stuck here all night. I only have so much celebrity trivia I can entertain you with. You know that, right?"

[so_catholic]

Danny stops mid-stretch, giving Mindy a look like he's just seen her turn on the heating in the winter.

"Your mouth said entertain but my ears heard torture. See how weird that is? I'm good on the trivia, thanks. Maybe we can just..." He flicks a hand between their bodies half a dozen times, lifting a shoulder suggestively. "You know..."

[beyoncepadthai]

"Are you asking me if I want to have sex in an elevator?!" Mindy demands, though maybe less mortified than she should be. It's a little too candid for Danny the Catholic prude, he has to be talking about something else, but still. That's how it sounds. How it seems.

[so_catholic]

"What?! No! No. No." Danny's shaking his head so much he starts to feel a little dizzy, some of the color draining from his face. He slices a hand in front of Mindy for emphasis, his volume dropping dramatically to a frantic whisper as if he's worried they'll be overheard. "No! Talk. I was talking about us talking. I would never have sex with you in an elevator."

[beyoncepadthai]

"Why wouldn't you have sex with me in an elevator?!" Mindy yells in contrast to his whisper, not caring who overhears. At least they'll have more of a chance of a rescue, that way.

And maybe it's stupid to be offended about a hypothetical, but the stuck in an elevator fantasy is one of the hottest ones there is, so Danny's automatic dismissal of it hurts just a little bit. That and the fact he looks physically sick.

[so_catholic]

"Keep, keep it--" Despite his flapping at her to lower her voice, Danny knows a lost battle when he sees one. The entire atmosphere has shifted in what feels like nanoseconds and he rubs the back of his wrist over his forehead, sweat already forming.

"Why are you yelling?! I'm right in front of you, Mindy!" It might be a hypocritical thing to say given Danny's own lack of volume control at times but it's a more appealing alternative than trying to answer her question.

[beyoncepadthai]

"I'm yelling at you because I'm offended," Mindy says, lowering her voice for his sake though it's to a hiss. And okay, maybe she's a little embarrassed that she assumed he was asking her for sex, but the last thing she's going to do is admit that. "Is that what you wanted to talk about? How much you don't want to sleep with me?"

[so_catholic]

Confused beyond words unfortunately isn't a unique experience when it comes to Mindy. Danny can't work out which part she's offended by - she'd yelled when she'd assumed he was asking for sex and she'd yelled when he'd told her he wasn't. Usually he refuses to follow directions but if a Mindy Lahiri instruction manual existed, Danny may be forced to read it.

"No--what? I didn't bring up--I didn't even mention sex. That was all you." His eyes travel away, trying to work out what he's supposed to say to make it better. His attempt isn't exactly great. "It wouldn't be awful?"

[beyoncepadthai]

"You totally implied sex with your hands, Danny," Mindy says, although it's with less fight than she might otherwise have offered. Deciding she doesn't care what Danny says about the filth of the floor, she crouches down and puts her head in her hands, praying for an end to the elevator of awkwardness. Of course he doesn't want to have sex with her. He's even taken to calling a break on their so-called friendship.