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"Hey."
"Hey."
"What's up?"
"Not much. You?"
"Not much."
Casey waited patiently for about three seconds, until it became obvious that Dan wasn't actually planning on continuing this pathetic attempt at a conversation. "Uh, Danny?"
Dan looked up from the floor, settling his gaze somewhere around the third button on Casey's shirt. "Yeah?"
"Remember when you came to my apartment and knocked on my door?"
"Yeah."
"Which was about two minutes ago."
"Yeah."
"Was there a reason you came to my apartment and knocked on my door, or did you just have a hankering for late-night monosyllabic banter?"
Finally, a spark in Dan's eyes, a smile quirking his mouth. "You did not just say 'hankering'."
"I think I did."
"You said 'hankering'."
"I did. I'll say it again, and you can't stop me. Hankering."
"Casey…"
"Hankering," he said again, getting into the Old-West-home-on-the-range spirit of the thing, rolling around in the vowels. "Haaaaaankering. Han-"
And then Dan was kissing him, and apparently Dan hadn't been hankering for conversation at all. His teeth brushed against Casey's lower lip; Casey's mouth opened, almost unconsciously, to let Dan's tongue steal in and stroke against his. Apparently Dan had been hankering for something completely different, something that involved this desperate press of lips and this frantic clutch of Dan's hands around Casey's upper arms, like he was afraid Casey might push him away. When Dan let go, backed off and gave him a moment to breathe, Casey took stock and realized that despite his surprise, there wasn't any part of his body that was interested in pushing Dan away.
"Huh," he said, because the situation seemed to require some comment. And leaned against the door, because he seemed to require some support.
"Casey, I –"
"This is what you came over for?"
Danny tried to look sheepish, but didn't quite manage to pull it off. "I couldn't exactly do it at the office."
"So you waited until two in the morning, and then you came over here because…"
"I've been thinking about it. This. This subject."
"What subject?"
"The subject of you."
"I'm a subject?"
"You are now."
"Danny," Casey said, taking a deep breath, feeling air rush over the moisture left on his lips by the kiss, "it's late, I'm tired, and I've just been ambushed by your previously unexpressed hankering to kiss me. Have mercy on me, please."
"I wanted to be the one," said Dan, his voice quiet and sure.
"The one what?"
"The first one."
"Yeah, that clears it right up. The first one what?"
"The first one to kiss you."
The metaphorical light bulb clicked on somewhere in the vicinity of Casey's head, matching the glow Dan's kiss had lit in the vicinity of his groin. "The divorce."
Dan had summoned up his earnest expression, which was much harder to take than sheepish. "Your divorce is final. And there's only a narrow window of time. So I had to act."
"Clearly. You had to act."
Dan's eyes narrowed, ruining the earnest effect. "Are you mocking me?"
"Hey, you started it with the whole 'hankering' thing."
"I'm serious."
"I gathered that right around the time you kissed me." Even saying it out loud, he couldn't quite believe it. The late hour and the dim light of the hallway outside his apartment contributed to an air of unreality, compounded by the fact that Danny had actually kissed him. But when Danny decided he wanted something, he went after it. Casey had witnessed it before. He'd just never actually been the thing Danny wanted.
"Casey. You only get one first kiss."
"Are you talking about my first post-divorce kiss or our first kiss?"
Dan cleared his throat and looked down at the floor again. "Yes?" he ventured.
"And you decided, for reasons unbeknownst to me, that you had to be my first post-divorce kiss?"
He froze as Dan stepped closer, into his apartment, bringing him close enough for his breath to gust over Casey's face. "I really need to explain the reasons?"
Staring at Dan, feeling the effects of Dan's startling new proximity, Casey decided that no, Dan didn't need to explain anything. Not until the morning, at least. He closed the space between them, just to see if it would make Dan look up and smile.
It did.
"I have a whole lot of firsts left," he said, already intoxicated by the new look on Dan's face. "You wanna help me get them out of the way?"
"Hell, yes," Dan muttered fervently, as he leaned in for their first, and only, second kiss.