It's barely nine in the morning when Danny strolls through the halls of Margot's building, brown paper bag in one hand and a cardboard drink holder with two coffees in the other. His has an abominable amount of cream & sugar in it, at least according to Margot.
"It's can't even be classified as coffee at this point," she had remarked one morning, opting instead to drink hers black.
He turns his lip up at her cup, failing to see how she could ever find it appealing. Margot Bishop is quite the enigma.
He reaches her door, knocks twice and waits. It's not long before he hears the click of the latch and a small smile flies to his face before he's conscious of it.
Only, it's not Margot on the receiving end of his grin. It's a woman, olive skin, dark wavy hair, a smirk that seems glued to her lips as she looks him up and down without regard. She's in a robe. One he knows quite well: Margot's.
"Darling, who is it?" The blonde's voice lilts through the room from behind this stranger, from where he knows her bed is.
"That's what I'd like to know as well," the brunette says, her stare never leaving the man in the doorway. She tilts her head, eyes the contents in his hands with a furrowed brow. "Just who exactly are you?"
"I-I'm..." he stumbles, shaking his head, clearing his mind. He's not an idiot. Margot had told him before of the laundry list of past lovers, men and women alike.
I'm gone.
He turns on his heel, leaves the woman in Margot's robe standing in the doorway, a puzzled smirk firmly on her mouth. He makes it to the elevator when he hears the door click shut behind her. He's just pressed the button when he hears it open back up, a barefooted blonde bundled in ivory bedsheets peering down the hall.
"Danny?" She reveals herself fully now, reaches back and closes the door, rolling the trailing sheets in one hand before walking toward him. "What are you doing here?"
He looks from her to the brown paper bag, to the coffee cups in the cardboard holder, and back to her again before sighing and shaking his head.
"Nothing. I just-"
"What's in the bag?"
"Bear claws."
The look on her face is one of ecstasy as she closes the gap between them and snatches the bag from his hand, unrolling the top and pulling out a pastry. She's about to bite into it when she notices the look on his face, the furrowing of his brows, the way the cardboard is beginning to split underneath the severity of his grip.
"What on earth is the matter?"
He scoffs, throwing her a look of incredulity. When she stares back blankly, he asks, "Who was that wearing your robe?"
Her eyes widen almost comically. "Felicity? Are you upset because of Felicity?"
"Of course not, Margot. What possible reason could I have for being upset about Felicity?" The sarcasm drips from his voice, and she has the audacity to laugh.
"Are you serious?" When he says nothing, she continues. "Well, haven't you been sleeping with Sofie?"
"What?!" He scoffs, a frown etched across his face, hardening his features. "No! Of course not."
"I just assumed...the way you two were going about it when you were first assigned to my case...do you mean to tell me there is nothing between the two of you? Nothing whatsoever?"
He sighs, running a hand through his dark hair. "No. There might've been something a ways back, before you, but not anymore. It didn't go anywhere."
She thinks about this for a moment, nodding thoughtfully before bringing the pastry to her teeth and tearing off a piece. "You're jealous of me...sleeping with someone else."
He shakes his head with a tired laugh, dropping his hand to his side. "Yes, Margot. I think I've made that pretty clear."
She pauses another moment, before quiet laughter begins to shake her frame, her head shaking back and forth slightly. He rolls his eyes, breaths a huff through his nose. "Okay. I'm going to go."
His shoulders have barely angled to the left before she's reaching for him, turning him back. "No, no, I'm sorry." He looks at the small smile on her lips, the glint of something he can't quite place in her blue eyes. "It's just, this is a first, is all. No one's ever cared, really, who I've slept with. And Lord knows with Ben and my brother going out every night, shamelessly shagging ungodly amounts of people, I guess I could never really bother to care who he slept with either."
He tries to put himself in her shoes, see it how she's telling him it is. Eventually, he relents, covering the hand holding her sheets against her body with his own.
"I'm sorry. We never said we were exclusive. I get it, it's just sex. It wasn't my place to assume it was anything else, I mean, you're Margot Bishop, for Pete's sake. You could probably have anyone you wanted if-"
"I guess this means you don't hate me after all," she interrupts, and the only thing stopping him from kissing the smug smirk off her face is the fact that she's wrapped in bedsheets that smell of another woman.
"Not so much anymore," he admits, his hand finding its path through his hair again. They stay like that for a moment in silence; it's awkward, heavy, uncomfortable. Eventually, he clears his throat and pulls her cup out of the holder. "Here." She tucks the bedsheets snugly under her arm and uses her free hand to take the cup, eyeing it approvingly. "I'm just gonna go..." He turns, pressing the elevator button once more, summoning it to her floor. He hears her pause momentarily, and then the faint pad of her feet on the carpet, the shuffle of the extra sheets trailing behind her growing fainter and fainter as she makes her way back to her room. He steps into the elevator when it slides open, jams the Lobby button and watches the doors close.
"Danny?" His hand shoots out between the closing doors at the last minute when he hears her call. She's turned back to face him, leaning against her doorframe, the remaining bear claw in one hand and coffee in the other. "Would you like to go to dinner tonight?"
Dinner. They'd done room-service, morning-after breakfast, lunches at the office in between searching for the identity of the woman who turned out to be her daughter, but never dinner.
"Will Felicity be joining us?" He asks, making his intentions clear. As loathe as he is to admit it, he's developing feeling for this blonde murderer at the end of the hall. He won't judge Margot for wanting an open relationship, but he won't willingly partake in one himself. Not when he knows it would be too risky, like playing with fire.
"No, I believe she's got a flight to catch this afternoon," she says. Her grin is mirrored in his face.
"Pick you up at seven?"
"I'll pick you up at eight. Wear something smashing," she counters, throwing him a wink before disappearing behind her door.
He can only shake his head, allowing the elevator doors to close him in. Staring at his grinning reflection in the steel doors, he can only wonder what he's gotten himself into.