Post 3.01 - The McGarrett Family Home

[gonna_owe_me]

It doesn't come as any kind of surprise to her that she hasn't been able to stop thinking about Steve.

Neither does the fact that those thoughts come with a hefty side-helping of guilt. She should have known those trees were too close to the window. She should have been faster, more alert. Maybe they could have caught him, if she'd been doing the damn job Steve told her to do, if she'd done it the way he thought she could.

No surprise there: like she told him, she's not a bodyguard. She's a long way from basic, or doing anything that isn't in a gym or in front of a computer, and he doesn't blame her, but in some ways that just makes it worse.

So she puts in her request for leave right away, requests the weekend, and it's granted without too many hoops to jump through, but she's got to give up her Friday night and part of Saturday morning, which is fine, too. All she needs is to change, find a pair of shorts and a breezy, teal-colored top that hangs loose off her shoulders. Slides a pair of sandals on, brushes out her hair, washes her face, puts on a little makeup. She skips the gym, but throws running shoes, shorts, and a sports bra into the little bag she packs, along with a swimsuit, before slinging it over a shoulder and hitting the pavement.

The sun is high and hot, and she stops at a food truck, first, grabs two cardboard boxes, steaming with a scent that makes her stomach rumble and curl in on itself, before hailing a cab and sliding into the too-warm, hot polyester scented backseat, and giving the address.

It's been a while since she's been here. Cab rolling off in a faint crunch of gravel, leaving her with the tote over her arm, the food in her hand, looking up at the house with eyes squinting in the sun.

Doris left last night. Right? That gives Steve last evening, all night, and this morning to do his thing, be alone, brood if he wants to, deal with the admittedly ridiculous hand he's been given, and she'd have respected that, even if she didn't have to work, which is why she didn't call or text, just let him be, but it's daylight now, and it's gorgeous out, and there's only so much alone time Steve can really take. No matter what he might think.

Leading her up the path to the door, to knock, adjusting the slippery straps of her shirt, brushing hair out of her eyes as she waits. Rearranging her expression just like she does her makeup, or her clothes, so that when the door opens, she's got nothing there but a smile and the usual pleased light at seeing him.

Comments

[haole_cop]

"'Obscene?' Really?"

This is going to be the death of him. He's sure of it. The way Steve grins, lunatic and fond all at the same time. The way he pushes at Steve's chest but can't actually convince himself to try pulling away, or moving, or letting go of Steve at all.

Doesn't actually try to take his wrist or hand back, though he does pull at it, more with exasperation than any desire to actually have it freed. Really, Steve? "You think pinning me down is going to help with any of that? Your inability to keep from giving me bitemarks and hickeys, I mean. Are you thirteen? Is that what this is?"

Even if he thought he could get away with it, he wouldn't try. Or couldn't, maybe. Has to be right here, holding Steve as firmly as he's trying to shove at him. While Steve just laughs, cocky and self-assured, a wide smile stretching so teeth glint white in the dark, so the corners of his eyes crease up and he looks actually happy for a second. In a way Danny hasn't seen enough of, ever. Can't get enough of the smile that lights this whole room and blitzes the inside of Danny's chest like a floodlight.

He'd do anything. Say anything. Keep poking and prodding and protesting, keep tossing stupid insults at Steve's stupid head, keep giving in to Steve's mouth on his skin, whatever it takes, just to keep seeing it. To wipe away the memory of that other, so lost, look. The one that felt like someone attached Danny's ribcage to a short rope and then dropped the rest of him off a rooftop. "I should not be responsible for your lack of self-control, Steven."

Dropping his name in two disapproving syllables, even when his skin is shivering against that bare touch. Shorting out nerves like Steve's lips are brushing past skin, right against the sensitive, too large, too fragile, glass-blown thing that's taking up residence in Danny's chest. And knowing that Steve shouldn't stop. Shouldn't ever stop. That Danny would give almost anything to make sure this keeps happening, insane as it all is.

[thebesteverseen]

It's a rush. Insane, washing him out, even when he's holding still. Danny shivers against his mouth, under his chest, in his arms. Hand still tugging, downward at the offending hand holding his. Mouth still tossing out barbed darts, in his name, at his head. All three at once. "Obviously." Steve said it pert and thick with disbelieving sarcasm.

"We've already covered you failed at that." Like Danny was nothing where it came to his control. Totally unneeded.

"Ages ago." The moment he said those words. The moment his lips parted and his fingers fisted in Steve's shirt, like a life line. The moment it took him more than a minute with those two, before Danny could even shove either of them back to ask what the hell had just happened to his world.

Their world. This world. When everything changed in a seconds.



Steve was absolutely fine before all that. If fine was all he was aiming for being.

Fine, and not this stupidly heady, high feeling, that causes him to rub words into Danny's skin, like he can't get enough of it, before propping himself back up. Without actually giving in to doing anything in the slightest, like some smug iota of proof, when Danny is shivering from a seconds' effort.

The cage of his fingers around Danny's one wrist, releasing and dragging down his forearm a few inches. When he can't help and doesn't even pretend there's any remorse going on in him. Because there isn't. There is so very little he actually feels anything untoward about all of this, and hit most of it already.

[haole_cop]

"I failed at that? Am I holding some kind of leash? Do you realize the sort of hazard pay I should be getting if I am somehow in charge of your ability to restrain yourself? At the very least I deserve a raise, because that is another full-time job. Or are you just always about to lose your self-control?"

Look. Surely Steve managed to function for years before he met Danny. Right? Okay, yeah. He was a loose cannon for a lot of those first months, and still is, but Danny likes to think that maybe Steve has grown. Mellowed, possibly. At least from those first moments, guns in each others' faces, twisting Danny's arm behind his back. Something he hasn't tried since, no matter how many times Danny gets up in his face, or yells at him, or tries to reason with him (usually a lost cause).

But then there are those days when it's like meeting Steve all over again. Like last week. When they were up here, but there were no smiles and there was no laughter, and Steve really didn't give a shit about marking up Danny's skin. Not in the way that makes him groan, or whimper. Like he was angry at it. Because he was angry at Danny. And Danny knows this is a thin and shaky line they walk, between Steve being like this and Steve being like that.

That. Nowhere near like this. When Steve is teasing, murmuring words into Danny's neck, making the skin there spark and shrink in reaction, making Danny bite down on one of those sounds Steve just referred to. The ones he said were obscene, which, Danny begs to disagree. They are not. It's not his fault that Steve drags them out of him, like he drags shakes and tremors and insanity. Like he drags all these ridiculous words that mean absolutely nothing, because they're all just skimming the top of this bottomless well. Drops here and there. Barely touching the litany in his head.

The one that can't stop reminding Danny how gorgeous Steve is. Like this. In the half light. Naked and relaxed. Or at work, with sleeves rolled up tight above his elbow, letting Danny see the muscles in his forearms flex and loosen in a way that is guaranteed to make him lose his mind, now.

When he's so hung up on the curve of Steve's mouth, and he'll never not be able to think about the things Steve has done with it, how it feels when Steve's breath gusts hot or gentle across his bare skin, shocking him like he'd been dropped in icy water.

Never won't know how different it is when Steve's fingers drag down his arm, instead of looping quickly at his wrist, letting go right away. Tugging everything else into a slow slide that's going to end with Danny in a pile at the foot of a cliff, and there's no helping it.

Not when he's looking up at Steve and he just can't even tear his eyes away, because, Christ, Steve is the most beautiful thing he knows, and it keeps hitting him, when he least expects it, sidelining him like a semi smashing into his skull.

It's screwing with his thoughts. It has to be. Because the words that drop out of his mouth are insane, something he should never say, never condone, or offer. Or challenge, if that's what this is.

"So then lose it. But don't blame me."

[thebesteverseen]

Holy Christ, what is he actually supposed to do with Danny?

When his own mouth is creasing up his cheeks, hard and fast and wide, reminding him all too glaringly of It's fine. Do it everyday. I like it. And that stupid, smile that dragged out across his lips, and he had to turn and walk away. When things like that hit him long before things like this were even the jagged bits of broken glass he was walking barefoot on.

But it's banking to a dangerously sharp edge quickly. Not about forcibly calling him Danno, stealing it from him and batting him about the head with it, until Danny gave him permission. Like Danny keeps doing right now. Danny's voice filling up his head and his chest, until it might burst. Not occasional words. Dozens of them. Staking our their claim on his sanity, on his breath, on the ability to us his head against the movement of his blood thundering.

Still possible. I want to be with you. Good. Because I just want you. Those rules can screw themselves. So then lose it.

Like dropping all the appliances this house owns in a bathtub, only after they've all been cranked up to high, and shoved under his skin, with sparking, frayed wires. So that Danny's words, and the way he's looking up, like there might be nothing else in the world, that Danny wants, that Danny can even see, that guts whatever he had been holding in the way of wanted patience and pressed, flippant amusement.

Like the length of any leash actually holding his want to be cool and smug goes up like flash paper on Danny's mouth losing it there.

"But I'm good at it," is goading and arrogant, every proof and promise, when he's leaning back in. Taking it for a goddamn golden ticket. Raising the hand that had originally stolen Danny's wrist, to find the side of his face, cheek, jaw and tip it up more. Lips splitting against the thick cording muscles and the rapid beat of Danny's pulse.

Running the tip of his tongue against it, before sucking up his skin, gently, between his lips. A tumbler, a thimble of awareness, left, to try and keep to that. Gentle. To a point, if there was a point. When he didn't clarify it at all. His words. If it's blaming Danny. Or losing control. Or dragging every single sound out of Danny that is better, higher, hotter, scorched into his head and his skin, than anything he once imagined.

[haole_cop]

There are lots of things Steve is good at. Like driving Danny up a wall. Or shooting things. Making other things disappear in as large an explosion as possible. Driving things, flying things. Swimming, and diving. He's good at running, good at strategy, good at getting the attention of even the most jaded and bored of waitresses.

And he's good at this, too. Mouth clever against Danny's skin, but lighter than Danny expects. Especially when Steve is grinning at him, and his hand was at Danny's wrist.

Not anymore. Now, it's tipping Danny's head, fingers pressed warm against his jaw and cheek, leaving Danny's hand free to find the back of Steve's head and cradle it, all too aware now of the tiny sound trying to force it's way up and free from the grip in his lungs. He's got to be, now that Steve's mentioned them, labeled them obscene, which is, thanks, just not accurate, alright. This is not some porn session, there's nothing heavy and creepy about this. It's almost a whimper, choked into a moan that doesn't actually make it past the lowest part of his throat.

"Oh, sure," he says, instead, goading, despite the threadiness of his voice, the way air doesn't quite seem to be working the way it normally does in his voice. "But you, you're good at everything, aren't you." Heavily sarcastic. Disbelieving. Like Danny can't believe Steve manages to put his shoes on the right feet in the morning.

"No, don't answer that. I don't need your ego getting in bed, too, there's only so much room here."

[thebesteverseen]

Steve can't stop himself from laughing into Danny's skin, briefly losing his focus entirely for the hilarity of the conversation.

One he's not even needed for, which is even better. Shivers of his chest shaking all through his back and head against Danny. Sarcastic and setting himself up, only to diffuse his own setup, too. Half like Danny's castigating whatever smug thought paraded into Steve's head, and half like he's correcting himself out loud, even through words that are being thrown at Steve's own head for nothing more than thinking.

Okay.

For a little more than thinking.

When Danny's fingers are threading through his short hair, curving around his head. Holding on to him, keeping him where he is, even without a single grip. As though Danny ever needs to use an actual grip. When his fingers circling Steve's wrist, a hand brushing up flat against his chest, the hand of one catching his arm. They all work as well as if someone twice Steve's size stopped him in a sudden choke hold. The whole world stops flat, on a dime, disorienting stillness and air shoved in.

He's never less than aware where Danny's touching him, when he isn't. If he isn't. Every single word rolling out. The way Danny is putting up a fight of still insulting him. Like his voice isn't careening sharper, breathier. As though those words make any of the rest of it less apparent. The way Danny's muscles tighten. The way his chest raises and falls faster, but not as fast as the pounding of his pulse picks up.

Which just leaves Steve where he was, when his laugh died. Mouth finding that same spot, but on the opposite side of his neck now, and sucking a little harder, as his thumb brushed through the stubble on his cheek, before dropping. Finding his shoulder and chasing down the muscles there. Fingers brushing through curls, chasing the line of muscles. Pulling just the smallest bit harder again, on the skin between his lips, when his hand settles against chest, and he, casually, rolled the flat of his thumb over Danny's nipple. And back.

Small steps, more focus, more force. Wanting. Moving gently against him. The rock of his hips, his upper body. Shifting closer, tighter, more into Danny, against his sheet. The ones that already smell like him. His pillow. When he still has his point. That he wants. The is steaming up the glass somewhere in his head. Sliding between it, and just the growing want for it.

[haole_cop]

"You know, it's not actually all that comforting when you laugh like that at a time like this. I would even maybe classify it as 'unsettling.' Occasionally deeply so."

Okay, maybe it's ridiculous that he's still trying, but words are his only defense, when Steve is rolling a little further over him, and Steve is laughing into the thin, sensitive skin of his neck. Lighting Danny up like some circuit board got thrown and everything plugged in at once, traveling in sheets of light that travel under his skin and won't dim for anything. That laugh shaking into his core, sounding like the greatest thing Danny's ever heard.

So far from Steve's tense words and cold terse anger during their standoff in front of the door. Not even anywhere close to the quiet coaxing of earlier. This is something different. Something Danny's. And he's filled with the urge to just be ridiculous, to hear it again. Rant and rave, insult Steve, toss whatever absurdities into the air he can find, just to keep it coming. Recording it somewhere, deep inside, to play back, as if he might be able to convince himself that way that it's real. That Steve's laughing, muddling breath into Danny's skin, and lighting that patch with every possible nerve, until Danny's making his own words a lie by craning his head away to give him more room.

Whatever he wants. Every inch of skin. Breathing in sharp and hard at the thumb rubbing over skin that feels suddenly like the focal point of his whole body, everything clustered together under Steve's fingers. Stomach contracting, back trying to arch, shoulder blades pushing back.

Shifting, rolling towards Steve. Pushing into the gentle rocking motion. Wanting it all. Not to burn down the house, or the bed. Not to run sprinting to the finish line.

Just to feel Steve all pressed up against him. Stomach, thigh, leg. Steve's breath sifting into his. Steve's skin so warm and surprisingly soft under his hands, that feel so big and clumsy when he is struck with the ridiculous desire to be gentle. With Steve. Who is the human version of a tank. Who is nigh unbreakable. Heavy and fit, prone to acts of extreme violence, and currently on top of Danny and apparently determined to thread what's left of Danny's steadily melting brain right out through his spine.

But it's there. The want to trace light fingertips over the muscles of Steve's back as they flex and relax. Memorizing the way they move, how they feel. Down to his hip, before palming that rise of bone and muscle.

Realizing belatedly that he's stopped talking, because the air in the room seems to have been suctioned all away. It must be, because he's breathing faster and harder than ever, but his head is as dizzy as if he's looking off a mountaintop onto a sheer drop.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny keeps right on rolling. Words falling out, breathed pauses between words, and scandalous concerns Steve truly need to stop and be chastised for. Like laughing into his skin doesn't make Danny's finger hold on a little tighter. Doesn't makes his voice seem that much more strained. Like he isn't tilting his head into the pillow, giving Steve even more of his skin.

Making it impossible not to shift up, his whole body, trace his mouth up the line of muscle.

Pretending maybe that he doesn't feel how responsive the entirity of Danny's body has become. Like there is any way to ever not notice it. Not feel it. When Danny's entire body shifts, like the ground under him going up. Rising to meet him. Fighting to feel more. To be touching Steve more. Arching into him, chest and stomach suddenly pushing up into his fingers, while Danny's stretches wide, open and available.

That his own skin prickles into sharp awareness under the slow, heavy drag of Danny's fingers over him. Down his back. Like he doesn't even know. Like Danny's going to touch every inch of it suddenly. Again. Following the lines of them straining, themselves, as his fingers move. Wholly almost unrelated to movement of his mouth, the brush of his finger, still rolling back and forth.

The way those fingers trailing down, cause his stomach muscles to tighten and loosen in waves he really can't focus on stopping. Before they find his hips. Cupping the edge of like Steve's hip was always meant to fit there, and he just didn't know until now. Like the bones and curve of his body there, cut of muscles, shape of skeleton, belonged in the curve of Danny's hand.

Rocking a little harder, just in the swing of the movement, more than the helpless rut into Danny's upper thigh.

Like a joint testing twisting in a new socket. The hold of that hand on his skin. The movement of his hip, shifting, in, under it.

Air. Who needed air. Danny pulse is burning against his tongue, melting into the throbbing filling his ears, running higher and faster through his own body. Even the quiet just reminds him, when it catches up with him. However long that takes when Danny's breathing, and the shift of his skin, and the drag and cup of his hands on Steve's own skin, blurs his sense of when anything was and is, reminds him. That he doesn't want that.

Silence. That isn't what he's looking for. The best things about Danny's mouth have nothing to do with it. Well. Most of them. And he's jut going to let the hiccup where his breath evaporated on a rejoinder evaporate on his tongue, through his lungs, on a thought that only helped to burn down more of braincells. But he wants other things right now. The whole delirious aim. To find the point where Danny's mouth drives him mad. Drag that back out. Point at it. High and far over.

When he's shifting again. Mapping his mouth down. Through curls warmed between the press of both of their skin. The smell of Danny's skin filling up his head, and the fast feeling of hair brushing his cheeks, his noise, as he moved across Danny's breast bone, the rise of muscle in his chest. Taking his time, pulling up skin, until he gets to the same place his fingers are, and takes that, too.

Lips tripping over the rise of flesh. Pausing barely, to breathe, to lick his lips, before he's using the tip of his tongue around Danny's nipple. Gentle briefly, almost making a full small circle. Before his lips close on Danny's skin, hot and moist, dragging it up against his tongue and teeth, too.

[haole_cop]

The only halfway clear thought is that it's ridiculous that they're considering doing this again, and he realizes he's said so, when he hears the silence in the room broken by his voice, coming thready, scraping against vocal chords that feel thick and useless.

"Seriously, you are exhausting, what do you think I am, a teenager?"

He's not. He's on the wrong side of thirty-five, and so is Steve, and it's not even like he's been totally celibate since the divorce, alright. He can explain away the four times -- four times, what the hell -- on the first day as what happens when lust and surprise and relief and Steve all come together in a perfect storm of Things Designed to Take Down Danny's Sanity.

So it's ridiculous that he might be able to recover from the exhaustion of earlier, and he knows it, because it's just biology, alright, mortal men are not supposed to be able to go multiple rounds every time they wind up in bed, but his body seems to be having other ideas. And those words, the ones dragged up and breathless, they're coming with a faint gust of what could be laughter if air weren't so tight, because, come on. He's arching into Steve, and no matter what he might say, he's responding. Like Steve's tongue is touching electricity right through him. Sending his pulse careening. And Steve is such a bad idea. They've just been over it, sort of. The rules. The ones that can burn down and get thrown away. The ones he'd be happy to scatter as ashes, because there is no giving this up.

It's madness. An insane thought, cut off by the knifing sensation at his chest, the trail Steve's mouth took burning like it was a match being drawn down his skin and not lips.

"Jesus, Steve."

Making those other words lies. Fingers gripping Steve's hip like nothing in the world could possibly make him let go. "Are you trying to make a point, or should I just chalk this up as one more way you've discovered to drive me crazy?"

[thebesteverseen]

It's really harder to decide which one shoves at Steve more. That almost desperate whine about how this was impossible. Steve was impossible. They were. Or the way Danny's voice can't even hold still, before he's blowing out words like that. Reckless shards of sound that dig into Steve's skin. Swearing and saying his name. Like Danny can't fight it even, the way it runs at and over everything. Steve is. Even every logical card in his hands.

Steve lifted his head, canting in the direction of Danny, and all his breathless, complaining words. Like his brain wasn't connected at all to that thin threaded voice or the writhing that kept happening under Steve. And Steve, beyond exhilarated in the fact it really is that simple, and that Danny, under him, is proving really every point ever, about driving him crazy, just lets his mouth shoot off. "It can't be both?"

Not that he exactly planned for follow through, which left that a little in free fall.

Not that he actually had a problem with the concept, but it left him amused, watching Danny's face.

Thumb back to stroking the slippery puckered rise of Danny's skin, once his face had lifted. Too dark eyed to actually fill the shoes of the seeming innocence of nonchalance of his posture, as he was waiting for Danny to fill him in on the fact that obviously he wasn't supposed to be talking, or he was disturbed in the head, and wrong.

Even when everything about Danny, except his mouth, said Steve was right. Said Steve could have both of those. Could have everything. Drop his mouth back to Danny's skin, with a flush movement of letting his fingers pull on Danny's skin. Dropping his mouth, but not covering yet. Brushing his lips across the top. Slow, using it to trace the circle of his own lips, before saying. "You already drive me insane."

Drive him crazy. Not distract him. Not get in his way. Not just make a point. Drive him crazy. Beyond thinking, or breathing. Beyond being able to do anything, but let it roll off his tongue, as dangerous a confession as it is an admission and accusation, with such a dark threat and absolutely no barb in it. Losing it on Danny's skin, the way he loses everything else. Every time. Before he drops his his mouth back and pulls hard this time. Dragging his teeth up long the skin, roughened friction without a bite to it, and used his hand to hold Danny's side.

[haole_cop]

"Yes. No. It can't be both. I know you. It's definitely going to lean one way or the other. I realize you are an excellent multitasker, but I'm fairly sure you have an actual plan of attack here, and probably single-minded one at that, though obviously killing more birds with one stone is appealingly effective."

Steve's got a conversational tone Danny's not sure he appreciates, when Steve is also dragging madness across Danny's skin, leaving him cold when he lifts his head to join the debate, which makes it all the more dizzying when his lips brush back over that sensitive nub of skin, pushing Danny's head back into the pillow involuntarily, Danny's eyes closing against the sensation, fighting to keep from pushing up into that lazy mouth, for more, harder.

"You think that's not mutual?"

Because Steve is the reason for like at least sixty percent of the stress in Danny's day to day life. Sure, things with Rachel are taking a toll, yeah, he hates the arguments and the lawyers and the scumbag criminals they chase after week in and week out, but Steve, alright, Steve is like a virtuoso when it comes to getting on Danny's nerves. There are the weapons, and his desire to leap off very tall objects or very moving objects, and his firm belief that sometimes violence actually is the answer. And his stubborn refusal to think that anyone else's methods might work.

"You're already insane. I can't possibly be making that much of a difference. But me! I was level-headed, once upon a time. I had psych evals that were so clean they would make our current legally-required team of head-shrinkers weep. You know, more than they already do at the crap we pull."

Times when he never would have considered infiltrating North Korea, and -- okay, he probably still would have gone after the CIA, but he would have had a damn good reason and not forgone backup.

And that's all before even getting into this.

This, where Steve is breaking Danny's sanity apart like he's shredding paper, piece by piece, until it all comes ripping apart and Danny gasps, sharp, fingers hard against Steve's head, as the air in the room boils and every nerve in his body lights in painfully brilliant sensation, arrowing straight to that one point. Sending him rocking into Steve, jerking against the hand holding him down, his free hand skating helpless over Steve's back. "Fuck -- Christ --"

[thebesteverseen]

Steve's voice is far too smug. Even when it shakes right along the edges. Like it's been dipped in oil and is already burning inward toward his center from every one of those edges. And he is. He can feeling it, digging at the floor under his balance, finger tips, even laying on Danny. Especially laying on Danny. Hear it in the singed ash of his control smudging up even his own voice.

"Fucking Christ." He shakes his head into Danny's skin, repeating Danny's words. A variation on them. His shoulders even tremble. And it may not all be from some approximation like breathless huff of laughter. It's probably not even possible it's only that. Not with all this. Not when Danny does that. Says that. But it's that, too. When he's half-turning his head, to get Danny's face back in part of his direct line of sight.

Shift with the deadliness exactness of every other hairpin turn in his life. Every turn of the car, or a case. Except on Danny. When his mouth firms, against a struggling smile. So pleased, so full of nearly bragging. "And you talk about having some modicum of control left."

Steve's or Danny's. Because hell, it was like one rope, thrown over a cliff, going up in flames, like it hadn't already frayed down strands before that happened. But Steve didn't stop. "When you sound like that?" Shoving every coal straight into Steve's hands. Especially the one tracking down Danny's chest, brushing fingers across his stomach and his hip, while he shifted his torso, mouth finding a higher patch of muscle on his chest. "And you feel like this?"

How was Steve supposed to even think. How was Steve supposed to think of work, and other people. When Danny started falling apart in his hands. When Danny was the one letting out these gasps and groans, swearing, and calling on God, and turning Steve's name into words Steve had no hesitation in the thought he'd want to gut anyone else on the planet from even hearing fall off Danny's lips.

Because it was his. God. Danny falling apart against him, every jerk and gasp. While telling Steve it was all his own lack of control.

"But, hey, maybe I'm wrong." Steve said, stopping to brush his mouth on the inside rise right where Danny's collarbone started to go out. Before he lifted, looking at Danny's face. An all too smug tone, literally making his words all but the reverse of every single one that rolled off his lips. "Maybe you like your delusions that you were ever level-headed better."

The same as they hadn't happened. Since the kitchen. Since that night after Steve literally staked out Danny's parking lot. Since the bruise that purpled at Steve's neck, and then Danny's whole set had faded. That maybe there were reasons why it shouldn't or it didn't and why it wasn't and it hadn't since. Grace, and Five-0, and the general rest of the too opinionated world.

That things above board hadn't been brooked once since. Not on either side since they vanished. Even before leaving.

"But, me?" Steve asked, whisper quiet, dark and low, breath falling against Danny's lips as his mouth was turning into a sharp smirk, the edges of his eyes crinkling. "I think you like it."

After all, wasn't that every thing else they'd said already, here, too? It wasn't. They shouldn't. He didn't.

There were rules. But that didn't mean you couldn't f eel it. Couldn't still want it.



"I think it's exactly what you want." Which had Steve tipping Danny's chin again, and kissing him, deeply.

[haole_cop]

"You obviously have some control left, if you can keep talking."

Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick, he really is the most aggravating person Danny's ever met, makes Danny want to snap at him even now, even when he's pushing into Steve's hands and rolling closer, wanting Steve pressed flush against him, all lean long six feet of him, every infuriating inch that Danny alternately wants to burn down or shut in a corner so Steve can think about what he's done.

Because Danny was fine before he met Steve. In that way where fine meant he hated everything and everyone, never got close to a single person other than Gracie and, eventually, Meka. Hating Hawaii, and Rachel, and HPD, and not knowing the language and digging in his heels to make sure he never did. Hating Steve more than any of it, all of it. Until one day he wasn't hating Steve anymore, one day Steve was his best friend and the person Danny trusts most in the world and now --

And now Steve is teasing him with fingers and mouth and stupid, smug words, pointing out the fact that Danny clearly lost it long ago, and, okay, he probably has a point, but Danny's certainly not going to give it to him that easily.

He's gone crazy. Steve makes him crazy. Making him want to rip those rules to shreds, the ones that say they shouldn't, can't, be here. That they both know exist. And he should listen to them, but all that thought does is spark a sudden, deeply horrified thought that maybe Steve will listen to them, that maybe that's how this is going to go, cut off even before they get anywhere, which is insane, which only goes to show that, yes, he has actually lost his mind.

He doesn't care. It makes him press up into this kiss, palm sliding heavy up the back of Steve's neck to his hair, down again, arm wrapping around Steve's waist and tugging him bodily closer. Steve's a big guy, but Danny can move him around, always has, has got zero issue with getting in Steve's way and putting him exactly where Danny thinks he should be, which is usually further from some poor scared sucker of a witness than Steve likes.

Hauling him further onto him, and, yeah. Okay? Yeah. Words dark and muttered low into Steve's mouth.

"Oh yeah? You know what I want, huh, Steve?"

He's idiotic. He's giddy. It's gone straight to his head like thirty year old Scotch, and he's pretty sure Steve could answer that question, challenge, dare, with just about anything, and it would be right, because it would be Steve, Steve, Steve. Name tight and winded, pressed into the single drowning breath before he kisses him, again.

[thebesteverseen]

He's being pulled at and shoved, and the last thing Steve's about to do, even when he's trying not to laugh at the irritating making sharp edges out of all of Danny's words, is not follow. God. Like there's any way he'd move anywhere else. Anything else in the world, the universe, needed more than following those hands. Being drug so that he's covering even more of Danny, laying on top of him.

Unable to keep a groan from slipping through his lips, into Danny's mouth. Because he might have been fine with just driving home the damn point, but Danny would not be. And his own body is making it stunningly clear, especially when he's manhandled like he's anything smaller and easier moved than he is, that it really likes all of this. Which is not a surprise. But it still has his back arch, stomach muscles all crunching tight, grinding down into Danny at a flash of actually unexpected sparks.

"Yeah," Steve shot back. Not a single second's hesitation for Danny's question, that wasn't taken up in kissing Danny.

In driving the man's head into the pillow, by a handful of hair, or into the bed with the hand at his hip still. Before he slid his face, like he couldn't get close enough. Didn't want a single inch between his mouth and Danny's ear. Like Danny could possibly miss it. Even from five inches away.

When Steve barely permits the one in the smoldering, golden, doubtlessness of, "Me."

Every bit of him. Somehow. No matter how crazy, beyond of control, it is and he is and they get. Danny keeps saying it.
Keeps dragging him in, and pushing him further, harder, higher. Always meeting him and giving him just as much, too.

[haole_cop]

"Look at that, you're getting it."

As if it isn't obvious. As if he hasn't been saying so since the first day. In words, touches, looks. The way every now and again he honestly can't take his eyes off Steve, even when he's not doing anything particularly interesting. Even if he's just sitting at his desk, or on his couch, or driving the car, or drinking a beer or one of those horrifying green shakes he's so fond of.

Snagged on him. Stopped dead in the middle of whatever he was saying or doing to wonder what the hell is wrong with the way he thought the world works, that he somehow gets this. Gets Steve. No matter how soon or how ugly the end might be, he has him, right now. In bed. Whispering that words into his ear, with absolute confidence. So fucking beautiful it takes Danny's breath away, which is a lot more appealing in movies and music than it in real life, when it means a sudden sharp crack in his chest, the inability to catch any air at all.

Not that it matters, when Steve just steals it again.

Or when Danny tips his head to the side, and drags Steve back up from his ear to find his mouth, because he's sick of talking. Yes. Even him. There are times. Times to swallow words he's already got lining up to be let out, because Steve is a lunatic and it's dangerous to give him too much free rein, but at this point, the car is already sailing off the cliff, so he might as well go ahead and set it on fire.

[thebesteverseen]

He really doesn't have long to look smacked over with smug, because Danny's not giving him the time. Words. Words, come out, a little biting and just enough edged with humor, like Steve was a child who might have announced the sky was blue. And maybe that goes to his head, too. Flippant, sharp and amazed. Because really, Danny being so completely on level fine with the reference still makes his heart race faster.

Something he can barely think about either, when Danny's face is turning and he's being drug, over, back up. Direction doesn't even seem to matter, or exist anymore. It's just finding Danny's mouth, and meeting the kiss that's gone looking for him. This touch that feels at once like a reckless challenge, and vicious surrender. Nothing easy in them. Maybe on the outside. When this, this entire push and shove, bark and bite, taunting and teasing, thing feels like the easiest thing in the world.

Feels like the single, one and only, thing he doesn't have to fight. Doesn't have to struggle to feel real, keep breathing, his head over water.

When he doesn't think, it happens in the space of breathing. The whole world falling away on the taste of Danny's skin. The movement of his lips. The ways his fingers always find their way into Danny's hair. The way he can never, may never, get enough of the feel of Danny's hands captured from the air, plastered on his skin. Like for the first time in his life there isn't enough of it. His skin, his body. Usually too much, and too tall, and perfect for slamming into things, but careful else wise. Compact unless he's at ease.

Like Danny might find all of it and keep going, elsewhere, once its done. Insane, feverish thoughts. When he can't get over the smallest space of Danny. The sound of him breathing. The feeling of his stomach muscles under the hand Steve has drifting between his hip and his side. Like there could never, never, be enough hours in a day, a weekend, a month to memorize all of it. All of him.

[haole_cop]

Apparently that's good enough, or distracting enough, because Steve drops the act and the words and stops taunting Danny only to set about burning down the room around them, the bed underneath them. Letting himself be hauled onto Danny, while Danny's leg bends at the knee, brackets him in, leaning hard against Steve's leg. Danny's arm tight around the back of his waist. Meeting that kiss like a goddamn landslide, threatening to bury Danny under it all, and, Christ, he wouldn't care. Would be happy to let it happen, because he never wants to leave this spot, okay.

Whether Steve is attempting to shatter him, or drag Danny's lungs right out through snapped ribs, or muffling him into the mattress, or not. He likes it here. Said so.

Here is where Steve's hand is flat against his stomach, making Danny's muscles contract, hard, against his touch, like they've been zapped with a jolt. Back arching, shoving shoulders down, torso up. Against Steve's weight. And he'd like to keep his eyes open to watch all this, to make sure it's happening, but he can't, because Steve's mouth is destroying him and building him right back up again, brick by broken brick. Wanting him. Even against the rules.

Danny has never been so glad Steve has never met a rule in the time he's known him that hasn't been left crumpled and cracked open on the wayside.

It's a lie that there's nothing left to say. There's plenty. All about how he still isn't this kind of girl, Steve, only, it appears he is. Falling back into bed, the most complicated bed there is, right here, again. With zero plans to stop it before it stops on its own. And about how Steve should really rethink this Viking mentality, okay, Danny is not a village to be burned and pillaged and sacrificed to whatever horrifying three-faced god or deity that allows Steve to pull the shit he pulls with barely a scratch here and there.

But it just comes out as Steve, Steve, tiny and damaged against Steve's mouth, a fucking litany, like he still can't believe it, even with proof in his hands, pushing against his body, setting off, huh, sparklers in his eyes.

Not the kind to do damage, though. Which, that really was just sick.

[thebesteverseen]

For a smaller, if deceptively stocky, man, Danny has a pretty constant habit for locking him into a place. Or at least doing his best to throw all of himself at it, or the idea of it. Any other time or place or person in his life, Steve's pretty sure he would have a few more issues with it. But here, now, all he wants to wrap Danny around himself, or vice-versa, and never resurface. What would be the point. Why should they.

The world could keep from trying to poison and kill itself for a few days, right?

So that he could give into this. Not just a few hours. Feeling like he's stealing each second from the sun. Both the one that set and the one getting closer with each passing minute. When Danny's been gone, or he was, or the world, in its many facet's was trying shake apart in their hands. So that Friday is a blur, and most of the weekend, aside from Cath's laugh, and her shock, and the hellish endless day, comprising many days without sleep, in the week before it.

Back to nearly the beginning of last week. Or maybe right before the beginning. Which is insane. That one can't still be the first weekend, and they can't have lost this whole week. Lost the chance to even note it was still here, because they weren't, hadn't been. Here. Got caught up in so much else going on out there. But it is. It's already gone. With every single jagged bite it took out of every obvious and not-so-obvious place already.

It's almost possible to forget it entirely, when Danny's got his leg curl over the backs of his, and he's got an arm almost like a bar against Steve's back. Holding him there. Again. Like Steve had plans on getting up and go anywhere else, doing anything, anyone, else.

Like he's even capable of doing anything but feeling the burn in his chest, through his lungs, as Danny surges up against his like a wave. Danny straining up into him, muscles and ribs, and the loud, thundering race of Danny's heart, pressing into Steve's own chest. Before the words come, breaking on his lips, his teeth, and his tongue, and Steve still feels like it's insane Danny doesn't get it. The power he has in a single word. Set of syllables he's heard all his life.

Tripping and escaping, fast off Danny's mouth into his, with the force of a shovel pummeling the back of Steve's head.

When he doesn't know which perverse part of his braincells left clinging on has him whispering, "Breathe, Babe."

[haole_cop]

It makes him laugh, which is entirely against what Steve's telling him to do, a waste of the air he actually has managed to get, or keep, when it breaks ragged against Steve's mouth, tearing from lungs that don't seem to work right. Just like nothing seems to work right, around Steve. It's the only explanation for the way his body seems to have a mind of its own, control lost, snapped like a thread somewhere against Steve's fingers or his mouth or the words he keeps saying low into Danny's ear. Impossible words, like I want you and you already drive me insane, which, that's not fair. Danny can't be held responsible for all of Steve's crazy, that's like taking responsibility for the country's obsession with reality shows, or for Kim Jong Il.

Except Steve doesn't always seem crazy. Like right now. Instead of shoving Danny closer to the fire, he's holding onto him, arms hard and secure, weight pressing down in a way that's more reassuring than smothering, which is absurd. Steve crowds him. Drags him. Steve turns criminals into sad, smudged spots on the road, with this same body weight.

But Steve's not doing anything like that, now. If anything, he's tugging Danny back from the crumbling edge, voice quiet, tight and constrained, but low. Almost soothing. Like this is as much about, what. Taking care of Danny, as it is forcing Danny to lose every inch of self-control he's got left, wrapping that tattered cloak back around himself.

Making Danny take in a hard, deep breath that scrapes against his lungs like metal, a reckless, stupid smile pulling at his mouth against the helpless laugh. "I sort of thought you were aiming for the opposite."

Christ. How the hell is he supposed to breathe. Remember to. Care to. How could anyone, when Steve is here, shoving a lightning storm under his skin, settling on him like continental drift. When that second word darts past the roiling insanity to stick in something hidden deep and soft, striking with an ache that spreads like lit gasoline across the rest of his body. Something he's heard Steve say plenty of times, sure -- but not like this. Not in that dark, low, lingering voice. Whispered rough into his mouth. Hit like a light switch.

"You are not conducive to breathing."

He's sure he's made that point before, but it clearly bears repeating.

[thebesteverseen]

There will never be enough minutes in this night, in these hours, for this.

The inside of his chest filling, steamrollering any lungs and organs stupid enough to be in the way, trying to shove out at his ribs, the way his heart already can't stop tumbling and sprinting toward decimation, as Danny is laughing and smiling right into his skin. That slightly crazy, deeply ragged, bent sound that makes it sound like Steve's suggestion is not only insane, it is literally the other side of impossible.

How is that not supposed to go to his head. How is he not supposed to wrap his hands around it and tug and prod and push at it. Every single time he can. Every single second available to him. How he is he supposed to even turn around, while holding case files, or talking to other officers, and not remember, for a flash of a second, Danny like this. Trembling at the edge of undone.

Letting Steve do this, egging him on with single smart mouthed remark, dragging Steve down into the flame with him.

Steve kissed him, again, even with the words beating at his mouth. Nothing. Nothing was as important as touching him, again. Even when he dragged back with a snort, mouth stretched wide in the kind of smile than was heedless of containment or control, beyond smug and arrogant, into something almost amusing twisted, like Danny had any idea what could be meant by that statement. Danny. "Look who's talking."

Danny wasn't conducive to any of it. His ability to breathe. His ability to think. Whether in here, or even on the job, when it came to certain other cases and specific days in the past. When Steve blew straight past any ability to be stopped, to be willing to listen, to let anything or anyone get in his way, for Danny. Before all of this. Before it was madness spoling out in every direction.

Every reason to stop, to not go forward, beyond the rules themselves already. Every single overturned, rammed through, warning sign. That is a hazy whisper beside all of this. Danny's voice filling his room. Danny's hands mapping his skin, like they are remaking it and burning it down. Danny, himself. Warm under his hands. Under every part of himself, right now, right here. When he can't help rocking a little bit, just to feel Danny. All of him, pressed up tight, even when he's not trying to merge into his skin. Something he'll want to give up.

[haole_cop]

That's never been true. Right? Did he ever live as a burning coal under Rachel's skin, the way Steve is suggesting he is under his? Did she find it impossible to breathe, in better ways than the times they were screaming at each other until they were blue in the face? Steve keeps kissing him, because somehow kissing Danny is even more important than tossing a reprimand or a taunt back at Danny's head, which is just as bizarre as that taunt being true to begin with. Danny would have bet even money that Steve's favorite thing, aside from large-scale automatic weapons, was to poke and prod and strain Danny's temper, but Steve is making him wonder if he should reassess, because Steve presses a kiss that makes Danny's head swim to his mouth first, before aiming an insult that is actually nowhere near an insult.

"Are you running a fever?" He squints up at Steve, trying to catch his breath. It's catching, rusty and copper-tasting, deep in his lungs, like he just sprinted across an interstate, dodging cars the whole way. "Did you maybe hit your head on something harder than your skull? Like a diamond, or whatever they make space shuttles out of? Because you seem more delusional than usual. I realize that's a little like saying the ocean is more wet today than it normally is, but still."

Even when his voice tugs, hard, into a half-groan at the way Steve rocks against him, making Danny's hips cant up, instinctive, pushing for more, closer, if not rough and fast and mind-erasing yet.

He's joking, anyway. Mostly. It's just, it's impossible, right? Why should Steve think that, feel that. Why should there have been a year's worth of wanting someone like Danny, who can barely manage to keep his wardrobe together, let alone his life?

Listen, it's crazy, but honestly if Steve's been Bodysnatched, it would make a lot more sense out of the last few weeks.

"I mean, you aren't insulting me. Did I hit my head? Is this opposite world? Have I fallen down the rabbithole?"

[thebesteverseen]

God. It's glorious really. Fingers tightening on Danny's hip. One hands sliding between Danny's hair, and down his neck, only letting him away so far, even as the high never fades from just watching him. The taste of Danny on his lips, under the brush of his tongue on his own bottom lip, while Danny is dragging in air. Deep and wide, expanding into his chest, squinting down at Steve and tossing words at his head.

Words that would work so much more if his voice wasn't so thick and full. Making Steve want to lean up and taste the words. Run his mouth against Danny's throat while he's talking, like he could feel them take shape. Ideas that flame through head, and fade into ashes about as quickly as they spark into life. Because Danny's words just leave him staring at this face. Digging his teeth into the path his tongue just took, when Danny groans and hitches up into him.

Sliding his hand under, into the small of Danny back. Like somehow it'll be possible to pull him, push him closer.
Like there's any space left to be rid of between them, anyway to explain how much Danny is wrong. Has been wrong. Is.

That isn't the few seconds when his eyelids flicker closed, before he's looking down at him again. All the words that have been thrown at him nothing near the actual truth. How insane it is. Was. Realizing, and then having each week only make it more true.

"You have a problem with that?" With Steve. With the fact Steve can touch him like this, slide slow and heavy against Danny, and aim for that same reaction again, and insinuate every dirty truth that's wrung him inside out. When he can shove at Danny, push at him, in every other way, too.

"You think I'm putting you on? That you haven't driven me fucking crazy, for longer than you can even grasp," Which might sound like any other dig, like the play back to Danny's words it was meant to be, if it weren't for the way his voice is rubbing into scatter shot gravel, while his skin tightens against the feeling the same slow friction digging it's claws right back into him, tightening muscles ans causing his shoulders to roll slightly forward, shoulder blades pushing back.

[haole_cop]

It's ludicrous, to be caught on the way Steve bites his bottom lip. A sharp press into skin pinked and slick, and Danny realizes that he has actually lost his mind, right, because he's staring, gutted like a fish, on even white teeth, the bunching muscles in his jaw. He's such a goner.

"Problem, no, I have no problem here, I think that's great. It's definitely only fair, considering --"

Which turns into a strangled sound at the way Steve moves, sliding, slow and deliberate, and, Christ, he inspires the filthiest thoughts, things Danny should never, ever, have been thinking about his partner, things he had to be half-asleep to even allow, that he was always worried might somehow teleport themselves through space straight into Steve's head. Thoughts about Steve's long, lean body, and his long, quick fingers and the squared off angle of his jaw, the shadows it drops against his throat that Danny wants to taste like they might be different from the rest of him. He'd wanted to know exactly how much of Steve's body was covered in ink, wanted to trace every line with his fingers and tongue.

Wanted to hear Steve's voice turn threadbare and wanting. Wanted to be shoved against a wall, to shove Steve against a wall. Wanted to feel him hot and hard against his thigh or belly.

And it turns out, when it all happens, like it was never supposed to happen, he gets as hung up on Steve's mouth, alone, as anything else. When Steve isn't even doing anything with it, except letting out a few words, dropping curses that plop with a sizzle into Danny's stomach. "You're already crazy, that hardly counts."

Putting him on? Maybe not. But that doesn't make it any easier to believe. Even when Steve's hand is pressed firm and sweet to the small of his back, pulling them close in a way that's not just about a rut and tumble of heat and blurring, world-shaking sensation. That feels almost protective. That vulnerable spot, where Steve's hand fits completely, like it was always supposed to be there, which is exactly the kind of romantic nonsense Danny should not be thinking about a hand that he has, personally, seen turn people's faces into blurry red sponges.

That is now pressed, flat and warm and perfect, tucking him closer, neatly, and Danny's just going to give, up, alright. If this is insanity, they may as well park him in an institution and leave him there, because he would go willingly.

[thebesteverseen]

That might be one of his newest favorite things. Danny struggling to speak, shoving all of his words together, still frantic and sure he can, to have have it come crashing down on him like a the roof of a building still on fire at Steve's command. Turning, without warning, into that sound that slides between every inch of Steve's skin and the muscle beneath it, cutting it free, setting it on fire.

Overwhelming Danny and shooting Steve up into the air, like he'd filled with helium, when he makes sure he doesn't.

Shoot up into the air. Pull back. Give any more space. To breathe. To come back down easy yet.

When Danny is catching air and still pushing himself into managing other words. Words, that are insults, like hand rails Danny can cling to. Attacking Steve's head, like normal, like somehow that is normal, he's so crazy that wanting Danny, wanting Danny to such an endless great distraction, that it felt like it could burn off his skin, was just another shade slipping into and out of it.

Steve laughed. This rumble caught somewhere in his chest, more than out loud, on a point he's not about to fight.

Because Danny is gorgeous, falling into him, shifting into him. Throwing out excuses, like he isn't wrapped on Steve right now.

Steve who was barely willing to press it all into the shapes of facts like this, warm and dark and used the same as shoving bright, burning coals under Danny's skin. Barely able to believe it's still happening. Somehow Danny didn't leave, even if he almost did. Especially, then. That Danny is here. Under him, writhing and canting in slow certainty.

The curve of his back, knobs of his spine pressed to the inside of fingers, muscles bunching and releasing there. "What's your excuse then?"

Because Steve isn't sure there aren't words really. To explain how this happened, how it started, what's happening now. But Danny'll try.

[haole_cop]

Jesus. If he thought a kiss, or a bite on the lip was bad, it's nothing to what Steve's laugh does to him. Dissolves him like a sugar cube in hot water. He can actually feel the edges of himself melting into this ludicrous goo that is all that's left of his internal organs. He thinks he could literally be spread over toast, like butter. "Obviously your crazy is catching. Like the flu."

He doesn't know why, alright, but he has to keep putting up a fight, like he needs to save face, or something, but the truth is he's not sure he's wrong. There's just no vaccine for Steven McGarrett, SEAL extraordinaire and all-around Superman in cargo pants. No vaccine, and Danny's not even sure he'd have tried for one if it did, impossibly, decide to exist. Not now. Not now that he knows. He hates not knowing things, being in the dark, being on the outside of understanding, and this has pulled the wool over his eyes for too damn long, alright?

"Maybe it's something in the water. Or it's a side effect of the chronic sunstroke that every miserable day on this island bestows on me."

Alright, fine. He's pale and he burns easily and he doesn't like the sun or sunscreen, but he hasn't really had sunstroke except for maybe like the first few weeks here. He might be reluctant to acclimate, but he kind of hates dizzy spells and fever more.

This sort of feels like that, though. The sudden shift in his body, just because he was suddenly in sun and hundred-degree heat all day, because the days were about half again as long as they are at the height of July in Jersey. The sun doesn't fuck around, here, it sort of futzes about rising, but once it's up, everything is pounded with heat and the sort of brilliant prismatic light that only comes from being surrounded by water. And it took a toll. Wore him out, skyrocketed his core body temperature, left him dizzy in a way he wasn't again until that spilled milk, that dead body, that doorway, the one a year ago.

The one that Steve said was the first tripping step into all of this.

And now he feels it again. Shortness of breath, spinning head, rapidly rising temperature. Like heatstroke, because Steve is like all of Hawaii rolled into one, island-warm, blood beating like waves, the ocean Danny mistrusts and hates that he can't mistrust or hate when it's Steve, Steve's ocean. Perfect under Danny's hands, smooth skin, rough stubble, reacting to every touch and kiss and word like Danny never thought possible.

When the truth is, he has no excuse. "Maybe I never had a chance."