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]

"Wait a minute, hold on."

Which, he has to, because Steve is kissing him, in a way that starts out sharp, like it's supposed to be punctuation, but then his lips part and his body shifts fluidly over Danny's, and it makes Danny want to bury fingers in his hair, keep him from ever moving his mouth away, because this is so much more necessary than air. Even when he has to keep at it, needs to keep pushing it. "Who said anything about surrender?"

He, Danny Williams, is the prince of lost causes. He knows it. Steve knows it. He can move on in a case, but when it's personal? Done. There has never been a thing he's been able to let go of. How much easier could the divorce and move gone if he hadn't clung to the shattered remnants of his marriage? He gets all tied up in it, he always has, and now he's tied up with this, with Steve. For whom there is no cure. For whom Danny's feelings are so far past his control he'd have better luck deciding the weather. If there was a chance, it's long past, now, because he knows this, alright, he knows it, the way Steve is at the edge of every thought and how Steve smashes into his dreams the way Steve has, regularly, smashed through actual physical walls or windows.

But that doesn't mean he gives up. Oh. Hell no. He might not be fighting this feeling, but he's sure as hell not going to roll over and let it swamp him, either. Clinging by his fingernails to whatever piece of solid ground he can find, still reaching for land even while he's being swept out to sea.

Or maybe just reaching for Steve. Hand stealing low, smoothing over his hip and the round of his ass, like he owns this, Steve, every inch of his skin and every part of his body. Even the kiss Steve's drowning him with, making lights flash, hard and stuttering, somewhere between his eyes and the ceiling.

[thebesteverseen]

It distracts them both, even as they push and pull with words. They both seems to fall under the same, too. The way a kiss stops everything. Not because they mean to, but because one of them slides, and the other one seems like all they can do is follow. Tangled up, sinking beneath the waves. Tumbling deeper into each other, until someone needs air and words suddenly exist at the same time.

Bubbling up, forcing more space, air, thoughts through the endless press of pressure slowly building up and up and up.

Prying in the lights, with the curl of amusement and pleased denial in Danny's voice. The way Steve can hear it coming. He's wrong. He's pushing, prodding, choosing the right words. And Danny is coming right along with him into it, too. And how did this happen. When did it go from something Steve couldn't even consider, not even side-eye what it all was, not even when he was listening to Danny swear and rant and beg on a voicemail, to that fact they're all tangled up, joking about it?

"That isn't what you just said?" Steve taunted, eyebrows raising, mouth curving wide. Making the entire reaction over the top.

Even when it's gutted. Threaded thinner by the fingers crossing over his skin, causing him to tip and shift. Pushing into him, reactively, only to stretch and arch up into Danny hands, even as his muscles tightened against the skin that's so much more sensitive. The skin to prickle behind and around where those hands touch him. Gutting his thoughts. Blistering through the thought, like air's necessity, there will never be enough of this.

Of these hands. Of the way all of this feels. All the touches and the teasing. All the warm, sharp words. The surprise rushes of heat and want.

[haole_cop]

"Look, just -- shut up, shut up."

Threaded thin, edged with a desperate whine at the press of Steve against him, fever-hot between bellies, burning away any last resorts, any single final ability to think clearly, or at all.

What is there to think about? It's Steve. Who he trusts. Who he stayed for. Who has given him more than Danny has ever deserved out of a job or the miserable life he'd planned for himself here.

He doesn't want to have to admit it, okay, not all the way, is still holding up the battered shield of attitude and insult, but, Christ, Steve, muffled against Steve's neck as Danny curls up into him. Shaking hard with muscle contraction, and something else. Something huge, swallowing him up, which is how it must have felt for Jonah with that whale, right?

"What I said was." Low, tilting crazily towards dangerous, or dark, a confused smoke of amusement. "You are unfair, okay, there should be rules against you, how was I supposed to know you were going to fight dirty."

Which is how Steve always fights, but he didn't know he was this time, so Danny really shouldn't blame him, but Danny does. Being the kind of upstanding, lunatic, super-human, whackjob of a supremely incredible human being he is, how the hell was Danny supposed to fight back, huh? Him and his smile and his blue eyes and the way he cares about everything and everyone, how he has to save the world, which is too much, McGarrett, but he does it anyway. And then turns around and is so surprised at each and every offer to be kind to him that Danny's heart trips all over itself and splats facedown on the sidewalk.

And it's really aggravating, all right. Danny had no say in this (he can't imagine not choosing it, but that is not the point). He's already lost.

With no chance. Not one, ever. Not now. Not once there's awareness. Now he knows.

[thebesteverseen]

He's not laughing. No, really, he isn't. Which is kind of hilarious, or maybe it's just insane. Because he wants to laugh. Maybe he even meant to laugh. Or grin at Danny words turning sharp, underlined desperate. Railing at him to shut up. It would be the right, and perfect, place for a laugh. A joke. More fierce prodding. Except he can't make it happen. Because everything else is just rolling itself like a boulder right over it.

That thin desperate edge under Danny's voice. The way he shudders, hard, fast, and curls up into Steve's skin, Steve's body, holding on and pushing back. Muffling far more desperate words into Steve's neck, half escaped, half wanting, all of it like he's injecting alcohol straight into Steve's blood stream. It's slamming his head, and tightening his fingers on Danny's back as he tries to hold on, through the onslaught of Danny, of his shaking. Gets smacked with wanting that even, too.

Just to curl Danny up into him, curve around Danny, and never let him move forever. Hold him close. Keep him safe.

Never need him to worry about any of the things Steve's brain refuses to think enough to supply belonging here, in this thought. Just burning in and out the image of pulling Danny to him, and keeping him, curled up like this, to him, against him, in his arms as long as he could. Beyond the sensation burning through him, steadily more blinding.

Steve even loves this voice. The threat and darkness of the words being shoved at him. Biting at him, words like sharp knives, the wash of the ability to think, to do more than feel, that is chipping further and further away, like ice that can't stand, can't stay solid under the roaring torment of flames. When somehow it seems right and proper and just too impossible to deny, just to retort, "You started it."

Not that he knows if he means, giving those words in the conversation. Or falling in that doorway. Or simply being the person Steve could never look away from, never burn out with someone else. Or maybe even for only making it, barely, six hours the morning he returned. It didn't matter. All of it was true, but most true at the moment was everything burning away except this feeling at the bottom of it all.

Endless, corrosive, overwhelming. The way control slips on this conversation, this point, this joke, this whatever. The way it always does with Danny. When he knows his jaw his is tightening and he's moving more deliberately. An actual rhythm, and not points of insanity occasionally. The fingers on Danny's back coming up, around a shoulder, to find his head, his hair, and tip his head, because he has to be kissing him. Again. Now.

Can feel the ragged edge of desperation growing, pricking everywhere like thin, tight needles across his skin in so many places. The want to shove it all into Danny, until he is feeling it, until Steve can see it on his every movement, hear it in every word, every impossible to catch breath. When surrender isn't even the right word anymore, because it's nothing that clear, that concise, even.

It's the just the whole world shattering on them, between them, while all they can do is hold on and fall apart, all at once.

[haole_cop]

He has got to shut up. He has got to stop opening his mouth, because God only knows what will start falling out if he doesn't: curses, endearments, long-held secrets. This thing knocking around his head like falling rocks, that he absolutely cannot say out loud, partly because there's -- he just won't, and partly because it is rapidly dissolving into blunted bricks of itself. That Steve is beautiful, that Danny wants him, that those two things are everything that's beating in his blood and soaking through every cell in his body. That Steve is unbelievable in all the best and worst ways, and that there is nothing, nothing in the world like this, curling into him, wanting to wrap that ridiculous long body with every part of himself, wanting to hold onto Steve and promise things Danny should never promise.

That the world can just back off, alright. That everything is going to be okay, that they will make it okay, that Danny will, somehow, if Steve lets him try. That no matter how bad everything is, it can get better, because look at them, look at this, in the middle of an avalanche, bullshit of epic proportions, and yet Danny feels like he can breathe. Like he doesn't have to throw hatred and cynicism at the world, that it's not him, alone, screaming at a universe that never bothers to listen to him or even notice he's there.

"No, wrong." Ground out, almost into Steve's hairline, the sensitive skin behind and under his ear, where short strands tickle against Danny's breath. "You are -- the instigator, always."

Steve started it. Steve picked him. Dragged him into partnership and Five-0, when Danny hated everything in the world and nothing so much as this asshole, pulling a gun on him and demanding ID, sort of like he's demanding Danny's mouth right now, sort of like how he's pushing them both into a steady rhythm that's burning Danny from the inside out, like a coal fire simmering underground, hollowing ribcage and stomach and replacing it with heavy hard something, splitting him open in a way that will leave him feeling raw and scraped later.

Being outpaced by his own breath, losing the beat of his own pulse until it's nothing but a hummingbird hum in his head, a dizzy pounding in his ears, and he's wrapping arms around Steve hard enough that he shouldn't, should think about that rib, the few bruises left.

But he can't, because nothing else even exists. Just the need to hold him as close as he can, curl up into him, like he could crawl right out of his skin and under Steve's, and even that wouldn't be, couldn't be, close enough. Nothing is.

[thebesteverseen]

It's amazing. Above and beyond, far away, somewhere deliriously past it. When Danny is literally all but graft himself in, and Steve's hand has to find the bed, because someone, somewhere, in this pile of arms, and mass of bodies, has to be able to support all of this. Which is ludicrous, when Danny's lips are brushing his hair and his skin, and going to his head, as clearly as if he shoved Steve's head into hot water.

Causing his brain to feel like the impulses behind even thinking about thinking are shorting out. Sputtering. Causing him to shudder and close his eyes, only pressing into Danny more, only wanting to shove into him, through him, this second, the next minute, when it seems like Danny is doing his literal best to just wrap around him. Arms around his body, tight and firm. Words. Words falling out, through the water in his ears, while Danny is still arguing.

Always arguing. Even when his voice is catching, ground out on skin. It's insane. It's perfect.

Let words, tumble from his mouth, head turning a little into Danny's. The solid block of it at the side of his, his neck. So that he's catching hair, and only a little skin, when he's letting those few sounds scatter and shatter out. Sound about as impossible as his words do. "How are you even still talking?"

"Danno--" That one words, like a hot flared grasp for more attention, is too low, dark and antagonizingly smug.

When he shifts his hand from Danny's hip finally. In against skin, moist and hot from movement, from prolonged contact, while they were laying here. Sliding it between them, the rough moving muscles of stomach and bones of both their hips on this side catching on his wrist and forearm. Hardly stopping him. Barely inches even. Far less burn than a bullet.

To wrap his fingers around Danny's skin, and start pulling, as he finished, so much more taunting than ordering. "--stop talking."

[haole_cop]

How?

Because it's his natural state. He talks like a shark swims: often aimlessly, sometimes just to stay afloat and breathing, occasionally with actual purpose. These words are none of those, though; these words exist because Danny's brain is misfiring, like the last jerks of a nervous system with some sharp object embedded in it.

"Me stop talking, you are such a hypocrite --"

Before it's choked off in a tight, high whine against the grip of Steve's fingers and the helpless jerk of his hips in response. Skittering legs chase over his skin, sink into the back of his neck, claws dragging down his spine, melting away into boiling liquid silver pooling in his gut. He's got to push his head back, sink it deep into the pillow to open his eyes are far as they can go, barely half-lidded, and look up, find Steve's face, too blurry in the dark, but there, God, there. And there's not enough room, but he reaches, anyway, manages to extract one arm from that death-grip around Steve's back to slide between them. Banging knuckles, crushed between bodies, making him shift so there's some room, so he can find Steve, wrap around him, because if they're going down in flames, they're going down together.

Even if this is stupid. Even if it's against the rules. If Steve told him to turn around and leave after this, if Steve said this was it, the last time, the last night, he's really not sure he could actually listen, because fuck the rules. The rules aren't sending keening, aching pleasure up his spine and washing across the inside of his head. The rules won't do jack shit for him in this situation, except make the one other good thing on this island no longer possible.

So screw the rules.

Except none of it is really coherent. Just gasping, rasped breath, and a deep conviction that he never wants to let go, never, that the burn of his shoulder and hand brings him to life, that Steve's weight is like an anchor, that he could go flying off the island and out of sanity if it weren't for the landslide of lunatic SEAL on top of him right now.

[thebesteverseen]

He has a few seconds to relish Danny's reaction, and he's getting to be collector of these seconds. Unpredictable, so much better than any squander blip of imagination. The way his body fires back first, before his head, and especially his mouth, even realizes. Barely the pass a second between the two. But he gets to see it. When there are hips thrust up. In to his hand. Sending them, and it, into his own body.

Shoving light into his eyes, and flickering his eyelids, eyelashes, as he holds on, through a burning sensation that is more perfect than taking a breath after breathing noxious fumes. Because this is worth it. Watching Danny fall back, push back. Shoulders and head down, but never losing momentum. Looking up at him, through the heavier and heavier shadows of night cloaking the world and this room, blown wide open.

God. Gorgeous is not even the word. Gorgeous is like a toddler only just discovering finger paints and motor coordination. And Danny, and this look on his face. This heavy lidded desperate need to find his face, that even when the need for other things doesn't release him, he relaxed, his face does, just a tick, and somehow Steve can see it. Like the world orients on him. There is no word for it. Nothing big enough, true enough, right enough.

Nothing that explains Danny Williams needs only a second, only to catch his eyes, and that scoops out, with less than a breath, every single bit of his insides. Every single bit of who he is and how he exists, flattened without the ability to bring it back, without the damn to care, if he can just fall into this, see this, and never need to see anything else, again. It'd be fine. Just this. Just Danny.

Which is all the seconds he has before Danny hand is slamming into his, blunt nails and solid knuckles, finding room where there isn't, shoving him, so he has to pull back, make room, can't even pretend he doesn't want it, even when he knows thinking will turn into the ash and spray left in the air after a mass detonation. Unable to collect or settle or have any direction. The way the world winnows, and his lungs collapse, and, even expecting it, Steve groans.

The sound torn out through gritted teeth, and a locked jaw, and his weight throws itself, toward the hand still bracing himself, burning down the muscles. The world counting down into such small windows suddenly. The burn in the muscles of his forearm. The one supporting him, even when he's pretty sure his chin just found Danny's shoulder and his face a pillow, or a pile of the forgotten sheet. The other one only ratcheting to go faster, pull more friction, shove every breaker.

Because the only other point of focus is slamming at his entire equilibrium. Not threatening to drag the carpet, already pulling it. Because the world is already tilting and he knows how little of his fingers, finger tips, nails are left holding on after dragging through a maddening, slow, ebbing, lead up. Because it should all be impossible. Today. Ever. Again, tonight.

But the edge of the world is melting, already, and he can't even pretend he cares about anything. Even holding back.

[haole_cop]

It's all contracting. The whole world. To aching stomach muscles, bunching and releasing. To burning lungs. To his hand, dragging up and down, with no finesse and not subtlety, because it's not about teasing Steve into a tottering tip over the edge, it's about throwing the whole train off the cliffside and watching it burn. While everything left of him has coalesced into a molten, burning ball spinning in the lowest part of his gut, spitting fire at every lift and fall of Steve's hand, fingers on every nerve, wrapping the world in heat and flame.

He'll never last. No matter what he says about not being sixteen anymore, and, God, he wishes he were, almost. To try everything for the first time. To experience it all like it's brand new, without the worries, without the fear or the clinging uncertainty.

Like this. When nothing else exists in the world except Steve. Danny's hand slipping, losing purchase on his sweat-slick back, fingers scrabbling to hold on. Steve's face buried close to his shoulder, his neck, breath gusting hard against Danny's skin, flushed and shiny. The curve of Steve's shoulder bare with faint light from the windows, a stark line, moving like a wave. Power and desperation. And Steve. Collapsing against him, pushing through, digging them both deeper, harder. A low whine has started somewhere in Danny's ears, rusted-out, a weird hum that he would absolutely find incredibly unnerving if it weren't for the fact that the room is starting to splinter around him, like Steve's taking a hammer to a wall of mirrors.

"Come on," he says, low. Says. Gasps. Swears. "Come on, babe, like that."

Shaking at the seams like an old car hitting ninety on the freeway. Gorgeous chrysanthemum fireworks blowing his head to bits, but, God, it's spectacular, Steve is, Steve is spectacular, Danny could be lost on the way moonlight plays across his skin and darkens his tattoos if he weren't so entirely lost already. Gone without a map, or compass, or any desire to ever be found.

[thebesteverseen]

The world keeps narrowing, into the rush of heat, and the slap of skin. Furious pumping of his heart trying to leave his chest, his hand on Danny's skin. The bump of knuckles that doesn't even stop or slow down anyone at this point. The insane feeling like absolutely nothing could at this point. The roof could cave in, and the walls could fall out and the second floor could go crashing into the first, destroying more the fifty years of memories and mementos, and that still wouldn't be enough.

The memories are beyond fucked at this point anyway. The only thing that doesn't feel like it's taken it, with some glass and or diamond sharp edged object, beaten into him in every profane and possible fashion, is this. This thing. Beating, wild and terrifyingly untamable, even more under Danny's hands, on his skin, than it ever was before. Untempered. Tangled and messy and wrong and so right the whole world has gone away entirely, and Danny is all that's left.

All that's good in the world. Fingers pummeling his brain. Voice shoving fire down his ears, into his throat. When it feels like getting hit with a wrecking ball somewhere. Those so few words. Urged and dragged, and that word, that shouldn't even feel different. It falls out of Danny's mouth all the time. But not like this. Not low and as encouraging it is desperate pushing. As it falls down, and in, possessive. This thing only Danny calls him.

Taunting. Teasing. Affectionate. Rolled over into this. Like it's his. This word. This name. Steve.

Which slaps something in Steve like arctic water. Too big, and too overwhelming. Painful and jagged and wanted.

Desperately. Brokenly. So huge it feels like it does. Trip the last alarm. Shatter the windows. Take the roof, and the walls and the floor and the bed. And everything else. A domino reaction starting at the base of his spine like a chain of bomb. Slamming through him suddenly. Shoving him beyond sight and sound, into something so good it causes his muscles to all sieze before they start shaking, so far from control, so far from attached.

[haole_cop]

Steve goes like a mountain shaking off a landslide, tumbling into shudders that shake the whole bed, legs stuttering against the floor, and Danny's hand is suddenly slick with thin, sticky wetness, and that's it, all it takes, for him to come loose and go slamming right through the floor after him.

Like the world is coming apart. Some tornado ripping up the house and sending them spinning through engulfing chaos, and Danny doesn't care, doesn't care about anything except the angry scrape of his breath and Steve's hand, hot and heavy and so good it hurts.

"Fuck, Stev --"

A loving punch to the gut, doubling him up, shaking him loose until he feels like change in a pocket. Muscles so tight they feel about to split, shear right off bone, before everything melts: bed, air, body, thought. And explodes, soundlessly, face muffled against Steve's neck, sounds muffled against Steve's skin, body convulsing hard as if he's in the middle of a thirty floor drop.




Before the door slams. And the fist in his stomach dissolves into warm gold bliss, soothing muscles, dropping joints, leaving him fallen apart, made out of Jell-O with a head full of fluff and distant sirens. Flattened as a penny on a train track.

When everything feels like it creaks, as he pushes back, tugging his hand free and wiping it half-heartedly on the sheet, before letting out a breath that feels like it takes every ounce of strength or energy with it.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny is, of course, the first thought he recognizes as a thought after the world crumples in on him.

If you can call it thought. It might be trained recognition of movement, awareness badgered into a psyche beyond liminal weakness, enough to know there's a jack knife of movement under him. Rapid and necessary, making him try to find the nerve ending that involve his hand, and just try to beat his head against the wall suffocating it with cotton fluff, thicker and denser than cement, and not let go. Not uncurl his fingers in the slightest until Danny is making all that noise into his shoulder.

When the absent, giddy thought trickling up, then, is that he loves that. He loves Danny's stupid mouth, and that he'll never be quiet, not if you paid off Grace's whole future. He's incapable. Swear his name, and then all those tiniest sound, escaping the pressure on his skin, where most of it is getting trapped and lost. Soaking into him. All of that fire and brimstone and sheer sound that is Danny Williams, losing it. Softening in the curl of his fist, soaking into the fallen wall of his body, like Steve won't hear him.

Danny'd never be quiet enough for this to have happened almost any other time in his life. Which somehow drags enough muscle control back into his face that he's smiling. Stupidly. Grateful for that, too. He'd never want Danny in any other way, anything other than all of him. All of this. Him, and his endless movements that are jerking to a slow still, heavy breathe still racing down, and all those sounds kicked beyond any control except the desperate urge to smother them on Steve's skin.

Steve tips himself, a little, more toward the bed. So his side ends up there, even if it doesn't actually move him away. It's somewhere else to collapse like his bones are made of twine, bowing at even the faint attempts at something smooth and easy. Half a foot. Maybe. Enough to find the sheet, slide part of himself against it, still against Danny. Chest still heaving, heart barely giving up the mad dash gallop that is tremoring every limb, throbbing at every pulse point.

How even through that, it's not where his head falls or body settles, but the way his fingers hook on Danny's far side, loose and weighted with anvils in each finger tip, the feel of Danny's ribs, the muscles there, the heavy rise and fall of breathing, so warm and solid and real, that feels like it tethers him enough to breathe and let go, again.

[haole_cop]

His eyes have fallen closed, a breath out through his nose, gentle and almost relieved, before he blinks those eyes open, slightly, peers down through eyelashes at the arm lying across his stomach, Steve's hip still hitched close to his, Steve's stomach and chest still pressed to Danny's side. Long leg still heavy on Danny's. He's like a log in the middle of a backcountry road: passive, but impossible to move.

Which suits Danny fine. Another breath, deeply in and let out in a way that could almost be a sigh, accompanied by a low, contented rumble of a noise deep in his throat, while his hand slides up over the back of Steve's, thumb rubbing gentle against the delicate bones of Steve's wrist as it's being slid over, palm and fingers coasting slowly, loose but deliberate, up to his forearm, where they come to rest. Fingers following the curve of muscle, tips resting gently.

His other arm is caught somewhere under Steve's side, and he tugs it free without bothering to move the rest of himself, moving slow, caught in some frame by frame progression or air that's turned inexplicably to molasses. Shifting just enough to push that arm back, through what little space lives between Steve's neck and the bed. Curling haphazardly up, so his fingers find the back of Steve's shoulder, and he can tip his head that way, towards the dip Steve's head makes in the pillow or whatever this is.

It's a good thing he feels like he's been punched in the head, because the things he would say if he could talk are absolutely not going to fly.

But he wants them, anyway. Some part of him. (Maybe all of him.) Wants to tuck Steve close and mumble words into his hair, just nonsense things, wants to call him Steve or babe or even McGarrett just to see what the reaction would be. Tease him about being a Neanderthal and how Danny's pretty sure Steve actually might have hit him over the head with a club, that seems like his style. Wants to point out his beautiful in this light, before disagreeing with himself and admitting Steve's beautiful all the time, achingly so, enough that Danny can't concentrate, when Steve's slipping up under his skin like a needle full of sunlight.

How maybe this island isn't so bad, when Steve's on it. How maybe most places wouldn't be so bad, if Steve were there, but Danny doesn't want to leave and find out because he never wants to leave this spot, never wants to be further away than right now.

Wants to run the tip of his thumb along the sweat-damp line of Steve's hair. To cup his whole hand around the back of Steve's head and cradle him close. Which is more absurd than ever. To want to protect the Navy SEAL, the officer, the leader of their task force, who is a force of nature and a force for justice and who definitely doesn't need Danny trying to keep him close and safe but, hey, Danny doesn't try to explain it, it is what it is. Like a hand on Steve's arm and another one his shoulder could fend the world away.

When what he really wants to say is don't go. When all he really wants is to be allowed to stay. And stay.

[thebesteverseen]

Everything feels raw, turned inside out, and smacked down, like it rolls out and out and out and out forever. Except there are the hard edges of walls he figures out now and then. The faint stabbing pain on his right is an annoyance he does his best to tune out first, while there are fingers suddenly. Brushing against the thin stretch of skin over bones, up the muscles of his arm, everything so briefly sensitive, it feels like he could count the hairs Danny's hand drags across.

He's breathing through it, thick, slow breaths. Wondering errantly if his fingers will find their way up further. That Danny hasn't yet actually done what a lot of people end up doing, tracing their fingers against skin on his biceps under some assumptive comprehension like he's suddenly out, docile, unaware.

Not that Danny is anything, or this situation is anything, like anything that came before it.

Or Danny of all people would assume much about him that isn't true at this point.





Well. Except that he would sleep with Cath.



But, he's just. He can push that away. Somewhere else. While he's lifting his head a little and shifting to help Danny get out from having his arm pinned. Thinking fuzzily of shoving that whole idea in some other closet, and finding the other words from tonight. Other more important words. Than almost kissing Cath, almost making Danny right, or Danny's face, or Cath's. All the other words. All the other words tattooed on the spooled out feeling in his head, in his skin.

Angry, or quiet, or teasing. Words he knows Danny meant just as much as his assumption, as his apology. About him, about the rules.

Steve tipped his head a little when the hand settled on his shoulder, his own fingers tightening briefly on Danny's skin in response. He won't be able to fall asleep like this for long, half fallen over Danny, low enough if he tipped his face more down and to the right he'd find Danny's shoulder. Right there. Maybe less than an inch or two away. He won't fit if he stretches his legs.

But he doesn't need to worry about that. About getting untangled of moving yet. Not when all Danny does is shift those few things and settle. Letting out another deep breath, after amusingly sort of capturing his back, shoulder, arm. If his head down through his throat didn't feel like it was growing a field of cotton, he'd make a comment about how there's no need to capture him. He's right here still. Going nowhere.

Every cell weighted down with steel balls. But it really doesn't get that far because he is. There's just the smallest noise.

An amused snort of sound. Or means to be. It's more a breathy wuffled sound in the slow breath released right then.
At the same second as he does shift a little. His chin, and his cheek, and his mouth, brushing Danny's shoulder.

[haole_cop]

That tiny sound, as much a whuff as a laugh, makes Danny's mouth twitch at the corners, even as his eyes slide back shut. They feel so heavy, like there are anvils on his eyelids, and his head is as mushy as if he's being smothered in a down comforter.

Which don't seem to exist on Hawaii, but they're one of the things he misses most. Light, comfy, cozy. Perfect for curling up in against the cold, ideal with shared body heat.

He would suffocate under one here, though.

"Shut up and go to sleep, you monster."

Mumbled low and tired, despite the thumb moving idly along the under curve of Steve's forearm, despite the way he turns his head towards Steve, shoulder shifting under the faint brush of stubbled cheek and soft mouth. Even now, unable to keep from listing towards him, as if this mattress were actually a hammock.

It feels like one. He can actually feel the sway back and forth, the slight catch at each lift, as gravity and the world do their best to reassert themselves on him while he is just floating, completely languid.

With a jaw-cracking yawn, that squeezes his eyes even further, before he's snuffling and looking for a good spot in the pillow, searching out cool cloth against his still-hot cheek. Everything's cooling down, but Steve is a furnace and it's still Hawaii, still has to be above eighty out there, and it might still be sort of early, but what the hell. Steve gets up at the ass-end of dawn anyway, and Danny could use the extra shut-eye after the deficit last week and last night.

He just won't look all that closely at the fact that trying to sleep without Steve last night was an exercise in just how well acquainted he could manage to get with insomnia despite one night's worth of sleep in three.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve's eyes opened, again, at the insult. Head shifting barely, enough he can see that Danny's eyes are close. Yawning and rubbing against his pillow. The one that's going to smell like him. Again. Along with the sheets and the blankets. Until he has to throw them in the wash, again. Because they are nothing if not increasing the necessity for the sheets needing a wash every time this happens.

A problem he hasn't had with this kind of frequency in an incredibly long time. You know as often as that other thing.

The one marked almost never on it. Or never. Where he said those words to Danny, careful and deliberate.

I want you. Looking into his eyes, willing him to understand. Only you.

It might have been for a bigger reason, with far more attached to it, then. Danny still tripping over his own feet, and Steve suddenly so angry now that the floor was still there and Cath was long gone, leaving only the threat of repercussions to come. When even Danny isn't looking at him, as he keeps breathing in and out, and the words are there. Playing in his head, staring at him across this few bare inches of darkness.

They're still here. Even after how Danny showed up, and this slam through the conversation both of them hadn't touched, that went. Well. It went. And they're still here. Spent and exhausted on his bed, heavy breaths mixed with the sound of the ocean. Mixed with the way Danny's thumb is stroke his skin, arms and legs still wrapped up, crossing over, claiming. Like it's own set of words, trying to drag him under, make him think less.

Except the only thought holding. When he's looking Danny. Is still the same. Even just for himself.

Even with the bullshit and the bureaucratic tape. He wants Danny. Only Danny. Still.

Steve shifted inward, on Danny's roll toward the center of the bed. Totally a strategic land grab. Sliding up Danny's arm and shoulder more, until his forehead pressed toward Danny's neck. He didn't care about the whole falling asleep thing, or the moving, or stretching out or not stretching out. He just wanted to breathe him in and hold through that insane thought. This one. Where he's still here somehow, too.

Burying his face against shoulder and throat and the top of Danny's chest briefly. More like he was hiding from a great annoyance, with the faintly disgruntled noise that comes out, gets shoved out on purpose. The one that has nothing to do with the breath he breathes in through his nose. Warm, sweat and musk and sex, the faintest hints of shampoo from his hair still, and so Danny it makes his stomach ache.

Even if he used the second to say, "Maybe I could if someone wasn't still talking."

[haole_cop]

Steve shifts, like sand, rolling closer to bury his face in the crook of Danny's neck, making Danny's eyes blink open, and his hand lift, slightly, from Steve's shoulder. Hovering with brief uncertainty before moving up, towards the nape of his neck, the back of his head. Fingers straying into his hairline.

With Steve huffing grumpy aggravation into his skin, but it doesn't feel like actual exasperation. Not after Steve moved closer, took up more of Danny's space, skin, mind, everything. Purposefully. Not when Danny can feel the deep breath he's taking. Like he's trying to, what. Imprint this on his memory. The way Danny is, when his head presses deeper into the pillow and makes a whispering noise against the cloth as he presses nose and mouth lightly into Steve's hair, breathes. Deep and clarifying. Smelling shampoo, salt, sweat, Steve. Clean and warm. Sunshine. And no gunpowder. No strange mix of the beach and a fight.

Just Steve. Pressed against him, tucked into the curve of shoulder and neck and not looking like he plans on moving anytime soon.

"That was pre-emptive. And, see? Obviously necessary."

It sounds normal, despite the taut pressure in his chest, lacing him up against unstoppable expansion. Steve's on him like a blanket, like this isn't Steve's own bed, that he presumably takes up every night. Long heavy leg, long heavy arm, still proprietary over Danny's stomach, fingers curling under ribs, as if Danny could, or would, possibly, try to move.

They're pretty well past that. The part where sex with the ability to leave afterwards was still possible. He's not sure it was ever an option, not after the first day, falling asleep here, drenched in sunshine and exhausted to the core, still buzzing with the insanity of what they'd done.

This isn't like that. But they blazed right past that step, like they burned past others. Steps that never existed at all, that they can't go back to, because what would be the point? Even if all it's doing is shunting them faster and faster to some inevitable end, he'd never be able to look back, wish they'd started slower, wish they'd taken it easy. Nothing's ever been easy with him and Steve -- not like that. It's easy like breathing. Easy like gravity. Not easy like learning to walk.

There's a little voice in his head that sounds uncannily and unnervingly like Steve that says why walk when you can run?

Headlong into disaster, maybe, but he's going into it with his eyes open.

Well. In a matter of speaking, seeing as they are currently closing once more, even as he brushes his mouth across Steve's hair, tired and feeling expansive, wanting to be generous, wanting to give him something, anything, whatever he wants. The world has, he thinks, done enough taking from Steve. It's time to turn it around.

Lower. Quiet and soft, murmured into his hair. Sleepy, and fond. "Get some sleep, babe."

It's popping up more and more often these days, and it's sounding more and more like an actual endearment, but he can't care right now. Not when they're rocking to sleep, to a rhythm slowing with his breath and pulse, and a waiting, silent world.

[thebesteverseen]

He could, even would, move, if Danny was going to go. And maybe that was part of it, rolling over into him. Taking everything possible from this second. Especially when Danny goes still, hand lifting and staying somewhere behind him. The second of that causing a faint tension in his shoulders, his spine, when he's certain Danny might be done. Until his hand settles, carefully, uncertainly.

Finger tips in his hair, palm resting against his spine, his neck, the back of his head. All places people do not touch him. Places that serve to remind him how easily the human body can be hammered and bowled over. Strikes for an elbow, the flat of a hand, a hand solid object. But those thoughts barely register, like blurry photographs when he's feeling the weight of Danny's fingers. And the unexpected, turn of his head, Danny pressing his face into his hair.

Making it impossible to breathe. Not hard. Impossible. Like all the air evaporated for that breath he can hear Danny take.

Lips shifting his hair, breath and sound stirring it, pressing against his skin, when Danny's talking again.
Following it up with something so soft Steve is dumb struck trying to figure out if it was a kiss.

Before even softer words fall out of Danny's mouth, getting caught in his head and his ears and his chest. Soft and sleepy, a little pushing, a little affectionate. And then that word. That word that makes his heart flounder and spasm a little, like a startled school of fish at an unexpected diver. Having no idea which way to go and going everywhere at once. On that tone, and those words.

Leaving him swallowing, still without a breath to pull in, and shaking his head. Uncertain if the last is at Danny, or himself, or this crazy impossible situation they've gotten themselves into, can't, won't, aren't getting themselves out of, that won't magically neaten itself up. But how that tone, that word, makes him shove at all of it. A few more days, hours, minutes, seconds. Anything.

Making him whisper, against Danny's neck and shoulder, "Shhh." A quiet, close shushing, that sounds barely frustrated at all. Like he's not tugging Danny a little closer, a little more under and against him, with that hand on his side. Like Danny is the one who's obviously besieged by this position, by all this, being held close by the force of a weight stronger than gravity. Not him, and not the whole point that he's keeping his eyes closed, breathing in, catching Danny's heartbeat against his own shoulder, his chest.

Not thinking about how even if he does -- fall asleep; babe -- he'll wake up and have to move. In half an hour, an hour, whenever he tries to straighten up and shift. But it isn't now, and until it is, he's just going to sink in here. To the soft slowing breath of Danny against his hair. Hand warm on his neck, against his head, the sheets still learning to breathe and give up fighting it all until morning, or an hour.

Whenever. Whatever. The only thing that matters right now is Danny, right here, and the soft slow in and out, in and out.