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]

"No. Wrong. Just because you wear them everywhere does not mean that they are actually versatile. It's just that you happen to have a badge and a gun and people are inclined to let you come in anyway. They are not versatile. The word you're looking for is practical, which, for you, is a good thing, considering the amount of times you jump onto or off moving vehicles or rooftops on a weekly basis."

Steve doesn't look like he's paying attention, which, fair enough. Danny is on this particular rant at least once a week, maybe more often. But Steve is glancing at him, and then down to the hand spread over his chest, and back up again, and he's got this ridiculous, absurd, wide smile that makes Danny feel like he's been cracked against a countertop like an egg and now this gooey, messy center is getting everywhere.

Eyes flicking down to look at his own fingers, because Steve is giving him a look that's amused and knowing and a little expectant all at once, like he's waiting for Danny to catch on to what he's doing.

So Danny looks. He sees his hand spread against the thin cotton of Steve's shirt, arm bent and laying comfortably on Steve's chest and stomach. Fingers, thick and blunt and usually all too busy getting in someone's face, good on a gun, not always delicate or careful enough for other things. Spread wide, like he can take ownership of a few inches of Steve's skin, never mind the fact that he's lying on top of him, edged a little towards the back of the couch. "What?"

Nudging towards challenging, with a creasing smile at the corner of his eyes. A little lazy, a little lidded, as his other arm moves, curls loose against the armrest Steve's head is leaning against. Fingers barely lifting, just to tap against his chest like a reminder. "You don't like it?"

Not a chance. Not when Steve is looking at him like that. Not when Steve's fingers are still toying with the seam of his jeans, and Steve is smiling at him like there is nothing wrong with this picture at all.

[thebesteverseen]

When did this happen? When exactly did everything become just barely edging toward breathable, again?

Not this second, not Danny touching him. Being touched at all. When it had taken Cath and he almost the better part of that whole first afternoon and evening to realize they could still rag on each other, like normal. With occasional touches, but she still let him be. Was careful. Not to get too much in his face, or too close, when she was dragging him out of his head, again. For the newest second dozenth time.

Now. There's Danny. Laying out on him, warm and heavy, drug down there by him, like a blanket too small to actually cover him. Smile tugging even more free as he's looking at his own hands on Steve's chest. Not the smallest bit wary of Steve, or Steve's need for space, or Steve's ability to flip sometimes, too sharp, too short, too reactive, on a dime. And, God, how much he doesn't want that.

Almost wants to crush Danny, and his surprised smile, to him briefly. Just to blot out the thought he might stop. Or have to.

Danny who looks back up, no less blinding on that smile going from surprise into something far more smug and unconcerned, than when he looked down. The light catching in his hair as he moves. An arm of his moving to brace on the arm of the couch beside Steve's head, that he only glanced to for a quarter of a second. Habit.

An arm blocking in, around him, and a finger poking his ribs, muscle, the next second. Danny asking that question.

When it's beating in the hollow space of Steve's throat. The want to kiss this sudden brilliance off Danny, again. Slow, smug, and warm, rolling off of him like the sun. Like no one told him it already wen down and it's night time. It's living in Danny's face, and his eyes. Making Steve so aware. A minute. Two. Obviously, that's too long. Already. Except there's that finger making a point still, along with those eyes and words.

He shrugs wide shoulders, eye widening in approximation innocence and unexpected defense so transparent he's not even trying. "I didn't say anything." Which he didn't. Which has nothing on saying he didn't start anything. Especially, when he's sliding his hands, both of them, into the pockets of Danny's jeans, and pulling him in one smooth, easy movement, higher closer, voice all too amused. "If I said something it'd be more like this--"

Which pauses, when he decides Danny's close enough, and still not going to accidentally elbow him or smack him in the face flailing those arms and hands with a mind of their own. Until he can catch Danny's eyes, even in the middle of reacting to being manhandled, and just let his voice drop. Bottom of the barrel, eyes turning completely world-ending serious, at the drop of a pin, and focusing only on Danny's eyes, leaning up until the tip and then side of his nose brushed faintly against Danny's.

Until his chest ached, like mad for at least two different reasons, and it dropped nothing like a request. "Kiss me."

[haole_cop]

No, he didn't say anything. Steve rarely says anything when he's getting Danny started; he doesn't need more than a look, a shift of expression, a lift of eyebrows. It's a skill, really. Rendering entire arguments down to the flicker of one corner of his mouth, or the way he sets his shoulders.

Just like he didn't say anything now. Unnecessary, when that one look, down to Danny's hand and back again, said everything. Really, Danno? mixed in with pleased self-satisfaction, like he's won, somehow, by Danny giving in and spreading fingers wide and proprietary over his chest. Like he doesn't give a damn that Danny's trying to own him. Like that was his plan all along.

And he doesn't say much now, either, smug, gloating, eyes wide and unconvincingly innocent, because he can't possibly not know what Danny's talking about, or not know that he's working Danny over like one of those little wind-up toys that goes trundling into walls, unable to stop once they've started. Like he doesn't know he's irresistible. The definition of bedroom eyes, lazy-lidded and deliberate, voice low and quiet, the kind of intimate that makes Danny shiver just to hear scraping a delicate path into his head and narrowing straight into his chest.

When Steve has got to be a fever dream. There's no way. He shouldn't be real. Shouldn't be this beautiful. Shouldn't be lying under Danny, wanting Danny's hands on him, leaning up to brush the tip of his nose, his cheek, breath soft against Danny's mouth. Shouldn't be saying those words. Two words. Nearly an order. Just hearing them dropped low and meaningful against his mouth makes a low groan start in his chest, and it's like a seatbelt snapping during a crash. The way his fingers sink into Steve's hair. How he can't do anything but obey, find Steve's mouth so close to his, breath irregular and shallow.

None of it should be happening to him. Steve is. Steve is perfect. In so many ways. Maybe the single most beautiful person Danny's ever seen, in a way that is so completely different from Rachel's precise loveliness that he can't even compare the two. Definitely the best. In ways he never sees or considers important. It's who he is: honor, duty, loyalty. Self-sacrificial in a way that drives Danny crazy, sends his blood pressure sky-rocketing, because Steve never sees it. Himself. Everything he is. So much more than the SEAL on the resume, the best they've got.

There's no way to fight those words, so he does. Lets himself be slid up further onto him, hand dropping from chest to sneak under the hem of his shirt, fingers in his hair, heart dizzy and pounding. Kiss him.

Like he could do anything else.

[thebesteverseen]

It's perfect. That second Danny almost seems to stop breathing after the words come out. Barely a second, maybe a half second, before the movement, even if it requires less than half an inch of space covered, hits him like a high swell. First this groan Steve can't even label, but it's flinging itself through Danny's chest, like it could hit him solid. Like the sound alone isn't trying to liquify Steve's stomach.

Before Danny's mouth against him. Feverous in the same rush that sends fingers into his hair and suddenly on to his stomach. Causing a sound to choke its way up, fingers sinking into denim tight. Like for a second he can only hold on. Like he might not have been sure if Danny would take it as a joke or a dictate, an explanation, or the want burning through every single part of him. How could anyone resist this? Danny.

How did he get this? How did Rachel walk away, twice, knowing he loved her beyond slight or mistake, and how did Gabby ever let Danny leave, knowing him how she must have after all these months? How did this fall into his hands? Except that's such a passive thought. Fall. When Danny's fingers are tightening in his hair, pulling him closer, like Steve isn't curling toward this already, and rough, calluses on fingers brushing hard, against the taut muscles of his stomach, his side. And it feels like fire is waking up under each of those.

Waking up. Exploding alive, and awake. Like it never got put out. Like it was just waiting there through all these hours.

He can't say there isn't anything passive about Danny, but there doesn't feel like there is right now. No. Not at all. Not even slightly. When the only thing in him is to answer. Surges back like a domino explosion, caused by the first. Mouth opening under Danny's touch, but pushing up, into him forceful, wanting. His. That sound that Danny made, and this mouth, the taste of Danny, warm and wet and more necessary than air that he's taking from Danny, denying Danny access to.

The fingers finding him, that drag Steve's like a magnet into motion, in a rapid quick fire movement from those pockets, and up Danny's back. Pushing his shirt up with it. The skin of his back. Wide, and firm, and soft under wide-spread hands that coming up that expanse, warm, solid, fingertips dipping into muscle. Holding him down, close, like close will never be close enough. like he doesn't even know.

Like he could feel every ounce of all that energy and movement all composing Danny, making him three times bigger than he ever actually is. Filling all that space. Like he could drown Danny in himself. In this fire he's already been set on and is feeding right back to where it came from.

[haole_cop]

Steve says kiss me but it isn't like Steve isn't an agent of his own destruction, here, because he's pushing up, digging hands under Danny's t-shirt and making Danny feel like the damn thing could just die, burn right off his body so there's no possible interruption between fingers making their way and his skin. So scorching hot he can't believe the cloth isn't smoking, but then, he's more focused on Steve's anyway. Steve's damn shirt, which is catching under Danny's torso and pinioning his wrist, his arm, keeping it from being able to snake up under fabric the way he suddenly needs to, like the rest of Steve might have disappeared when he wasn't looking. Like there might not be hot smooth skin and firm muscle and the ragged pattern of Steve's breath pushing up and down.

He has to push himself up to free it, but he's pushing against Steve's hands, and Steve's hands are holding him down. Flattening against his back, sweeping up along trapezius to shoulderblades, moving like a forest fire, burning Danny down. And it's so ridiculous. That he is here, and not Cath. That Steve wants him, only him. Words hammering in his temples, beating in his blood.

Nobody has ever wanted only him. Rachel picked Stan, twice. He doesn't. He never. And he shouldn't, now, but Steve keeps opening this door and shoving him through and it turns out this door has been open for a while and he just never saw it. But how could he have missed it, this. How could he have never noticed, all the times they've been together, all the times he's reached out to touch him. Pats on the stomach. On the back. Fingers wrapping around his wrist. Every time he hated Steve's attention being taken away, and denied it as being something else, a character judgment, not jealousy.

How had he never burned his fingers on Steve's skin. How had he spent two years with him, and never gotten a clue until he was gone?

There's no excuse. Even if he didn't feel this. It's too pervasive, everywhere, packed into the empty space of his lungs and making breathing impossible. In the sudden sharp sense of loss, hating any space, even an inch he might be able to force in order to push his hand further up under cloth, towards Steve's chest, thumb rubbing over the nub of a nipple. He can't breathe, but who needs air when Steve's mouth is stealing it away, when Steve's hands would set it all on fire anyway?

[thebesteverseen]

The muscles of his stomach crumple, dig inward, fast and tight. Fingertips, and short, blunted, regimental nails, digging into muscles on Danny's back, even when the rest of him arches up into Danny's fingers rubbing against him, like Danny slammed past sensitive into tapping Steve with an electric current. Dragging a rough, half shuddered, gasp of a breath, nearly a groan from Steve's mouth.

There were going to be other words. A joke, that was the point. Questions. He could have drug out more details. About Grace. That was. Except it's dying on breathing in only fumes. Tasting only Danny. Hearing only his heavy, rushed breath. Because that can't be air. The rest of it falling, like a file. Out of his hand, off his lap. Filling with Danny's hands, and Danny's mouth, and how damn close he is, and how insanely not close enough it feels still. Suddenly. Always.

Danny was right to ask. How had he ever made it the whole year. If he'd known it was like this he never would have made it, couldn't make it again. Knowing what it felt like to really know what it meant saying Danny's hands got everywhere. Marking him hotter, harder, deeper that any of the dozens of needles for his ink.

Lasting so much longer, hooks in his skin, that became a low grade dull throbbing ache when this was gone.

He didn't want to think what it would be like if Danny suddenly wasn't here, on the island at all.

If Danny was gone. More gone than two feet outside that door. Mainlanded in the center of a desert. Following the one thing Danny could never leave behind. No one should ever ask Danny to leave behind. Steve couldn't believe Rachel could even consider Danny wouldn't look at, dig his heels in and start screaming. It was the one thing you didn't touch. The one thing as integral and irremovable as those blue eyes, and that gold hair, as the hands tracking his body.

Grace. Nothing in the world mattered or stood in the way between Danny and Grace. Not any location. Not any person. Not Rachel. Not Stan. Not his divorce. Not a paradise island, only Danny could hate. Because he could. He could hate everything that wasn't Grace when he needed to. And, not Steve. Who wasn't ever going to ask, but could feel it spreading out. Under the fire. Like that look on the lawn.

So small and sudden and now in comparison. So much another reason that other thing couldn't ever happen. Wouldn't.

But it doesn't stop him now. Maybe it should. Maybe it's the whole reason to slow down, back off, step out now. Make it easier. On who he doesn't know. Danny. Himself. But he can't. He can't help that the whole idea makes him dig in more, arch up into Danny's touch harder. Like it's limited, like he needs it to burn him forever as much as it just is every single time.

Not for Cath. Not for Rachel and Stan. When a bubble of air is stealing into his head, against the flood and the fire, and he's finding the bottom of Danny's shirt. That rumpled pile of wrinkled he keeps shoving up so he can touch more. Touch all of Danny, here. Still here. He didn't leave, when he ran out. Still touch those words he'd said, about wanting to be with him. Even now. Even with all of this.

Their jobs and the team and Cath, and whatever is going to happen with his contesting. One of those should make it impossible enough to stop. All of them should be like a god damn sign they should have pulled over miles ago. Except they aren't. Except they can't. Except this keeps happening. When Steve's trying to tug at Danny's shirt, against his shoulders, and he doesn't even want Danny to stop touching him. Wants the shirt will wise up and just dissolve, so he can have both.

Danny's skin and Danny touching him, the way it all goes to his head, the way it makes nothing else matter. Nothing but this.

[haole_cop]

He could make some stupid point about how if Steve hadn't liked where his hand was before, he must really hate it now, but then Steve arches up into his touch like a solid wave, like the shoreline fighting back against waves, all strength and no grace. Not for this, even if there's some kind of almost poetry in the way his muscles flex and relax, sliding under tan skin, the perfect deliberation of a body that is always in perfect control. Danny's seen it. Knows it. Has seen Steve balance on a board, launch himself into the air for a tackle, cut through the water. Half fish, half bruiser. The strangest mix of precision and brutality he's ever seen. Capable of taking a man out with three or four lightning-quick hits, as well as sparring, full-body and rapid, with multiple opponents. Sometimes going for the quick and dirty route.

Hell. Even before all of this, it's not like Danny didn't know Steve's body in motion was a beautiful thing. It was just academic. Appreciation. Like appreciating art, or a nice car, or a beautiful woman.

But now. Under his hands? That body edges towards the thin and ragged line of snapped control. Which is crazy. Steve always knows what he's doing. But the way his hands move over Danny's back is thoughtless, the way he pushes up into Danny's body instinctual. It's a heady, crazy thought, how he wants to see Steve fall apart into reflex and reaction, no room for thought or control. Heady, crazy, to think that he could. Can.

Only Steve is shoving at his shirt and it's bunching up uncomfortably under his arms, at the back of his neck, starting to drag against his stomach, and, you know, he really sort of hates this shirt right now. The shirt, and the jeans, and everything Steve is wearing, too, which is nuts. They were just talking. Everything was just quiet, and now it is all on fire and the house is burning down around them.

And it's making him laugh. A stupid, relieved, breathless laugh, that he ducks into the curve of Steve's neck, hand pausing against Steve's skin, body pausing before the sudden headlong dive that he knows will take his brain and punt it into the ocean, tie his willpower up in a dark room and leave it there.

Pushing himself up, to look down at Steve, and he can't help the smile, this stupid brilliant smile tugging at lips and ribs and spreading him wide.

"You have something against my shirt, now?"

[thebesteverseen]

He doesn't exactly know how it happens. It's almost disorienting in it's fastness. This dazzlingly bright, giddy smile smacks itself across Danny's mouth in front of his eyes, when that mouth is not still trying to pull the bottom of his spine out through his tongue, and then suddenly, that smile and Danny's face, and this bubble of soft laughter is being smothered into his neck.

There's blonde hair catching on his stubble and messy across his cheek and his vision, nearly in his eyes. Air plungering itself into his lungs and veins and Danny is laughing. Soft, low, like he just got the best joke. And Steve doesn't even get to ask before he's back up, again. Back up, the echo of biting, fierce pressure still on Steve's mouth, and the warmth of breath and friction against his neck, while his eyes are back on that smile.

The stupid, brilliant smile that he hasn't a clue what or how or where exactly. Only that's it there, and bewilderingly, it's making the edges of Steve's mouth twitch. He's so damn beautiful. How can he, or the rest of the world with the chance to, not see that. More people catch it than Danny ever seems to see. Steve doesn't. But then Steve was number one on that list. Of the people who noticed and whom Danny never saw.

Until now. Now, when Danny is staring down at him with that smile, bright and teasing, calling him on being impatient and reckless and maybe having a pattern, rushing forward like every single second is a sprint. Like Steve might have a single thing to be embarrassed about where it came to this, or even Danny himself. Like Danny pushing up like this, won't make it even easier to pull the shirt off him, that he isn't already there. Five steps ahead of there.

Ahead of the curve, and off the cliff. Even though he likes these jeans and he likes Danny's weight on top of him. Even like the thoughts it inspires that are nowhere near the menu of anything they've been doing for these two weeks. But he's hardly about to apologize for that, when Danny is jeans, on top of him, with smile, making every single inch of his skin on the outside pull tight and splashing the inside of his chest with such warmth.

He lets the words come out better than warmed in the sun all day, smooth and thick and slow, drawing out every single word in the sentence with far more intention and implication than the spoken words themselves, "I have a problem with every single piece of your--" And he pauses, to give Danny's chest towards his jeans a one second look. "--clothing."

And even when the words roll on, a spark of smugness dragging his mouth crooked and leaving it there, his tone and every implication, even though the rest. "You haven't been listening at all the last two years? I made it pretty clear."

[haole_cop]

"Hey, no."

Shifting carefully, a little more weight on his knees, which leaves him straddling Steve's leg, sitting back a little, the hand at Steve's hair sliding to the couch cushion, arm straightening. "You had a problem with the ties. I have not noted any filed complaints against the rest of my wardrobe. Shoes aside."

And, okay. He's not an idiot. He knows this is like waving a red flag at a bull, lifting up a little, ragging on Steve about how much Steve hates all of his clothes, because he does. Steve always has. Hated how Danny never wanted to fit in, to look Hawaiian. How he dug in his heels and wears the haole costume with grim pride.

But he just can't pass this up. He can't. It's impossible. The very idea that there is something about him and the way he looks -- goofy face, hair nothing like Steve's easily tousled easily worn regimentally short cut, built like a triangle or a bulldog, a full seven inches shorter. There are reasons he is sometimes invisible near Steve, no matter how loud he is or how much space he takes up.

But Steve is looking at him with this bewildered, short-circuiting desire, and it goes straight to his head like a tequila shot and high-voltage chaser, makes him a little crazy, wants to see how far he can push it, how far it can go. Is this for real? That slow lazy drawl, sun-thick, slow molasses. The way Steve's eyes move down his body, trailing a sensation of hands in their wake, like he's taping off broad strokes of ownership. Of t-shirt. Jeans. Danny.

"You're a liar. Weren't you just saying you like the jeans?"

[thebesteverseen]

"On the floor, maybe," is such a lie, no matter how much truth is in it, too. No matter how hotly he can toss it out.

When Danny is seated on him. Sitting. Moved to change his posture entirely. Straddling him. Asking him to think about Danny's jeans. The denim very few feet from him, and how his hands find Danny's hips, just to help him settle at first. Incase. But how that doesn't stop his thumbs from from sliding into the creases of the denim where Danny's hips bend, stroking pads of thumbs in the bend there, or him from feeling the steady weight of all of Danny's body settling on him.

Danny's words, asking about them, to make him look at the jeans. At Danny's waist, and his straddling legs, and the tight lines and bunching areas of jean, tight, created by the way he's sitting straddled alone, his own knuckles faintly white with pressing in. Remember that he did make that comment. When it's an overwhelming feat not to move beneath him. Shift his hips. Tip up just too far up from Danny, solid weight and almost painfully unhelpful imagination, on pure impulse.

When he's not even sure he can convince himself he didn't. Doesn't. Isn't. Dragging his eyes back up to Danny, anything but easy or light, and his fingers up to find belt loops, already torn between driving fingers into them and jerking him back down or pushing up and meeting him, even now, in the middle, before possibly toppling him over the other way.

[haole_cop]

"Well, that's saucy."

God, he's giddy. He is actually light-headed from this, sitting back on his haunches, hand trailing out from under Steve's shirt to his hip, pushing that hem up enough that he can rub his thumb over the dip of muscle there. Steve's skin, always tan, now flushing darker, warm to the touch. Eyebrows lifting like he could in any way be surprised at the things that come out of Steve's mouth, but the truth is, he is. He can't get over it. Steve. Thinking those things. About him. Steve's hands on his hips, thumbs sliding into the dents of his groin, possessive. Like no one should ever get to touch Danny again. And his eyes are traveling over him like they could burn straight through cotton and denim. Making Danny acutely aware of how tight these jeans are, sitting like this, how much less room there is in them now than there was before.

Christ, it's like having a bell to ring for anything he wants in the world. Like winning the lottery. Part of him wants to see just how far he can stretch this. What would happen if he changed into jeans and t-shirt one day at the end of work in the office. If this new appreciation will extend to board shorts and work clothes. How. How can he makes sure it never stops, that Steve keeps looking at him like this, eyes going dark and dangerous in a way that makes Danny tense and brace himself, because Steve's fingers are finding holds on his beltloops and Steve has always had a suicidally short fuse when it comes to restraint.

Even if Danny's not done enjoying it yet. Looking down at Steve splayed under him, lolled against the couch, gorgeous lines of shoulders and long arms, the flat plane of his stomach and the way his shirt hangs against his frame. He wishes he had a camera but he's got no idea if it could ever do this scene any amount of justice. Not the tiniest percentage. The lift and fall of Steve's chest. Shadow of stubble. Hair mussed and rumpled from Danny's fingers, lips pinked from Danny's kisses.

And eyes on Danny. Like there's nothing else in the whole world, and he thinks there is any coming back from this. There couldn't be.

[thebesteverseen]

The muscles in his stomach are trying to turn rubbery and trembling under Danny's touch. Tightening and releasing in fast spurts against the friction of that finger. But Steve's hardly letting it slow him down, if anything it just adds to everything. More kindling tossed at a fire begging to be allowed to get out of hand already. When Steve's attack comes in three completely different parts, going two directions, all at once.

His knee under Danny lifts and bends at the crook, at the same time as those fingers in Danny's belt loops are pulling him closer, pulling the jeans tight, down the leg that is becoming a fast incline. Paying some attention, but honestly probably not enough, to where exactly Danny is keeping his knees, near the center of Steve's body. He doesn't really think about a lot of that, a lot of the time, but with Danny even more. He just trusts that it'll work, trusts Danny's got himself as much as he's got Danny.

Both of those happen at the same time as all Steve's stomach muscles roll tight, as he uses Danny's weight on him, and not the belt loops, to roll-pull half-crunch himself up to sitting. Without dislodging Danny, and ending up right a breath from him again now. Eyes dark and heavy with something almost exponentially five worlds larger than cocky and fired beyond the shadow of a single doubt with something that is far more a promise to Danny than a comment about it, when he says, "You have no idea."

Yet. He could say so much worse than a side comment about pants on a floor, if it'll make Danny keep looking giddy like that.

If it could smack that smile right off Danny's face and make the paint peel and Danny's heart race with the sudden heat in the room, just on a few words, an image dropped in his ear. In this, in this he has either none or so few doubts that are almost lost in the shuffle. What he can do, could do, has done, has not ever had complaints about. To whom, or how many. The things he could say to Danny, do to Danny, if he wanted them.

Things Danny has probably not considered existing that fall in Steve's standard operating procedure.

[haole_cop]

Maybe not no idea. Sure. He's willing to believe that there's a hell of a lot he's got no clue about, that he's coming to the realization Steve has more than a clue, this is clearly not Steve's first rodeo, and that's fostered all kinds of questions he hasn't really looked at too hard over the last, what, twelve days?

Things that haven't been detailed. Haven't been offered, or even mentioned, aside from that once, that one time in the kitchen the very first night, when he went careening off a cliff of sudden uncertainty straight into panic and Steve never brought it up again. And he has to say he's grateful. This is already moving at light-speed for him, that we're taking it slow he'd hid behind in the car losing all credibility and dissolving into meaningless fog every time they're together. Like all it takes is one touch to short-circuit his willpower and restraint, turn him into a teenager who can't even wait the thirty seconds it would take to get upstairs, let alone the minutes or hours of talking they have yet to do.

And it's not, okay, he has no intention of putting the brakes on every time. He's not stupid, he can guess how this is going to go eventually, but the idea sort of stalls in the back of his head and grips hard onto a handle of fear. Edging towards this sudden hole in his education. A gut reaction he's not proud of that caused a face he'd be happy never to see on Steve again.

But he hardly needs to know details to make some educated guesses when Steve is surging up, gripping his hips, tipping Danny forward and pushing himself close, when Steve's eyes are more black than blue and wicked, wicked, lighting a bonfire in Danny's suddenly tight chest. He doesn't need to know. Steve can do what he wants. He can say what he wants. Danny doesn't care, as long as he keeps looking at him like that, like he is the last fraying thread of Steve's sanity, like restraint is a fragile cardboard web about to be blasted out of existence by a grenade already pulled and primed.

"Give me a break, I'm new to this whole thing."

Right this second, he wishes he did know. That he knew everything. Everything he can do to Steve, everything Steve wants. That he could make more than a guess. When those words come out low and wanting and nothing like the brash, prodding argument it could be. Fingers tugging at the hem of Steve's shirt. "But getting rid of this does seem to be a good starting point, I wholeheartedly."

[thebesteverseen]

The first thing to come out of Danny's mouth nearly makes him groan, fingerings tightening on those belt loops on the still present persistent need for Danny to be closer. Still closer than every second before the second he's in now. The way Danny's tone is so long and beaten, vibrating into his lungs and belly, turning one toward steam and the other toward a puddle, and those words. Those words are still so true.

When some part of his brain somehow catches on to that, like the one person who realizes in a pack of forty or fifty, at the top of the roller coaster, how terrible the coming swoop might be, even when they've been convincing themselves it won't. But the breaks are entirely out of their control compared to everything else going on. Not that Steve is beyond control, but he can feel the grumbling whine spreading like pistons on high are jamming, through himself, at the idea of it, already.

Tightening his fingers, sharpening his gaze. On Danny, with bitten bright lips and bright blue blown eyes.

This expression, this different wanting, almost begging to be broken open expression, he keeps finding on Danny's face. Never knew what looked like before. Never wants to not be seeing it. Again and again and again. When he can drag this out, make Danny voice go low and warm and asking him, so clearly, to follow through as his threats and promises. And the last thing Steve wants is to remember.

That it's so true. That it's not even two weeks, and he knows, beyond a shadow of any doubt anywhere, that before two weeks were done with Gabby and Danny they were hardly figuring out how or where to have dinner a first or second time. It wasn't this. It wasn't anything like this. Rushed and reckless, and threatening to rip apart everything. That Steve might throw everything to the wind, give all of this on one, first night, good time.

But that isn't Danny. It isn't even Danny when his voice is warm in his viens, reminder and request all at once.
They've never even seen a dinner table. If there was ever supposed to be one. Aside from with the team last weekend.

Which doesn't even touch the fact, Danny is new to this whole thing. Here. On Steve's lap. Drug every direction by their hands.

And, fuck, but every part of him still wants, when Danny is looking at him like that. His voice is dipping low, still, and his knuckles are brushing Steve's stomach and the top of his pants, sparks shooting off in his middle even more for the idea of anything being forbidden or requiring patience or him to stop, fireworks lighting his skin when Danny is tugging at his shirt.

When that is anything but please stop, and everything is torn and tossed together all at once, on high, in a wind storm. Where the brush of his skin is like singeing lightning, trying to take that wash of thoughts back out to sea. When Steve can't even stop how low, and overboard that tone is, or that he breathes in sharp without even filling his lungs at the touch and the tugging, smirk tagging in, bright and prodding "Yeah?"

He lets go of Danny's belt loops in a single fast motion, snatching fistfuls of the bottom of his shirt, right out of Danny's hands and pulling it off fast and easy over his head. Left with a handful of cloth, that he pitches somewhere over a shoulder with a brilliantly devil may care expression of almost asking to be called on it. Like he isn't half dressed now, skin flushed, chest rising and falling faster than normal breath, on display simply because Danny requested it.

Everywhere all over his face, when he can't stop his mouth, or the way he leans back for a second, one hand catching the couch to prop himself, unabashed in leaving himself stretched and nearly posed in front of Danny, as he is in the fact his eyes never leave Danny's face, smug as the high sun, and the smallest bit more watchful. "Better?"

[haole_cop]

His intention isn't to make Steve pause, or to bring any kind of wariness or caution to his face, his motions. He's joking, but it's not really a joke, too, because he is out so far beyond over his head now that he doesn't think he could be found without a rescue flare and a crack team of emergency personnel. Brand-new doesn't even begin to cut it, and okay, he gets at least some of the mechanics. Right? He's only got himself for comparison, but the basics are something he gets. The kind of friction that feels good. The spots on Steve's body that make him shiver when they're kissed or touched. He has mapped out rough sketches of things Steve likes, and it has been weird at times, sure, but not panic-inducing. Nothing he couldn't have pictured for himself, on his own.

Past that, though, past the things they've been doing over the past two weeks, the waters don't get so much murky as they are entirely foreign. And part of him his shrieking to take a step back, long enough to ask some questions and get some answers, long enough to breathe and remind himself that not everything has to be dipped into one toe at a time and treated with extreme caution. Steve is not Gabby. Steve is not Rachel. He's already known Steve for two years, knows his flaws and foibles, knows his favorite foods and drinks and schedule, knows the look when Steve's disappearing into his miserable head. It's not like the two of them require any awkward 'getting-to-know-you' stage, although Danny is finding himself more and more curious about certain aspects of Steve's past.

Mainly, the ones that make this so clearly not as strange for him as it is for Danny.

But it doesn't last long, the pause, and it doesn't smack the same self-recrimination across Steve's face as the screeching halt in the kitchen, for which Danny is grateful. It's not a bad thing. Right? Everyone has to start somewhere.

And it doesn't make his throat any less close, or his mouth any less dry, when Steve's giving him that crooked smirk, bright and brilliant, like he can't believe what he's hearing but also could never question hearing it. Like Danny's sure he wouldn't. Nobody who looks like Steve would. Moving in a sudden efficient wave, stomach muscles flexing and standing out under skin, chest stretched, shoulders wide, leaning back into invitation, eyes on Danny's face and a knowing little smirk tucked into his lips. When that expression can't possibly hold the smug expectation that's radiating off every angle, shirt discarded, body on display. No other word for it. Displayed. Put on show. Knowingly, purposefully. For Danny.

Who just. Who just needs to take a second. A second to look. Eyes tracking down faintly fuzzed chest to the ridges of stomach muscles and belly. Steve. Laid out and perfect. Waiting to see what he'll do. But Danny's heart is in his throat, and his tongue feels like someone knotted it onto a bow, or replaced it with a useless piece of felt, because there's nothing he can say. He can just look. Can only shift forward enough to curve his hands around the sides of Steve's waist, thumbs rubbing over the cut of obliques. Run them slowly up his sides. Slow. Reverent. Because, God. He is so damn beautiful. Relaxed and loose. No one should be allowed to touch this. Right? He shouldn't be allowed to.

Fingers and palms moving up, up. Slow. Tracking their path with his eyes. The sheen of warm skin. Deep tan. Dark ink. His hands barely, and then not able at all, to fit around his sides. Pushing up his ribcage, bending forward. Eyes focused on the slope from Steve's ribs to the soft skin over his stomach.

"I, uh. Jesus." His breath gusts in a distracted little laugh, that catches behind his useless tongue. "Yeah, I think so."

[thebesteverseen]

He expects a joke. Some terrible, biting comment about making messes on his own floor like a child. Or something pointed about basically laying himself out in front of Danny, in the air, with that goading statement and his arrogant belief in his physique being utterly unbecoming, no matter what his neanderthal head or the people in his life have led him to believe this far.

Anything but the way way Danny's face shifts. The way his shoulders tense a little under that plain t-shirt, and he swallows hard, like there's a rock in his throat he either can't breathe around, or can't swallow, or maybe both all at once. Eyes riveted to Steve's skin. Like. Like it might be more than just his skin. When Steve keeps waiting for the snap, the moment those words will pour out.

Danny will snap back, and that mouth, with the smile it can't keep out, will spear him, happily. Both said and wanted.

Because Danny has seen this. Okay. Danny saw it early on. When Steve was willing to get half undressed for any necessity of a case. More willing to ask it of himself than anyone else on his team. And Danny had gotten his fair share of seeing him, this all, his body, for years already. Which, sure, he'd looked. The first time like it was a hilarious unfairness that Steve got to look like this and be as insane as Danny found him.

Until there were events through the last year or so, where Danny was still looking and Steve could only bewilderingly have no idea why or what it was. Maybe that he was still insane even years later, untempered by Five-0. Because, obviously, it wasn't anything else when Danny was back to normal minutes or seconds later every time. And Steve got it. Okay. That it was nothing actually. A note. Observation.

That he was one looking for there to be more in it, and how there really was. Case or surfing. Accepted that.

But he doesn't look back up, and as much as Steve can tell, and he's so close, too close to not be sure, Danny doesn't even take another breath in while his eyes trace down Steve's chest with the thickness of an actual touch. A slow, settled, need to see all of it, that makes Steve swallow, watching him heavy lidded. Stomach muscles and lungs all but shuddering the moment Danny's hands touch his sides after those long seconds.

How Danny's still not looking up. How Danny, and his five thousands words, are actually so pin drop quiet it's like shouting.

His thumbs are pressing into the ridges of muscles, tracing, lacing fire into Steve's skin for every quarter inch of skin touched and left behind as he keeps touching more. Brushing slowly, so slowly, it makes him hold so still he think he may start trembling with the sheer effort it takes not to move. Across his obliques, up each rung of his ribs on both sides.

Until he can't help that he's pushing up into the sensation. Into those fingers. Wanting this. More. Everything.

And finally Danny's mouth moves, but not his eyes. He's still not even looking up. His sentence stutters stops twice. First.

What the hell is he even supposed to do, make of that. How is Steve even supposed to breathe, pretend the inside of his stomach and chest don't slip on something oily or fill full of an unexpected free fall, a hard jolt in the center of his chest, a want to grab Danny and kiss him, fiercely, all over again. When he's saying that. When it takes him time to even get to the ability to say that.

That somehow, it is. It is better, actually truly better, a better that looks like it is short circuiting Danny's brain and his mouth in one go, beyond being a smug mocking joke, when Steve is there, under his hands, half dressed, filling his face up with everything shining there that Steve can't even begin to name, and Danny wants him. To touch him. To look at him.

And Steve has nothing better than to rib it, because if he doesn't something else will come out, he doesn't even know what or how or the shape, but it's clogging up his chest and expanding so fast, so hard, taking out the walls and the floors, and it's threatening to just shatter everything else in there his body doesn't need anymore, by command decision of itself. "I'm sorry. What was that? Did you say something?"

Like he could not. Hear Danny's little choked breath. Stutter. Soft swearing. Confession. Burning themselves into his skin.

[haole_cop]

Did he say something?

He's honestly not totally, one hundred percent, sure. He feels like he's swallowed his own tongue, that's lumping in his throat and making words impossible. Like he's back to being thirteen years old and shy around girls. Like he can't even rally his misfiring brain cells enough to string a full sentence together. Just by looking at him.

Because, Christ, Steve is. Steve is. His brain is sorting through every word he knows, and he just can't seem to land on any of them. He's seen this. Seen Steve in board shorts at the beach. In cargo pants, first dry, then wet at work, with his easy refusal to miss a chance to go in the water. Seen him in sleeveless SEAL tanks, and white wifebeaters that stuck to him like a second skin. Seen him preen and unfold himself for the benefit of nearby appreciate girls, on occasion, when they catch him in a generous mood.

Danny's seen it. Him. Multiple times. Enough that he could details Steve's tattoos, and a few more visible scars. He's seen him in daylight, on the beach, in public, in private. Seen him drenched and dry, beaten and bruised, and back to fighting fit. And now, he's seen him smudged in dim light, felt the play of muscles under taut skin without having to watch it.

But it's different. This. Steve's willingness to shed clothes, like they're no big deal. And, well. They probably aren't, to him. Not like they are to Danny. To most people. To anyone with the usual insecurities about lack of muscle or a pudgy stomach, a too-hairy chest or strange creases. No. It's Steve's willingness to strip that shirt off and throw it away like it's nothing, because he asked him to. Because he's seen like this before, but not like this. Not laid out underneath him, pushing minutely up into his hands, like this slow exploration isn't enough. Not for him.

And Steve is gorgeous. There's no questioning it. Even before, Danny would have said so. Would have admired him, and been more than a little envious. And like he said, it's not that he hasn't noticed Steve is a guy. The textbook definition. Tall. Heavy muscled. Still looking like a quarterback years later, with half-lidded eyes that would make a member of the clergy lock themselves in the confessional and then break out for some serious sinning.

But there are a lot of gorgeous people, especially here, where the vast majority of the population spends their lives in bathing suits, on the beach, in the water, in the sun. He could toss a rock and hit a dozen that could be photographed and put in a magazine with barely any touch-ups.

But none of them are Steve. None of them have Steve's crazy, or Steve's stupidly giant heart, that gets Steve in so much trouble. None of them have Steve's smile, or have had Danny's back through everything, everything, two women and a freak poisoning accident and more calls with lawyers than he can count and too many shootouts. None of them are Danny's best friend and partner. He is looking at the only person like Steve in the world, and that person is letting him. Wants him to look. To touch.

"Shut up." A little hoarse, but he at least seems to be regaining speech control. Sort of. While everything in his chest is jumbled and sifting into new spots, like a shaken snow globe. "Let me appreciate something for once in my life, you destroyer of dreams. Huh? Can't I take a moment to enjoy this? Is that too much to ask?"

Thumbs moving solidly towards the center of his chest, eyes flicking up to Steve's face with something like amusement that's been batted back into being, somewhere across the tattered remains of something too like awe, no matter what he says. They're just words. They don't mean a damn thing right now.

[thebesteverseen]

There are certain seconds, the world catches up with him, in ways it doesn't have to. Or at least never did before. When the impatient energy, racing through him, thrumming, begging every single touch for more. Exponentially more. Sidesteps accidentally on something more true, more real. That maybe Danny hasn't yet, and he never did before. That they fall into this in a frenzy. The one that had them gripping each other only minutes ago.

That there really aren't minutes in the morning, with work. With being gone. With working three days straight. With hell breathing down their neck. And how each of the specific days when it was more than that. A few hours in the sunshine like the first afternoon, or the Sunday after, there's so much else in the room, there's almost no room to remember. What he's supposed to do here. What the first steps ever were. What Danny might need, or want.

Danny who doesn't have a contested mishmash of memories of things like this.

Anything that isn't running his fingers up and down skin that isn't silk smooth, with downy hair. Light and lithe.

That isn't encounters so brief, fast, and frenzied that they are over in half the time of a watch break, so fast from beginning to end you spend the rest of the hours of an entire night wondering if you just happened to want it so badly you hallucinated the whole thing. A night or a day, somewhere, in the middle of nowhere. Caught on a smile. This certain tip of a head, lift of an eyebrow, the curve of a mouth around the top of a beer bottle or hand around a cue, a can, anything.

A shared secret, lost again in the morning. A night. Maybe a few days. Here or there a week, in decades. More casually, than clinically since he's been grounded. But that meant being even more tightly controlled, not less. How quickly, not matter which situation, you learn how to appreciate something, even the bare seconds, the few minutes where your hand rests, and then take it for granted. Lock it outside, and turn back to the job.

Things Danny has never done. When everything Danny has ever done is painted on Steve's skin. Hands. Mouth.

On that winded, hoarse tone, complaining for Steve to cool his damn horses, and give him a second, taking everything in.

Even if taking everything in equals making it beyond fucking impossible to cool down. Because Danny's fingers are traveling across his skin. And Danny's voice is winded like he's running, just from looking at him, from touching him. And how, how is he supposed to sit still. When it's Danny. Danny Williams. Looking at him like this. Tone like that. How is he not supposed to hold on and ride that for all it's worth, before it's gone.

In every god damn way that is possible, probable, being written in searing profanity across the backs of his eyelids.

When he's swallowing, and staring at those eyes, finally rising to meet his, while Danny's hands are fanned and dragging fingers, coming in across his chest, toward the center, and he can't even help the breath he pulls in. Filling his lungs, stretching his skin and the space Danny's touch is crossing, has to cross, might touch next, like some part of him must move, has to move, before he explodes and truly does body check Danny into the arm rest behind him, burying his fingers in his hair and demanding everything.

Because it's words. Words, words, words. Being batted back and forth, struggling to crawl out of whatever is happening inside of Danny, like somehow it's going to distract him from the way Danny's eyes are so blue and so unfocused for a second, before focusing on him, again. Forcing Steve to gouge out will power, and reach for whatever he can.

The wisp of a goofy cocky smile trying to slide and settle on his lips, even when he shudders faintly against those fingers, heart thundering a marathon in his chest. "You saying you're dream about me like this, now?"

[haole_cop]

The easiest, simple, truest answer is yes. Yes, he does. Which makes it all the more bizarre to wake up and have the reality lying next to him. Or makes it feel all the more like a fever dream when he wakes up alone, in the puddled sheets of the pullout, turned on and confused like time's rewound and made him a horny teenager again.

But there's that word now that catches him, because. Well. He's been having dreams like that for a little while, now. Since that night, the one he told Steve about yesterday morning. The first time. The first shudder. The first dream, barely even a dream. Half-awake, hands sliding across himself and thoughts drifting down into a gravity well he never saw coming. Full of flickers of Steve. Like this. Only not like this, because he never saw this. At the beach, sand on his skin. Water in his hair. Island brilliance in his smile. Lit up and joyful. The best Danny could do, because he'd never seen this dark heat, couldn't have imagined Steve's heart knocking against his fingertips like it's trying desperately to beat itself right out of his body.

Or maybe he'd just pretended it was a dream. Closed his eyes and willed himself asleep, so he wouldn't know better. So he wouldn't be thinking about his partner and his best friend when he was gasping and shaking. So he wouldn't have the reminder of Steve's voice in his ear, a succinct, nearly terse voicemail greeting that managed to morph into so many things. So many words. Ones he was so ashamed of having pretended, of having wanted.

Only now Steve's real, no dream, no fantasy. Stretching under Danny's hand, heart careening under this touch, being an arrogant bastard, a vain dick, and Danny would toss insults at his head until the swelling went down if those words didn't come out thin and reedy. If they weren't being said, low, through a smile that's like the goddamn sun coming up, splashing Danny with warm and brilliance, focusing all the color and light in the room on that one goofy curve of lips. If they didn't sound pushed, not tossed and easy. If the muscles he's tracing weren't shaking with restraint under his fingers.

"What's that you're always telling me?" Easy to feign innocence or consideration when he's leaning forward, finding the flat slope of one pec and brushing lips there, kissing along the skin towards the slight dip of his breastbone, before glancing up, a stupid smirk of his own pulling like a loose thread.

"I can neither confirm nor deny that statement."

[thebesteverseen]

Danny gives it a second, stretching Steve's want for patience and expectation of it. But not unusually so at this second. Even if it feels even more like straining against a bond now. When absolutely nothing is actually holding him down or back. He's got his weight supported on his hands, and he could push up, stop Danny, do whatever. Which would work well, if that whole part about stopping Danny didn't catch under every inch of skin.

Like the idea of stopping Danny now, would stop the gravity of the planet, or the ability to breathe in his body. Not that he was doing a whole lot of that right now. Like he'd rather have his skin melt away than stop Danny. Whose fingers are roaming his skin, like it isn't just pock marked with regimental routines and scars with less than ghost stories. When he's actually feeling his brow lift in some curiosity.

And then. It's like being spattered with boiling oil. It has to be.

When his whole body literally seizes and shakes, hard, on that new touch, so soft, lips brushing his skin, with hot breath, so gentle and yet pervasive it feels like the skin under that mouth is going snap, like the ground just bucked him, knocking him into Danny's legs and spine, everything.

One hand digging hard into the leather cushion and sweating suddenly the whole weight of his upper body alone, because the other one is lodged in blonde hair, curling it around fingers, when he can't even stop the garbled groan getting dashed on the rocks of the back of his throat, even when his teeth clench tight, and he's barely getting air out his nose or Danny's name out between his teeth, not even sure if it's a warning or a plea.

Especially not with those words. With the whole idea like a flash flare being thrown straight down his veins on the movement of Danny's lips. Golden. Golden. Golden hair, and face, blue eyes, hovering so close and so far, using his own words, and insinuating he thinks about this. About Steve laid out like this. About doing all of this to him. Trying to snap his restrain one thread at a time, and call it some kind of kindness.

Like it can't even possibly be a secret, even as he uses those words. Throws them back in Steve's face. Every ounce of control.

[haole_cop]

That groan drops into his stomach like a grenade, but it's the half-choked gasp of his name that sets everything on fire. Crumples up his stomach, rips the roots of any willpower left right out of his skull, his spine, tosses them away like Steve tossed his shirt. Unable to help the sudden flaring driving burning want that sends him back down, mouth trailing harder, hot against flushing skin. Over the lift of muscle that's shaking and flexing against his lips, ducking down to find, capture a nipple. Pulling sensitive skin into his mouth, flicking it with his tongue. Tasting salt and Steve, hearing his own breath coming in a ragged wash.

Because Steve looks done in. By him. He's not even doing anything. Barely anything at all. One hand smoothing firm down his side, the other pushing up over his shoulder, running along the arm that's got him braced up against the couch. Ignoring the sudden tight ache in his scalp, sending thrills shrieking down his spine and arrowing into his gut.

Feeling like there's not enough. Not enough of Steve's bare skin. Not enough of him to reach it all, cover it all. Biting lightly into the pad of his muscle, moving down, finding the bumps of his ribs, mouth and teeth and tongue following the brand new gravity that's Steve, only Steve. Who wants him. Like Danny wants him. Who isn't looking smug anymore, whose voice is on the cracking edge of breaking or pleading.

Making Danny have look up along the length of his body, and the only possible way to keep it from spilling out, in words and broken sentences, how gorgeous Steve is, the things he does to Danny, the things he's doing right now, how impossible he is, not matter how Danny might have said it's still possible, he has no idea how this is happening, none at all, is to push up, hand hard on Steve's side and fingers wrapping around Steve's biceps. Find his mouth again, kiss him hard and a little desperate, because this was supposed to be gone, and it isn't, and Danny doesn't know how to make sure it never goes away but, God, he'd give almost anything. Anything at all.

And Steve hasn't laid a finger on him in minutes, but it doesn't matter, a tiny sound like a whimper at the back of his throat, muffled on Steve's mouth in a kiss that feels like it should burst every lightbulb in the house.

[thebesteverseen]

He's swearing into clenched teeth, the snapping red-line of his jaw, and he knows his fingers must have made a fist of Danny's hair, but he can't stop. Not once Danny ducks his head right back down. And it's not a kiss this time. It's not a gentle, maddening brush of lips. It's wide, warm, no, hot and wet. Danny's mouth making contact with his skin. When barely has time to be registering it.

When he's jerking from the sudden wash of sensation, and it doesn't stop or slow now. Danny's mouth latching on to a nipple. The feel of warmth, of suction, the graze of teeth, and fast flick of his tongue on a direct collision and control of Steve's hips, grinding into Danny's body. Fingers making it everywhere suddenly. Not the slow, every line drag up his body they'd been doing. Everywhere. Suddenly flitting, digging in, moving, like it can't touch enough, fast enough.

He's going to burn up before this ends, when Danny doesn't even stay at his chest. There are lips and teeth making their way down his chest, fighting against his ribs, snapping apart his holds. And then, in a movement that seems to happen like a void filling itself in, Danny is attacking his mouth. And Steve can feel it going. Everything. With a sickening explosion he doesn't even give a damn about. Both sets of hands finding the sides of Danny's head, finger tips digging in too hard, but he can't stop.

He's held so still, moving feels like the whole world is exploding around him, like he has to kiss Danny, down into the marrow of his bones, almost vicious and proprietary, every bit as hard and as hot as he's being kissed, like it's the only way he can breathe or keep his heart going. That tiny desperately soft whimper slamming into him, eaten by his lips, and shoving itself like burning steal under skin, shoving him up and Danny back. All movement, the world swimming almost to vertigo, after none.

Pulling his legs out from under Danny as he's pushing Danny into the opposte end of the couch, by shoulders, always against him, under him. Never letting go. Covering Danny in a corner of two cushions without any consideration for the small space, or not tossing himself across and on Danny. Mouth moving, still hard, pulling at skin grazing teeth, along his jaw, the hollow under his ear, down across Danny's throat.

Pulling skin hard without warning while his hands are going fast down across Danny, ripping at the bottom of his shirt, fingers under the cloth, catching only for seconds in the skin at Danny's stomach before he's back to pulling it up, without a single care for whether this t-shirt survives the next three seconds, which shows when he's jerking it upward, saying roughly into Danny's skin. "Off, now."

It's almost a growl compared to any of the other words or laughter he had earlier. One with no qualms about making it happen.

[haole_cop]

Steve moves like a riptide. Danny's still lost in that kiss, in the fire-fueled clenching fingers in his hair, Steve's mouth clashing against his and swallowing that sound, the desperate tiny one that still wasn't soft because there is nothing soft about any of this. Not Steve's muscles suddenly all contracting at once, not Steve's mouth demanding his, his breath, his skidding pulse and the lights flashing behind his eyes. Not Steve's arm, biceps bunching and pushing, as Steve bunches and pushes, sending Danny tripping back towards the other end of the couch with Steve following after. Bodyslammed into the corner, and he actually can almost stretch out, shoves one leg between Steve and the couch back, knee bending, the other on the other side of Steve's hips.

Pressure flashing white and dangerous, and Steve a blur of vengeful motion. Mouth attacking Danny's throat, while Danny pushes his head back to expose more, more skin, more threading pulse. Hands pushing at Danny's shirt like it's the most hateful thing Steve can imagine, like it's burning his fingers. Both of them scrambling to tug it -- Danny's back arching to clear the cushions, his arms crossing -- fabric tugging over his head to get dropped God knows where.

Sure that cool air won't get a chance to rush in, that his skin is flushing hot and pink under a tan he'd tried his damndest not to get. Not when Steve had nearly been threatening. Voice warning and teetering on the edge of snapped self-control, but now that the shirt is gone, Danny's hands are free, and they run down Steve's back, skating to his hips, fingers catching beltloops and tugging them, hard, down and closer, his own hips bucking up on instinct in a way that makes him go momentarily blind.

[thebesteverseen]

He forgets around almost as soon as it's past Danny's wrists. That shirt.

Wherever it goes, when they both let go, when Steve darts back in. Mouth taking liberty back with the skin he had, Danny stretching out beneath him, close and tight, straining to give him more, as Danny's hands landed just as possessive on his skin. Sliding, running down his skin, hard and heavy. Catching his hips, his pants, and jerking him directly into Danny bucking up into him.

Barely giving Steve more than a moment, before it's shocking straight through him. Hardly more than a second it takes to turn, to consider the damnation of visibility, and bite down against Danny's shoulder. When the rest of his body is beyond ready to listen to Danny's hands, his hips. Beyond it. To listen and respond and run right the hell over any impulse asking for a moments air.

Thrusting hard and fast down against the solidness Danny, several times, in a way that is not helping him remember any single thought he had in his head. That he had any restraint in his skin, or control left between his body and his choices, and the slam of want driving like a jack hammer down his veins. Any time before this second. Any thoughts. Any consideration. Going up like flash paper.

With a groan of something very lost, thick as black tar, and nearly muffled into Danny's skin, "Fucking Christ, Danny."

It'd be an accusation, if he wasn't hanging off the same cliff, hating every last stitch of clothing, or thought under the fire, himself.

[haole_cop]

Teeth, sharp against his shoulder, a sudden sting and ache that's bound to leave a mark, and he's breathless, head back against the cushion, hips canting up helplessly, half laughing and half groaning, saying, "Jesus, Steve, don't damage the merchandise, huh?" but you break it you bought it doesn't seem like it would stop Steve right now.

Neither would reminding him that as much as Danny hates going to the beach, it does, occasionally happen, and this, this is exactly the kind of thing Kono would never let him live down. Not that Danny is thinking clearly enough to point that out. Not when Steve is shoving into him, grinding hard and hot. Forcing himself closer. Making one of Danny's hands run up his back, over shifting, twisting muscle. The other dropping to curve, hard, down over the back of his pants. Fingers pressing hard into the curve of his ass, pulling his tighter, closer.

Because it's still not close enough. Not even when it's bare skin sliding against bare skin, and Steve's mouth is hard against his shoulder. Not when Steve is groaning into his skin, swearing into it, his name dragging in some three a.m. version of his voice, thick and scraped from the bottom of the barrel, a dull razorblade over Danny's nerves, snapping each one of them, one at a time, like strings snapping on a violin.

When the only thing he can think is more and Steve and he can't even, can barely register the fact that Steve is doing this to him, that he's doing it to Steve, his hands gripping and owning that expanse of skin, the beltloops, pants, legs. Feeling like he's getting rolled out by a cement mixer, Steve is so heavy and he's big, it's like being attacked by a mountainside, crushing Danny into the couch and Danny does not give a single fuck, as long as Steve doesn't stop what he's doing. Curling up into him, to give as good as he gets, as much as he can, cheek pressing into the cushion, neck stretched and straining under Steve's mouth.

So much for taking a minute, taking a second to adjust, to consider, to enjoy, but everything is burning and his heart is catapulting, head singing, and he doesn't care, there's time later, there will be. Right now it's only Steve, only him, the rest of the world can burn to a crisp except for Grace and him.