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]

"Hey, I didn't pick the couch. That seems like a problem for someone else, not for me."

He fits. He fits just fine, because he is not approximately eighty percent larger than anyone should legally be allowed to be. He and this couch are old friends, and he's crashed here plenty of times, both when staying at the house and just on nights that were too late and too tiring and when the last damn thing he wanted was to go home to his crappy, empty, tiny apartment with a bed no more comfortable than this exact spot. "Are you trying to tell me you want to go someplace else? You have some kind of plan in mind? Because those of us who are not part giraffe are actually doing okay right here. Admittedly, I think I may actually have melded to the leather, here, we should have put down a blanket or something."

Still. His hand moves when Steve shifts, arm settling like a bar across Danny's chest. Like whatever he's saying, he doesn't want to get up, either, break apart this lazy peace that's settled over them and the room and the abused couch and their discarded clothes. Everything tossed aside without meaning, because who gives a damn, when no one is going to interrupt, there's no one here but Steve, and Steve is smiling, smug, like Danny's refusal to budge is really some sort of treat for him.

That hand curving over the round of his shoulder, down to the blue and green ink drawn in curving patterns over biceps, so, well, maybe he's not holding Steve down with at least one limb, anymore.

Steve. Blue eyes all heavy-lidded and happy, creased with a smile that's crooked and self-aware. Stirring a warm puddle in Danny's chest that has no business being stirred by an axe-crazy Navy SEAL with zero regard for personal safety or the structural integrity of private or public buildings. It's idiotic, finding Steve endearing. Tying himself into a knot on the curve of a smile. Fumbling in the dark for the sanity he seems to have dropped and can no longer find.

And apparently has little to no need of, anymore, considering the way his heart wants to hang itself on Steve's smile like a hat on a rack.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny is rambling while his hands moves down across Steve's shoulder and into his arm, half his attention following the words and half following that hand. His hand, warm, heavy fingers and palm filled with lead, and every other place Danny is still touching him, still wrapped around, still not one iota really toward looking like he's about to let go or give Steve back his own body, and maybe he really doesn't hate that. Even if the cost is be uncomfortable.

His own muscles are still heavy, like they're water logged, except the water is cement. He knows he could move. He could be keep moving like he did a second ago. The ability to move is already well awake and aware in his head, in his skin. But he's clinging a little to this, even when his head is populating with ideas even as Danny is rambling onward about his being overwhelmingly tall. Like he's somehow unaware of it. Draped all over Danny.

"You damage my couch removing yourself from it and you're going to have to fix it," Steve said, eyebrows pointing a little more. His voice, too. But there is nothing but wide space and light in his eyes. Watching Danny ramble, rant, start moving, still clinging to him. Yeah. Okay. It's not the worst thing in the world. Which is maybe why he moves, settling like he's trying to stretch more space into the couch.

He can't really stretch out across it, even all that marginally, when Danny is under him, all around him and he's facing downward, keeping even his calves from hanging off. "There's always the bed." Steve says it slow, like he's having to rectify it with being mid-evening only or having to drag it out from some long forsaken corner of his head. Like he doesn't have every single second cataloged somewhere. At least the ones like this.

"At least I'm pretty sure someone-" Emphasize with a wider slide of a his smile. "-keeps reminding that I keep one of those around here somewhere." He tilted his head, maybe something a little more testing dropping in the smallest amount. "Unless you have other plans?" Which could be ideas, or it could be what it is. Sort of, a run by on whether Danny is planning on leaving sometime soon.

[haole_cop]

"Hey, it is not my fault your fuse is too short to add steps to your thought processes, like, for example, a consideration of whether or not you really want to wreck your couch. I am not taking responsibility for your screwed-up priorities."

Okay. Partly because, well. He can't really argue with those, here. Can't say his own priorities aren't just as screwy, can't say he gave a damn about the couch, or their clothes, or the lights that are still on, or the fact that it's only just past dinnertime and they seem to have once again hurtled straight past possibility into this: Steve collapsed and heavy on top of him, his head swimming in a blissfully warm, generous glow.

The thought of bed doesn't even sound like a bad idea. Space to stretch out in, smooth sheets and soft pillows, and Steve there. Dipping the mattress. Laid out bare against the mattress.

Still, he feels he should put up some kind of argument, for the hell of it, because it's what they do, and because Steve is kind of an idiot if he thinks he has other plans. "No," he says, eyebrows pushing together like he's a little concerned about Steve's ability to remember basic facts. Like maybe Steve just asked whether or not Danny will be at work tomorrow, or if he misses Grace. There are certain questions that just have no other possible answers.

"I have no plans. My entire plan was basically to come here, so it would seem counterproductive to thank you for a lovely evening and leave right away. And, frankly, I find the insinuation that I might have something better to do than go back to my hellhole of an apartment by myself to be a little alarming, considering you know every boring detail of my life. Do I have other plans? I do not. However, I also didn't realize that you are actually a retiree from Florida. You know. Because it can't be past eight pm and you're talking about bed."

It's all just words, though. Handed out through a smile that can't stop itself, because Steve is looking at him with that goofy wide shine all painted across his face, and Steve wants Danny here. In his bed. With him.

And Steve, for all his complaining, hasn't moved. Not an inch, not for anything other than to better point his words Danny's way.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve's pretty sure that first set of words out of Danny's mouth are beyond suspect. Steve and screwed-up priorities were not the hands tracing down every inch of his own skin, with that look that Steve still isn't quite sure how to label, or even look at entirely head on. That one, or the one on the lawn. Because either one won't make him want to move from this spot, for vastly different reasons all together, even though neither make all that much sense.

"Check," Steve said, cheeky, but the better part of his expression stayed more mocking than accusative or serious.

About showing up, just to leave. "You already did those." Without the thanking Steve for a lovely evening, or much of a hello, even, but he had shown up just to leave already. Only Steve didn't really let him go, and Danny hadn't really gone far, and even if Danny might have been all but drug back inside the house against his will and better judgement, he was still here.

Saying words like the one's he had. Shoving and dragging Steve to a more reckless disaster than most things got. Except that night.

Right, here. Under Steve. Looking up at him with those soft, blue eyes and in full flight with his sharp teasing mouth, looking like he didn't want to be anywhere else in the world really. Especially not with the hand at his shoulder, or the legs, all designed like some kind of real seat belt to keep Steve from going as much as they had just gotten over keeping Steve from being able to think of any thought that wasn't closer or faster.

"So, you don't have a better idea, and you don't want to go up?" Steve says, voice getting heavy with far more mocking amusement already before the rest is even out, hands shifting. One pushing up on the tacky couch leather beside Danny's side, and the other pushing up from the forearm safety-barred straight across Danny's chest. "Then we'll just put our clothes back on and do something else."

[haole_cop]

"Whoa, hey, let's not rush into anything, here."

He can't think of anything worse than having to put those jeans back on, confining and clumsy against his skin, instead of being able to feel Steve's, brush of skin, leg hair (still a strange sensation, but not actually unpleasant). Blood-warm and without barrier.

The last word gets wheezed out, under the sudden weight pressing down on his chest, compacting ribs and sternum, and he aims a disgruntled look up, groaning under the pressure, light as it still might be. Nowhere near the kind of gravity Steve can force on a prone body, when prying answers from reluctant tongues. "Christ, can you maybe avoid snapping a few ribs tonight? Clothes. That's sick. How am I supposed to be able to appreciate all of this if you start deciding to put clothes back on instead of taking them off like you have no trouble with at work? Don't you think it should be the other way around?"

And, really, how the hell is he supposed to keep his head when Steve starts stripping his shirt off during the work day, to change after a particularly messy chasedown or to hit the water for reasons Danny can only describe as loose, at best? How is he ever going to be able to not see this, then, to not remember what it feels like to walk fingers down the slope of his back, to feel the slide of muscles, standing out in sharp relief, slick with sweat. He knows how warm Steve is, now. How surprisingly soft his skin is. How it flushes under the tan. What he looks like, half-lit and lazy, in a muddle of pale sheets and shadow.

The short answer is, he can't. Won't. Is never going to not know, now, so the best he can hope for is the kind of brief insanity that clutches him during shootouts, and can be shoved aside for the greater good and the necessity of survival.

"I never said I didn't want to go up."

[thebesteverseen]

Steve's mouth is getting away from him before Danny stops sputtering his dislike of Steve's drastic alternate suggestion. Not that Steve has the faintest clue what they would do right at this second. Dinner and beers are gone, if the mess is on his counters in the kitchen, and the chairs on the end of the grass, left out from using them with Cath in the middle of the day after their hike, are all so far away.

Even if his brow knits together for a second, almost pulling back immediately, judging Danny's momentary winded state. Torn between settling down or whether he needs to move all together. Okay. This, this part isn't exactly copacetic with anything before it. He doesn't just topple down on people. Especially not women, rarely ever even pushed to snapping with Cath, but, more accurately, not anyone, and not ever, if he can help it. And he can. Because he's aware. He's never not aware.

Very tall, sprawling limbs in every direction, and built like a brick house. Which means heavy and solid as one when fallen.

This isn't a place he falls. Not usually. Even if it is a place Danny keeps him at, near, on him. Grabs at him when he tries to leave whether it's serious or joking. Like any time Steve is trying to get out of his way Danny has decided Steve's head has parted way from his body. Again. But then he makes a face like this. And Steve shoulders drag down, tight, brows furrowing inward, trying to decide if he needs to move, regardless of other words or actions or opinions.

Actively uncertain. Especially when Danny makes that face, but goes right on, holding him there, and smacking him about the head with other words not even a second later. When Steve takes from that the only thing really managing to catch, aside from a whirlwind of words, and Danny's voice, which he never ever seems to get all that tired of. Even when he's frustrated as hell or annoyed and seeing red at Danny.

"You're not done appreciating everything yet?" Steve's teeth bit in against his own bottom lip for a moment, letting his teeth drag back across, eyebrows raising pointedly laughing fond and so falsely wary, like that was maybe the most ludicrous, important thing that just fell out of Danny's mouth.

Like driving Steve to distraction and desperation and a want so bad it still felt like it lingered somewhere in the throbbing, snapped hard as thick ice or solid bone, but only after trying to take every ounce of sanity and air with it. And Danny was implying he wasn't anywhere near done yet, and making a storm's worth of noise about it even being implied at being taken away from him?

[haole_cop]

What kind of idiots has Steve been involved with in the past? How stupid where they, that they ever thought there was enough time for appreciation? Seriously, he'd like to know. He would have thought Catherine was smarter than that, that she would at least have the perception to linger as long as she could and savor this. Girls from bars and sidewalks and beaches look at Steve like they'd take all night drinking that glass of water, and he hates it, but at least that's the right idea.

Done. Like hell he's done. None of this was ever supposed to be available to begin with. It was just going to burn, forever, or until he got a grip on himself, in the back of his head. Eating away through level and level of his sanity, like a coal sinking through layers of ice. It was never supposed to be handed to him, was never supposed to be mentioned or thought of. And then. It was supposed to be gone. Right? When Cath was here, and that meant this was over, because Steve may be a dunce when it comes to choices made for his own personal good but even Steve can see that Cath is a better, far more attractive option than Danny, right? Being with Cath makes sense. It's simple. Uncomplicated. Sure, there's the issue of her being out to sea fifty weeks out of the year, but Steve's never seemed to mind that before.

Not like Danny, who is here all the time. Has been since this partnership started. The only way he might see Steve less is if Steve decided to mandate hours spent apart so as not to give the nice HR rep who signs off on their paychecks the kind of heart attack that only blowing the concept of the forty hour workweek out of the water and fraternizing outside work hours can bring.

And yet, Steve still did. Let Cath walk out the door, and kept Danny from doing the same. Went after him. Not her.

Told her. Even before Danny came and shattered any last illusions of secrecy.



In what world is he supposed to have had enough of appreciating this?



"See, you seem to have a basic misunderstanding of the word 'appreciate'," he points out, lazy, hand settling on Steve's forearm. Just light. Palm, gently curved fingers. Not actually keeping that arm there, but it would be one more thing to move, if Steve tried, the way he looks like he's considering. Like Danny isn't built to be able to withstand some pressure, some weight. Like he's not just as solid as this couch, in all the ways that matter at the moment. He's not going to break, and Steve's not going anywhere. Not with that look. "The whole point is to take your time, and savor. Isn't that what you're always saying this whole island lifestyle is about?"

Fingers waving, lifting off Steve's skin, to find a point, bat it away again. "Or have you been lecturing me this whole time for nothing?"

[thebesteverseen]

Fingers settles light on his forearm, followed by a palm. Resting warm and soft all at once, even with the calluses. It's nothing like the hand at his shoulder was, or the loose forgotten existence of legs and ankles curled thighs. It has almost all of his attention for a second. Almost like he can feel the separate brush of skin between each curled digit. His mouth curving a little, looking from the hand back to Danny's face.

When Danny collects his attention back again, and make it apparent he's not at all thinking about any of the things Steve is. Only Steve's attention and castigating anything he assumes might have been behind those words, and that seconds ago teasing to the statement itself. Busy lecturing Steve about things he's still sure he knows far more about than Danny, when the man refuses to do much more than walk outside his door when it comes to anything other than Grace.

Okay. Yeah. Maybe it's not that bad now. But it was when he first got here. It's marginally better now.

Steve hand raised to catch Danny's. Waving fingers and half wanting it back, half not wanting it to have left. More impulse than decision still, when his fingers are catching Danny's hand and dragging it back, like claimed treasure. Even while he smirked, smugly overbearing, "So you were listening."

Like that at least meant he was getting through the concrete walls of Danny's head and winning by proxy. His voice in Danny's head. Like he didn't hoard every minute Danny looked happy surfing, or sitting out on the lanai, or realizing he actually did like some kind of food here that he'd never tried. The slow divestment down to tighter shirts that were more open, even if he never lost his loafers and dress pants.

Well. Almost never.

[haole_cop]

"I listen."

Protesting, if mildly so, somehow managed past the sudden choke of warmth in his chest that's threatening to spill out everywhere into the kind of words Steve probably won't be smiling so smugly at. These are. This is. This is like his first crush, like being thirteen and agonizing over every second spent in accidental company with the object of his affections, during and after. This is one foot in his mouth levels of self-aware awkwardness that makes him feel as goofy as a cartoon. These are foil-wrapped, saccharine saying candy feelings. If he's not careful, he might find himself back in the 80's, requesting songs from a DJ recorded three states and four hours away.

That is how idiotic all of this is making him. These are ridiculous feelings, feelings that have no business attaching themselves to a natural disaster like Steve, a human wrecking ball, no matter how soft his eyes are or how endearing that smile.

Right?

Except he knows better. There's no turning back now, he's already caught in the tar pits, sinking blissfully away into certain doom and disaster.

But it's not right now. Not tonight. Tonight is still good, and Steve is dragging his hand back, like it isn't Danny's to move, like it belongs to Steve and he hadn't given permission to take it away. Which clenches that strange, half-painful knot in his chest, washes him out with warmth.

"I don't always agree, but I listen. There's no need for slander."

[thebesteverseen]

Steve smirked at the snap of correction alight with fond amusement. And maybe with the way Danny actually doesn't fight having his hand stolen from him, like it's a possession Steve could just waltz off with and not connected to every other part of him. Especially when it's one of the parts that's always moving.

Maybe making it even more compelling. The knowledge that even he can only make it stay still so many seconds, or minutes. That he could hold on to him longer, but the truth is that'd be like the cemented plane museums. There's something wrong about all the stillness in things made to move and fly, fast and sharp through the air. When Danny's, even just his hands, it's like that.

So he knows it'll only last so long, and he knows he'll only hold it so long.

Even when it's a little funny. The way he tips his head, to watch between his thumb sliding in, to brush along the center of Danny's palm as he turns it, and settles it back down between them, and Danny's face through the complaints. Like it's something big, like somehow he hadn't just taken advantage of every single inch of Danny's skin, without much in the way of a request or questioning anywhere in it.

Mouth quirking upward at a corner, when he shoots straight back with, "But you're agreeing with me now."

If only because it was a convenient excuse or example to try and make Steve stay any more still than he ever really did.

[haole_cop]

Steve's got this tiny, triumphant glint in his eye, that's kind of softened a few steps away from his usual smug arrogance, but it's still enough to snag a loose thread in Danny's chest and tug on it, because, come on, it's not like anybody ever looks this glad to keep his hand, right? Most of the time they pretty much are glad to get him and his hands both out of their faces.

But not Steve. Not now. Looking at Danny all satisfied and companionable, somehow still not tired of him, after two years, after nearly two weeks.

"Look, don't get used to it. I still think people are way too laid-back on this godforsaken sand spit, but there is occasionally some merit to taking it easy. And I wasn't agreeing, I was, uh..."

He trails off, stumbling back over the conversation in his head, eyes drifting away from Steve's face and a faint frown parking itself, bemused, between his eyebrows.

"I had a point. It was disagreeing with you, I remember, because I am almost always disagreeing with you. However, I seem to have gotten away from it. Marginally."

Something about not moving. Right? Except then Steve tossed out the idea of bed, and as much as Danny hates the thought of getting up, or leaving this spot, or letting Steve move away even an inch, he has to say that bed, with its lack of sticking leather and all of Steve's body weight, is sounding like a better and better option.

[thebesteverseen]

The insult to Hawaii does get a pointed look, but with the faintest shake of his head, like he really can't expect any better of Danny, and he can't, Danny's pretty much bound to dislike Hawaii, only taking the most minuscule of inching steps toward liking anything on it at Grace's behest or a lot of shoving. The thought doesn't stay long though, because watching Danny really is sort of like a spectator sport.

Especially once Danny looks entirely at a loss for how it just happened that he was agreeing with Steve, when he meant to point out he was not agreeing with Steve. Leaving him stumbling over his words. Trying to figure out what just happened, and how Steve wasn't wrong, even when Danny was certain he was at the beginning. It's actually kind of enthralling. Delightful. All these not him words. Bubbling up in his chest. Watching Danny's lips come together into a frown, brow wrinkling toward the center.

There with the urge to reach up a hand and brush his thumb at the skin there. Which doesn't happen, but it holds for a long second, considered, like something being turned over and over in his hand, while Danny is still tossing words together at the air, about having lost his train. Steve just plucks at like its own string. Instead of reaching up to smooth the skin. "You admitting you're just talking to hear your own voice now, too?"

"It must not have been very important, if you've already lost it," Steve goaded, unhelpfully, fixing him with a relaxed loose expression, mouth curved and shoulders back to more relaxed. Because he was, always, disagreeing. Maybe even on principle. They both did. All the time. Ever this was, right now. If just at a different tilt and spin. Turning Danny in circles, unmaking his own decision, ignoring the things that were problems.

For the one that should have been the biggest one, and wasn't. Was, more than not, the person who eased every other one.

[haole_cop]

"That's funny."

The kind of ground in exasperation that isn't even exasperation anymore, that is so old and routine that it's more like affection than anything else. Steve is talking him in circles, and Danny digs in his heels, mulish, refusing to keep plodding around in the track laid out for him.

Even if it means acquiescing. This once. Because Steve may have a point, and even if he doesn't, the couch is starting to make itself known in very apparent ways that will soon include fabric creases etched into his skin, not to mention how much less comfortable this thing actually gets, when there are no blankets or pillows and he's also trying to share it with Steve, who simply does not fit, anywhere.

Honestly, there are days Danny's amazed he makes it into the car at all.

And now he's just doing this on purpose. Teasing, prodding, like a little kid with a stick, with that stupid, bright smile washing across his face and painting thick stripes of light in Danny's chest.

It's not enough. Not nearly enough. Steve doesn't smile that way nearly as often as he should, and, yeah, the world is a rough place, vale of tears, and all, but this. Man. This is something else. This is Steve, years dropping away from him. Looking pleased and relaxed and fuzzy-edged. Smiling smug and small, whole giant frame loose and easy, taken apart like his joints have been let out a notch or two.

"I thought you wanted to move, I see no movement happening here, just a lot of you deciding to be a smartass instead."

[thebesteverseen]

Steve's smile turns sharp and dangerously mischievous on the drop of the words. Eyebrows raising, and pulling back a little.

Too bright and full of himself, instantly, "Oh? I'm not moving enough for you now? We can fix that."

It doesn't really take him more than the second to think about it, not even a pause for the words to pop out and register. Even if he knows there's about to be flailing, possibly smacking, definitely bitching is going to follow in with how easy it is for him to not only consider moving, but shove his body, and shift his weight and roll for it. Or more aptly, toss backwards.

Feet toward the ground, toss his weight on way, balance one hand, using the couch beside Danny, to push up and propel even faster, and the other not letting go of Danny's hand in his, dragging Danny upright along with him.

Not aiming for untangling himself, or even stepping back, so much as suddenly springing toward upward, against the space right in front of the couch. Getting his weight toward his calves and his toes, when he's dragging Danny along with that arm, prepared and preparing for that. Even though he's wrapped and and obviously not expecting anything as sudden as the words provoke in Steve a need to show off were utterly possibly.

[haole_cop]

"Hey, whoa--"

It's not fair. It's not fair that Steve has so much more leverage, almost always, and that Steve is big enough to gain the advantage even if he doesn't, because there is no law of physics that says he should be able to pull up and drag Danny with him that easily. Right?

(He's not totally sure, high school physics is a long way away, these days.)

He comes loose with a sticky, ripping sound, snapping at his back, which feels raw and stinging with suddenly cool air. Legs forced to rearrange themselves, the back slipping to bend against the couch back to regain some kind of balance, the other sliding off Steve's, awkward and loose.

It lets his free hand come up to bat at Steve's shoulder, at least, castigating, temper flaring into annoyance. "What the hell is the matter with you? Do you have to take everything literally? Is this some kind of medical condition? Please tell me, because it would actually explain a lot about the way you function."

Steve is a freight train, taking the most direct immediate route to whatever he's trying to accomplish, and half the time Danny feels like someone screaming that the bridge ahead is out, with zero effect on Steve's direction or speed. Stubborn asshole.

And then sometimes he drags Danny with him, like now, looking just as pleased with himself as if he could want nothing else but to have Danny shouting at him, annoyed at being moved, manhandled like a toy or teddy bear.

"Just so you know, this does not actually negate the 'being a smartass' factor. Huh? Are you happy with yourself? Was there a part B to this plan, or have we reached a dead end?"

[thebesteverseen]

It shouldn't make him smile when Danny follows through on what he knew was coming. A wash of movement. Fluttering mess of blonde hair. And suddenly waving hand, smacking his shoulder. Words turned pointed and sharp in the brace of a passing second. All of which shouldn't be making him smile. It shouldn't. But it is. Standing there. Naked, and grinning, watching Danny looking suddenly like he shot someone without cause.

Like Danny didn't just prod him about not moving, and is now yelling about moving too much, too fast.

It does leaves him standing, at least, even if he's grinning down at Danny looking as disgruntled as ever. Feeling the pull in the muscles in thighs and all through his lower abdomen. It's not so bad after everything else, swimming and hiking and running. But he'll definitely be feeling it a while. Even if it's completely on the sidelines from everything else he's feeling about Danny and his rumpled up expression and his hair.

The sorry state of the couch that'll need seeing to. Like the kitchen's dishes. And themselves. A reckless, exploded mess.

Leaving Steve groping for a second for where he threw his own shirt, even when he's bending to pick up a handful of the pile of pants and boxers not far off the couch itself. A pile at its, and their, feet befitting such a crazy rush, things half turned inside out. His own boxers still shoved inside his cargo's. Danny's peeled off jeans that he really would not mind seeing a whole lot more of.

"You asked for movement," Steve said, easily, like Danny wasn't shouting at him.

Widely and wildly unapologetic, which was totally an answer for that question about whether it made him happy. It might have been insane. But all of this, did. Which was. Insane. You know. Well. No one knew. Well. Except Cath, now. But it did. Make him stupidly happy for sets of seconds. Even the yelling. All of this made him happy with himself. Danny, still looking bowled over and blown out, and still managing shouting.

"Well," Steve tossed Danny his jeans, mouth getting the better of him. Maybe never not having the better of him, already. "I am going up-" Pointed and pressed on and poking, arrogant assumption ladled all over it, about what Danny will do and who he'll choose over what, even when he's being terrible. "-but you can stay on the couch, if you feel you haven't bonded with it long enough,"

[haole_cop]

There is definitely going to be an impression left behind. The cushion he'd been lying on is starting to breathe itself back into shape with a faint wheeze, and his back is cold against air instead of leather.

And Steve is standing there, laughing at him. Smiling and smug, arrogantly amused, expectant. And, okay. Going upstairs with Steve really is, probably, the best possible outcome to all this, but Steve is looking smug and pleased with himself and that's almost enough to make Danny dig in his heels and keep arguing.

Instead, he pushes up off the couch, catching the jeans as they're flung at him, and ignores the fact that he's buck naked and so is Steve, in a way that feels weird now that they aren't pressed up close and tight, neat as a key in a lock. Like this could be normal, like he could have made that entire episode up in his head, if it weren't for the fact that Steve's walking around totally at ease in his bare skin and his clothes are piled everywhere, tossed and forgotten.

"Like I haven't spent enough time on your couch."

Like he would ever willingly sleep on a couch, as long as this keeps miraculously happening, as long as Steve wants him upstairs instead. Couches mean fights, couches mean platonic charity. He wouldn't stay down here even if Steve weren't talking to him, were angry instead of amused, cold instead of inviting. Okay? Couches are out.

Instead, he waggles the jeans, eyebrows pointed. "Or is this an invite to get myself dressed and out of here?"

Doubtful. Because Steve has just about said so, but two can play at this whole teasing game.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny comes up, catching his clothes and punching back on the reference with his own dig about whether should leave. Waving the pants in his hand like they are supposed to be some kind of red flag being flung in front of him. It might help more if Danny looked even slightly like he was considering the option. But he isn't. He's still undressed and completely undone.

Not looking like he's focused any of his attention on alleviating either of those issues at any point relatively soon.

"Yeah, Danny," Steve said, expression smoothing long and blandly amused, on a rise of his brow that went pretty much with his forehead. And this tasteless flat sort of playing along, where his voice completely gave away the fact he wasn't agreeing in the slightest. "Because that's exactly what I've been saying all night."

Leave. Go home. Get out of here. Be anywhere else. With anyone else. He hadn't let him leave. He had vehemently hated the automatic assumption Danny had. He was so much closer, only minutes ago, to knowing the truth was still the same as it had felt for over a year. Not that he didn't want something, but that he wanted absolutely everything he had and absolutely everything he didn't on top of that.

Everything that was Danny. That was what he wanted, even if he couldn't put it into words. Details. Sense.

When he reached out a hand, finding Danny's shoulder, and dragging his fingers up it. Grazing a faint red circle already coloring on it. Up to his neck, finger tips tightening a little at his neck, against the shell of his ear and the hair behind it. When the position is more like he could drag from there forward, but instead he leans in, towers down toward Danny.

"Do you really need a written invitation still?" That part is soft, almost unwavering intense, not looking away from Danny's face or tossing it away like the joke it was brought out as. Like somehow he could pack the last hour, or two, or whatever it is, every minute, all of this since he came in. Every bit of it. Into that last word. Still.

But his mouth slides just enough toward teasing, when his head tilts. "I'm sure there's paper in the desk somewhere if it'd help."

[haole_cop]

Still. Like there's no question. Like there couldn't possibly be a question. Because Danny is an idiot even for joking about it, and okay, mostly, it was, is, a joke. Right? Steve already said. He's already naked, for God's sake. This isn't like slinking back, half-dressed and rumpled, to sleep at home. Hasn't been since the first day. Stay. Said now in five or six different ways, at five or six different times.

"I don't know," he says, and he pretends it's actually as light and disinterested as he wants it to be, doesn't snag on that awkwardly placed tine in his chest that keeps twirling everything tighter and tighter. "There's something sort of classy about a written invitation. Not that I'm suggesting you have that kind of class, alright, that's just the sort of wishful thinking I sometimes indulge in."

But Steve's hand is curling light just behind his ear, and his skin is still tingling from the path it took up and over his shoulder, and they're just words, anything, whatever he can toss at Steve to make him find the faces Danny's used to: the frowns and eyerolls and smugly arrogant smiles. Because this --

This is. It's Steve softened. Steve lightened. And it strikes like a match against all the parts of Danny left rough and sandpaper-abrupt. A tiny signal flare, bursting into small, steady life. Things Steve keeps touching, like fingers are brushing straight through skin into all the twisted up miserable thoughts tacked like torn, crooked photographs on the walls of his skull. Tugging them straight, or bypassing them completely, and leaving him in this strange, confused spin that leaves him blinking and bemused, staring at a completely different view than he'd thought was in front of him.

Steve's specialty, he guesses.

Steve, leaning down, towards him, close enough that all it would take would be an inch forward and up, and that shouldn't still make his mouth feel dry, should it? "But thank you for the offer."

[thebesteverseen]

It should say something immediately. The way his eyes --light, bright, half focusedstill-- flicker at the antagonizing words.

Ballsy and arrogant, like there's no cliff he couldn't climb, surmount and leap off of. Right this second. Just like this. Without a stitch of clothing. With Danny leaning in against his fingers, and his voice tumbling, out all show, even when his pulse is softly racing not far from where Steve's hand is, and breathe comes thiner in it. All of it in his view looking down.

He lets his hand fall from the side of Danny's head, easy as his next breath, with an exaggerated raise of his eyebrows, taking up a gauntlet not even actually thrown down. Or not anymore thrown down or out than anything else that ever comes out of their mouths. Fingers falling through the air, close enough half an inch, an inch, at the most, would have some force of friction graze Danny's chest.

But he doesn't touch him. In fact all he does is smirk like he knows he could -- touch him, drag him close, kiss him -- like the insult and insinuation is nothing more than a compliment worse than gone straight to his head, like too many beers after the end of case where everything finally worked out, without any deaths, and even an easy, fast sentence.

When Steve steps back, and turns. Heading toward the desk in long, fast, efficient strides. Stoping only at the side, to start pushing things around. Locating a yellow memo pad and a red pen, neither the best choice with any thought. But thought isn't the point. Not even slightly. Especially not when he's looking up after he jots something, sizing Danny up for a second, and crossing out something, and suddenly, instead, writing another word.

Only to look up, smirk even more menacingly pleased with himself, all focus on the paper on top of stacks, and long limbs and tan lines, broken only by yellow light and shadows and the dark ink on his upper arms and lower back, before he amends the last word. Again. The smile at his lips, as he does such, a clear warning all its own.

[haole_cop]

Steve is rarely a fan of the expected maneuver. He prefers the abrupt, the alarming, the downright blunt, and Danny knows this, but he still isn't used to seeing it in action. Two years down the line, and he probably won't ever be, because his brain does not take the cataclysmic leaps off the train tracks at which Steve's excels.

So Danny shouldn't be surprised when Steve breaks away, dropping his hand and leaving the back of Danny's neck cold and tingling, side-slipping Danny's equilibrium off-balance, but it leaves him staring over his handful of jeans, watching Steve walk away. Moving with the same sense of efficiency and efficacy as he'd use at work, like he's heading to the computer table, or to his desk. The long, wide, flat, polished one; not the ancient piece left here by John McGarrett, that's probably older than Steve himself.

Staring that dissolves into exasperation, eyebrows pulling together and eyes turning unimpressed.

"Really?"

Whatever Steve's writing, making him look so pleased with himself, he's pretty sure he doesn't want to see it, will only drag himself further into this mire he's so stuck in, that he should have known better, and just never had the chance to avoid because he never once saw it coming.

"Cute, that's very cute, I like it."

Steve's grinning at him, that slant to his smile looking more mad cat than ever, and it should only worry him, right, should only wind that gear that tightens to its breaking point every single day at work.

That funny little hop just behind his breastbone just proves how crazy he's actually gone.

The hand holding the jeans moves, jerking towards the stairs, and his eyebrows lift, incredulous. "Should I wait? Or are you going to pass me a note? Are we back in seventh grade now, did I miss some sort of time warp, here?"

[thebesteverseen]

Steve's pushing toward standing up again, ripping off the bottom two inches of the yellow lined paper without much attention to where the paper rips. Madcap and amused, weight shifting back into his feet and away from the lean into the desk, fingers holding the paper, wrist writing quickly. Pen dropping, forgotten as soon as it's left his fingers, rolling across the desk, unheeded until it hits something else that, at least, isn't the floor this time.

Steve can't be bothered to think about the pen at all. Or the desk. Or even Danny's hands, and jeans, waving, heavily castigating words. Okay. Well. That last one, only tucks his smirk in broader, as he's headed back. Danny waving his pants, not making on move to put them back on cover himself back up. It's a sight that is still so new and different he can't help noticing all of it, even in that second of turning.

Strong, thick muscles along arms, legs, stomach, shoulders. All of it edged with the fuzz of hair that covers so much of Danny, catching the room's light and giving a soft halo to the space around his skin directly under it. All of it. All of it seizes something in his chest and his stomach. Disbelief and amazement, caught up in that high, smart smugness on his features. That Danny is here. Like this. That all of that just happened, is still happening.

"You're the one who said you wanted more class here," Steve said mockingly. The paper gets held like it's the best answer to any of those. Waiting for Danny's hand to grab the single folded over paper, before he stands there. The smirk stays there, thick and warm on his mouth.

Waiting for Danny to open it, and find the message written, fast and not even as neat as the little paperwork he like to, with Come to bed, idiot. The last word crossed out. Then under it, directly is Danno, also crossed out. With right under it written, once more, Idiot. With a messy line flicked out, right under, underlining it. All of it, actually, underlined by the way Steve's face never actually falters, even in adding impatient patience to waiting for Danny to catch up to his thought about it two minutes back.

[haole_cop]

It's unfair, is what it is. How that goofy grin on Steve's face makes Danny feel like someone's twirling a spaghetti fork in his guts. Self-pleased smirk crooking his mouth, blue eyes warm and full of the kind of gleeful brilliance that wipes ten years off Steve's face, and it is, shouldn't be, something alarmingly like endearing.

Whatever's in his bent head, whatever he's written that he holds out on that yellow legal paper, that he's holding out, with a look like Grace gets sometimes when she's found something she loves and that Danny will probably, definitely, hate with the fire of a thousand exploding suns (including but not limited to: small creatures from the beach, talking dolls, singing stuffed animals, and anything to do with boy bands), and it's off-putting, to say the least.

The way his chest and throat constrict, with the way Steve is watching him. Like Danny is still the best part of this, whatever he'd come up with that he clearly thinks is the greatest dig of all time, because Steve occasionally cracks himself up in ways that no one else gets. Resulting in things like this square of legal paper that Danny looks at, suspicious, before huffing a breath through his nose, and reaching to pluck the thing away, flipping it open and scanning it quickly.

Mouth twisting and eyebrows sinking into an exasperated frown, before his eyes move back to Steve, and he waves the paper, flapping like a crippled butterfly. "You call this an invitation? This is the worst invitation I've ever seen, and I'm including the construction paper ones handed out in fourth grade to the stupid birthday parties at the roller rink. This is terrible."

But it is an invitation, and the knot existing in his chest jogs hard at the smile in Steve's eyes, bright and strangely gentle behind the smug smirk painted arrogantly across his mouth, and his hand is reaching before he knows it, fingers wrapping Steve's wrist and tugging as he turns towards the stairs in a way that belies the aggravated tone of voice.

"You done? Can we go, or do you have any more desire to continue being a smartass?"

[thebesteverseen]

It should be wrong, how much his chest stays warm and tight watching Danny's eyes track across the few words there. The way his mouth twists, unsurprised and harried, toward a frown. Eyebrows lowering, even when Danny looks up. Like Steve is the worst this he has to put up with in the world. That paper being flung through the air, waving with his hand, the point to drag in, drag Steve's eyes back to.

Like his gaze can be peeled off Danny's face. Aways from that aggravation that doesn't actually change the exasperated warmth in Danny's blue, blue eyes. Or the way his hair is a mess, everywhere, hanging around his face, brightened up by the lights, making him want to thread his fingers into and drag Danny, and every crease at the edge of his eyes and mouth, back closer.

Like twenty feet to the desk, and the two or three left between them, once he got back, was too far all of the sudden, and, again.

A prize for pushing even more buttons, making Danny rant even more, like he can't stand Steve's harebrained antics.

Which might be true, in some small part, if it were not for that other hand, and those fingers that curl around his wrist. If Danny's eyes weren't making a drunken sway around his face, hooked against his mouth. Up and down, eyes meeting, drifting, fingers curling on his skin. Shoving at each other, more and more, and dragging it further away. Dragging Steve further away.

From the desk, and the couch, and the living room. And most any recollection of the front door and the lawn. When the only urge is to follow that hand. The cuff of warmth that it feels like all the blood in his body reacts to, like a siren sounding. So that Steve follows without any hesitation. The direction of that hand, of Danny, of the stairs, and the voice throwing words at his head like the rubble still loitering the ground all around them, like the clothes and shoes lost and forgotten somewhere far behind him.

"You asked for it," Steve sniped, right back, all sharp edges, if sharp edges and mocking would or could be made of blistering warmth and pleased success, of that way his mouth curves wide, head ducking slightly in contrast. They were still headed up the stairs, toward his room, after all. No matter how it happened, how it turned on its head, Danny dragging him, shaking his head and complaining, fingers circled like a necessary leash to drag him, it still felt like he'd won in the end.

Danny was staying and Danny was dragging him up, shaking his head at himself and Steve, the whole world.

[haole_cop]

"Incorrect. I said nothing about invitations, and, if I had, I definitely would not have asked for one with an insult tacked onto the end. What are you, six, that you think that's funny?"

Because he does, clearly. It's smacked clear across Steve's stupid face, how amusing he finds all of this, how he obviously thinks that was basically the greatest brainwave of all time, and Danny's pretty sure he'll be smirking about it for at least the next twenty, thirty minutes, easy.

All night, even, which ought to be annoying as hell, and it is, sure, but Danny will also get to be here all night and he's pretty okay with that plan, no matter how aggravatingly pleased with himself Steve is. "That was your big idea. Admittedly, I should know better than to encourage you, but you know, I live in hope."

Making determinedly for the stairs, fingers still wrapped firm around Steve's wrist, like the guy might try to make a break for it. He might. It's possible. No matter how often Steve tells him to stay, or makes fun of him for wanting to be sure, there's still that niggling doubt, burrowing in the back of his head, latched on to his skull. Pointing out, unhelpful, that Steve could change his mind any time.

Which doesn't match up with anything Steve's said or done, so Danny can only conclude it's not actually about Steve, that voice. He might have his worries, but the available evidence suggests Steve wants pretty much the exact opposite, right, otherwise he wouldn't have told Cath, would have spent the weekend hooking up with her like usual. He wouldn't have run after Danny onto the front yard, wouldn't have watched him like he did, splayed out on the couch, dark blue eyes following every movement Danny made, trained on his face and blown wide open and soft instead of just feverish.

No. Well, yes. It still could happen, and Danny's sure it will, at some point, but Steve's taken to looking outright offended at any sort of suggestion headed in that direction, so Danny can only conclude it's his own fucked up head saying this to him, convincing him it's true.

Which doesn't make it easier to ignore, but does allow him to vastly enjoy the way Steve follows him up the stairs like Danny's fingers around his wrist are some sort of leash, some imperative thing he can't help but follow.