He's relaxing slowly enough. Steve can feel it. Slow increments, the way you can begin to notice even infinitesimal movement when you've been stuck in a tree or a hole for days at a time. Until you are so lost in utter stillness, everything else is a little jarring, a little, sometimes a lot, like having a boiling red spotlighst and blaring sirens going off. It's a little like that. Not the spotlight, and the siren. But he can feel it going.
Under his arms. Under his head. Against his chest. Danny undoing with the slow, steadiness given perfectly timed second hands on a good watch. Unfurling not in seconds, but in breaths. Pulled in, through his nose against Steve's neck, and pushed out in these solid warm gusts against his shoulder, the top of his chest. When it's only marginally better, Danny coiled into him instead of away from him. But it's a marginal he can deal with. A marginal he can feel.
His mouth curves just faintly when Danny laughs. That sounds almost hurts, but it's perfect, too. He wants ore of that. Even just barely there, before Danny is smarting off at the words Steve put out there. Not letting go, but waving what verbally amounts to a hand brushing the implication away. As though anything about Danny could. Make him think of a girl. Make him want a woman. Want anything but this.
The confused muddle of knots inside his arms, that he's pretty sure starts at Danny's spine beneath his fingers and does not stop until it comes out the other side of his own back. But it's still true. This. He wants this. More than anything. And he knows what it is. And what it isn't. And, he's aware, even, of what it really might never be. Of the razor edge it walks in terms of the timeline of Danny's future, and the seismic ground Danny dropped on to with one kiss.
Even when Danny is finding more words. Less careful. Repeating, denying. Like he's fighting away some assumption of Steve's, and Steve can't even be entirely sure what it was. That was seconds ago. But Danny was now, which was the only place he could be, knew how to be. Before stopping with that implication. That Steve knows. Because Steve knows Danny. What Danny can give, will give the world. A person. And all of it doesn't match here. Everything Danny does.
"So you just like me more than the rest of the world, is what you're sayin'."
That one at least tries to cross over earlier. Thick, but just tripping toward assumptively arrogant.
Like the only reason Danny could ever have chosen this path, chosen these choices, attacked his coffee and been willing to be kicked out of Five-0, jumped through a hundred hoops in so many days, when he threw a fit about take one step even toward a hoop in the direction of Gabby, be here at all, in his arms, his bed was that obviously Steve obviously was better. More. The Best.
Because everything else. Every other else in his head. It isn't supposed to be there. It's somewhere else. Behind other doors.
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Under his arms. Under his head. Against his chest. Danny undoing with the slow, steadiness given perfectly timed second hands on a good watch. Unfurling not in seconds, but in breaths. Pulled in, through his nose against Steve's neck, and pushed out in these solid warm gusts against his shoulder, the top of his chest. When it's only marginally better, Danny coiled into him instead of away from him. But it's a marginal he can deal with. A marginal he can feel.
His mouth curves just faintly when Danny laughs. That sounds almost hurts, but it's perfect, too. He wants ore of that. Even just barely there, before Danny is smarting off at the words Steve put out there. Not letting go, but waving what verbally amounts to a hand brushing the implication away. As though anything about Danny could. Make him think of a girl. Make him want a woman. Want anything but this.
The confused muddle of knots inside his arms, that he's pretty sure starts at Danny's spine beneath his fingers and does not stop until it comes out the other side of his own back. But it's still true. This. He wants this. More than anything. And he knows what it is. And what it isn't. And, he's aware, even, of what it really might never be. Of the razor edge it walks in terms of the timeline of Danny's future, and the seismic ground Danny dropped on to with one kiss.
Even when Danny is finding more words. Less careful. Repeating, denying. Like he's fighting away some assumption of Steve's, and Steve can't even be entirely sure what it was. That was seconds ago. But Danny was now, which was the only place he could be, knew how to be. Before stopping with that implication. That Steve knows. Because Steve knows Danny. What Danny can give, will give the world. A person. And all of it doesn't match here. Everything Danny does.
"So you just like me more than the rest of the world, is what you're sayin'."
That one at least tries to cross over earlier. Thick, but just tripping toward assumptively arrogant.
Like the only reason Danny could ever have chosen this path, chosen these choices, attacked his coffee and been willing to be kicked out of Five-0, jumped through a hundred hoops in so many days, when he threw a fit about take one step even toward a hoop in the direction of Gabby, be here at all, in his arms, his bed was that obviously Steve obviously was better. More. The Best.
Because everything else. Every other else in his head. It isn't supposed to be there. It's somewhere else. Behind other doors.