gonna_owe_me | (no subject)

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Steve is really good at avoiding her.

Normally, she probably wouldn't even call it "avoiding." Normally, she would call it his usual M.O. and chalk it up to being a side effect of being halfway around the world from each other. There are times they've gone for months with no contact, and two weeks is barely the blink of an eye, particularly when she's busy and he keeps getting high-profile, high-priority cases.

At least, that's what she hears, when she hears anything at all.

But those weeks and months of zero contact, running silent, off the grid: those days aren't exactly applicable when there are extenuating circumstances such as A. they are living on the same island and B. she knows there's something he really doesn't want to talk to her about.

Ergo, avoidance.

She's not an impatient or nosy person, though, so she lets it slide, for a little while. He clearly needs to get used to the idea himself, and, frankly, so does she. It's not that they haven't stumbled across a situation where one or the other of them was out of commission for their normal arrangement, but in general, those interrupting factors were not potentially career-threatening. Not to the extent of sleeping with a subordinate. Not to the extent of sleeping with a partner. Not seriously.

And it is serious, whether Steve is admitting to it, or not. It's splashed across him like someone doused him in paint and sticky sunlight, in the way he'd magnetized towards the door, the way he'd run out after Danny. Maybe even more because he didn't bring it up until he absolutely had to.

So Steve is avoiding her, and she can sympathize, because this is not a conversation she particularly wants to sit through, either, but it still needs to happen, because, knowing Steve, he hasn't told anyone else and is shutting it back into compartments poorly designed for a situation of this magnitude and complexity.

Which is why, when she called him on the next weekend inferred to be Danny's weekend with Grace, she's given him the benefit of both giving her the slip for two weeks and the peace offering of meeting at a place with really excellent drinks, one of which she has in hand as she sits at a table by an open window, chin in her hand, looking out at the quietly rolling ocean. It's early evening, and she's come off a twelve hour shift, so it's nice to sit, let her thoughts unhinge, ebb and flow with the waves and mild breeze. Wrangling an affirmative had proved to be difficult, but she'd managed it, pointing out that they might as well meet out, seeing as they're definitely going to make it to the restaurant this time.

It strips him of the home field advantage, too, but he's not the only one who knows how to keep a wall at his back and a few tricks up his sleeve.

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He doesn't really get it, that look that Steve's getting, crawling between his eyebrows and camping there in a short, deep line. It makes him look like he's about to object to something, like an unruly jury member whose forgotten he's supposed to just observe.

But, really, what's he expecting? No matter where they are or what's happening around them, the list of "things that piss Danny off" is always, always topped by Steve. Always. Sometimes facetiously, sometimes in deadly seriousness, but Steve never ranks less than first, except for a few seconds now and again when Raceh's lawyers or the scumbag of the day beats him out .

Still, Steve always rises back to the top, out of sheer volume of annoyance, and because he's always around, unlike lawyers and skeezeball criminals, so there's no reason for him to look like he's worried he's getting kicked off the Dean's List, and it makes Danny grin, huffing a laugh that sounds more affectionate than exasperated, despite his best intentions, because Steve's eyebrows were starting to push together in that bullheaded way he's got, and Danny can't help it, he finds it kind of endearing, which is, he's aware, sick and wrong.

"Don't worry," he says, when he can, but the words still smudge against Steve's mouth, still get breathed with Steve's breath, lands on Steve's lips like he's the one who said them, "you're still the number one pain in my ass."

Except it comes out low and warm and pressed into Steve's mouth, while he's trying to curl up and Steve's trying to push him down. He wants to wrap all the way around him, flip them over and blanket Steve like Steve's blanketing him, pin him down and make him see...

Something. Whatever this is, this thing Steve's questioning and Danny wants to make sure is unquestionable. He's an idiot, he knows he's an idiot, he knows this is wrong and he knows they should stop and he knows, to his core, that wriggling uncomfortable confused part of himself, that he's not going to do any such thing. There's no stopping now, not until it's over, not until they've slammed into fifth gear and gone shooting off the cliffside.

But laughing at Steve -- even yelling at Steve -- isn't as good as kissing Steve, dragging him down and trying to push up at the same time, fighting to own this kiss like he fights to own everything Steve shoves at or away from him, because Steve needs someone who'll push him back instead of letting him shove right through, and, God help him, Danny appears to intend being that person.

At least for now. As long as he can.

Steve can'r help it. The soft groan that nearly drags out of his chest like it's being drug with forceps and a jet engine, hands and thoughts unable to do anything to stop it. When Danny is laughing into his face, into this kiss. Taking that sounds and throwing it everywhere in his chest, like a hard wind off the sea, like waves crashing against a hull, up and over deck, spattering solid and sharp across everything.

Drowning out all the thoughts he had a second ago. Until the heavy racing, pounding, in his chest can't even be his heart. It's just this wild thing chanting Danny's name over and over again, like it's trying to escape his ribcage. Trying to bang through muscles and bone like it's tissue and twine. When that sound, that groan, is getting tangled in that space, on Danny's words.

Relief twisting up with something viciously possessive. Doesn't want to share. Doesn't want to give up even this angry, annoyed focus of Danny on him to anyone or anything else. Doesn't want to see it, himself, replaced. Wants to taste the marrow of that focus, fixation, antagonization, which shoves words into Steve mouth that twist and contort in every way they shouldn't. Give him ideas about marking, claiming, that leave the small bruises in the dust.

Which isn't helped by Danny suddenly laying into him, fighting for control. Dragging him down. Fingers in his hair, on his skin. Pushing up into his body. Like there's any space. But somehow Danny finds it. Solid and warm against him, fitting himself in like a key. Until Steve has to react, tightening his knees and thighs against Danny's legs, hands traveling. One loose and heavy against the side of his head, and the other back toward the buttons he'd left.

The shirt in his way. The way everything is throbbing in his head, his skin, against the onslaught of Danny. Against giving at least as much as he gives, if not a hundred percent more. Shoving out even a scream follow by smarting dialogue, because he's gruffly saying, "I'll give you a pain in your ass," before he's tugging Danny's bottom lip into his mouth with teeth, sucking on it, like it's necessary for staying alive. Or maybe for leaving it at that.

A ground out sound, followed by threat or an accusation. Because he doesn't mean it. Except that he does.

And fuck it all if he hasn't said anything like that in weeks. It's at least as true, as everything he can't take back now.
That he wants Danny, in every single goddamn way possible and not possible, as much as he knows he shouldn't, too.

It's a wild thought, that he loves this.

Flashing through his head like a shoal of silver fish, darting away in startled fear at even the idea, but it's true. The sound Steve makes, dark and needy and exasperated all at once, the way he pushes down, hard, like he's jealous, could possibly be jealous, of anything else that might manage to piss Danny off as much as Steve manages on a minute to minute basis. Hand dragging hard over Danny's chest, to find buttons and tug at them, sulky and rapid, proving a point, fingers snaking through his hair, and those words, dropping like raw eggs and splatting gunshot patterns all over the inside of Danny's chest.

And the way Danny can't quite seem to catch his breath, because he's still laughing.

Mostly silent, now. A shake of his chest against Steve's palm, unruly smile grinning against Steve's mouth, those words sizzling straight through his cerebral cortex, into the instinctive core of his brain, burning out any filters that may once have existed along the way. "I don't think that's the normal goal, is it?"

Falling out of his mouth, into Steve's, amused and a little challenging and a little questioning at the same time, because it's a joke, and it's not a joke, and it's been a month now, and Steve's clearly done all this before but Danny's still got basically no clue how it works beyond what they already do. Which doesn't mean he's not willing to learn, which doesn't mean he doesn't want to, and doesn't mean he doesn't feel a little thrill of uncomfortable fear beating blunt wings in the pit of his stomach, too.

Not that he expects Steve to put it on the table right now. Not that he has any idea what he's talking about, aside from a vague notion.

But under those fluttering leaden wings, the sick crawly feeling in his gut, there's something else. Heat. Want. He wants Steve, in every way possible, said so the first day, and he meant it, even though he froze up in the kitchen, didn't know what to do with the information shoved so unceremoniously into his hands. Wants, God. So much. To wake up tomorrow morning and not have to go to work. To wipe that uncertain look right off Steve's face.

And, yeah. When they end up in bed, he wants to fuck Steve. He's aware of wanting Steve to fuck him, even if he's not totally clear on how the mechanics work.

Does it matter? He figured it out once. He can do it again. And this time, he has the benefit of not being a clueless teenager. It's not like the basic premise is all that different, right?

If anything the fact that Danny throws anything back immediately after that first tiny pause is surprising enough. That it's about this -- the way Steve cannot extricate the memory of Danny floored toward terrified even weeks later -- and he still keeps rolling. Half a laugh, a joke and just that faintest edge of something that says he really isn't certain whether he's right or wrong. That's almost more than Steve really knows what to do with for a second in there.

Beading a line faintly into his shoulders even when he can feel Danny's chest shivering under his, ribs caught in the solid shake of the laughter that is more caught inside the barrel of his chest than inside Steve mouth at all. The way every single sign says something other than the face defining itself, clearer and clearer, in his head. And he has never once forgotten what that looked like. The way Danny looked ready to bolt and run screaming finally. Even for a second.

So, maybe his hand does pause, in undoing the last button. Just enough that it's noticeable.

In a way that he'd never pause for gunfire, or even large explosions, happening outside his location in a warzone.

Before he has it back, before he's tugging a shirt side oneway to get his hand on the rest of Danny's skin. The soft firmness of his stomach. The solid rise of his hip bone and his ribs. The coarse delicate hair over it all. The way he can't pretend it's not Danny's skin and Danny's saying anything that have both left him a little breathless, a little driven in the kiss that followed them.

When the complex combination of too many words, too many responses, too many uncertainties has him give a shrug, breaking through the line of his shoulders, for a tone of voice more flippant than how deadly, pin-drop, serious, ice one step from cracking, everything feels in his chest suddenly. "That really depends on what you're looking for." Which might be more honest than needs putting out there, too.

Especially not light on Danny's lips, before he's on to looking down at his hand on Danny's side, thumb stroking Danny's skin, caught in the faintest space between their bodies, tightening the ache in his own body, before he's looking at Danny's face. Because it's about as true as anything, too. There were people who went look for that, too. Rough, fast, hard as possible. He's been one of them before, in certain circumstances, and even that sits like heavy weight trapping his tongue.

Not that he has any delusions that Danny might be looking for that. Or anything. Maybe even ever.

Edited 2013-05-20 12:15 (UTC)

He's really not used to Steve taking a second to stop and think, so this hesitation, tiny as it is, is unnerving.

Steve doesn't hesitate. Steve doesn't pause. Steve rolls over all barriers and obstacles like a tank, barely acknowledging them at all. Steve burns out the floor with words that hit Danny's stomach like acid. Steve grabs them both and shoves them off a safe bridge into a churning mass of rocks and river.

Danny's not used to the idea that Steve might ever not be absolutely, one hundred percent sure, and his eyes are open when Steve offers light words that ring dense as lead. They're still open when Steve works that final button free, and there's a frown beginning a slow pull between them when Steve avoids looking at his face for a second, watches his thumb smoothing carefully over Danny's skin, instead.

Making Danny not sure which is more concerning: the fact that Steve isn't looking at him right away, or the thumb that's the only part of Steve's hand moving across his skin, like Steve thinks he might bolt, or like Steve thinks he needs soothing. Or, maybe, that Steve needs to be soothed, dropping terrible attempts at casual against Danny's mouth and then turning away for a second that stretches too long, tugs Danny's brow into a deeper line by the time Steve looks back up again.

It shouldn't be a forbidden topic. Right? Especially now, after what he just said outside, after what Steve agreed to. After what Cath assumed, even if it was more a joke than an actual label. These nebulous fantasies and guilty, fevered imaginings aren't going to cut it forever, and he just wants to know, okay, there's no harm in knowing, and that little flutter of trepidation can just swan right off out the door, thanks. "Yeah, I think it's fair to say I couldn't even begin to make an educated guess about that. I'm pretty new to this whole thing."

How can he know what he wants when he really has no idea what's even on the table, what it's like, how freaky it might feel or how natural it might surprise him as being? He doesn't know. It's re-learning the wheel, and that takes a certain degree of, what. Experimentation, right?

He's already established he trusts Steve with his life. Is any of this really harder than that?

His hands slide from Steve's hair to his shoulders, one traveling up and down his bicep. Slow down. Breathe. Relax. "But you're not."

It's not a question, because it's obvious. Even though they haven't talked about it, and he hasn't asked. It's private, right up until it starts being something that can help or hurt them, and Danny's pretty sure it just reached that point, out of nowhere, with the sounds of the movie playing unheard and ignored in the background.

All of the sudden things slow. Not stop. Not freeze. But Danny's grip loosens on his hair, fingers, hands sliding down his neck. Across his shoulder and his upper arm, pressure whispering through the cloth of his shirt, smoothing over muscles before they even have the chance to tense. The chance to anything but listen to that touch.

The way he can't not hear the words that get said. Seeing it has a dividing line and one he already tried to hit with a wrecking ball. That he lets get the best of his mind now and then, in situations where he can't help it, but only that. Not the better of Danny.

Who is staring up at him, quiet and slanting more toward serious than his face has been in a little while. Admitting to both of those things. Asking Steve to.

"No-" he says, feeling the ease dripping slowly out across himself, like drops of water falling off his skin once he emerges from the water nearly every morning. Something he's so used to, he could recognize it in his sleep as much as he could sleep through it on his feet, at attention. Not nervous or ashamed, but maybe a little warily unprepared for it being this second.

For it being said so easily, when it hasn't really been poked at or talked about in weeks.

It's more middle of the road, acknowledging, but almost only that. "-I'm not."

When he has no idea where Danny might take that or want it to go.

Or what he might want to know, and how much there is in those places Steve isn't even sure whether he'd want Danny to know.

He's suddenly intensely aware of all the ways they're pressing against each other, now. Steve's weight blankets him, long legs bracketing the one Danny's still got on the couch, hips pressing bones into the top of his thighs. Stomach, softer than the rest of him, but still firm with heavy muscle. Pillowed warm and complete.

Warring ribcages, that really shouldn't fit, because Danny's have a sharp rise and fall to his stomach, and Steve's not exactly small-boned; he's big and rangy with a large frame that might not be as square as Danny's but is definitely no less solid. There's nothing about any of it that should feel comforting, except maybe that thumb, smoothing back and forth over Danny's stomach, making him aware of his skin as a part of himself, as him, rather than this coating that sometimes burns in the sun and is starting to treacherously wrinkle at the corners of his eyes and mouth. Like maybe somehow that careful thumb is stroking something more than just sensitive skin, is traveling right along nerves sparking and impatient with worry, is slowing thoughts too rapid with uncertainty.

But it is. Comforting. Like Steve's pinning him to Earth, like Steve's weight on top of him is enough to keep anxiety at bay, because he can't fly off the handle when he's sinking into the couch cushions, Steve a warm iron weight anchoring him there.

"Well, I don't know about you, but that sounds like a plus, to me."

He's careful to keep it light, even if this is turning suddenly serious, because he needs Steve to stay right where he is, so that Danny can continue to think about this without tripping into the pit of panic he'd kept stumbling into earlier, tarry fingers wrapping around his ankles, dragging him down. But Steve is looking shifty, at best, and that's got to stop, right now. Is it awkward? Of course it is. But Steve can probably feel his heart beating, can feel the lack of space now available between their hips, can see the way Danny's face is flushed and his hair is in disarray. And it's not like Danny's ever let embarrassment stop him before. "As much as it horrifies me to put any part of my personal comfort in your hands, at least one of us knows what we're doing."

Well. For the physical part, at least. He's really not sure that would apply to any of the rest of it at all.

It's not awkward. Awkward is a strange room where buildings you've never been in hold receptionists who wait while you stand an attention for two minutes before asking you to sit the next ten minutes. This, this is like going to find the bathroom and ending up in a closet on the wrong side of the wrong floor, and not even quite remember the steps for how you got here to begin with.

When you can't stop your muscles from being still and stretched and tight without ever quite tensing, or the reflex of cataloging to much of what is happening right in front of your face. The change rate of breathing, the stacco of heartbeat, the pupillary response. Like each is its own sign, and it's own defense to hide behind when he's staring at Danny. The curve of his mouth that is doggedly hanging on, even as it becomes less pronounce slowly.

When the safe thing to do is to roll his eyes at the insult throw in there, and give Danny a withering look. "Your personal comfort hasn't suffered on the job." Is exasperated, and maybe because he knows just how much Danny doesn't agree. But then Danny came in laced up like green, boot licking, granny in Steve's opinion. Even with that surprise sucker punch.

Steve sees no fault in taking a lot of claim toward Danny being a little more whatever it takes to get the job done, even within his own rules, and a little more loose in the collar, even if those slacks can stay right where they are at this point. Or well. They could move, right now. Like away, to the floor, over the back of the couch. But he isn't looking to see them transitioned out of Danny's wardrobe next.

"But yes, you," Is pointed, like it's an exhausting task, against the thick set of eyebrows and eyes drk with something like malicious teasing. And maybe, maybe just a little too much stillness. Still. "-could have picked far worse where it came to that."

Even if the whole thought, thinking it, is like fingers made of ice have suddenly, without warning, dug into the skin at the base of his neck everywhere. Someone else. Here. Not Gabby, or Rachel. Another guy. Someone else Danny chose. To do whatever with. With his hands heavy and everywhere on Danny's skin, or his mouth catching the sounds teased out of Danny's chest and his throat. Looking at his face, this face.

This careful, uncertain, still trying to keep it light face, that breaks at the edges of his mouth and his eyes, because he can't lie for shit when it matters. That goes along with the fingers that don't ever stay perfectly still. That twitch with something Steve might always call nerves. Because they don't flatten and still with it, it's like they keep making sure Steve is right there, on top of him, pressed in, able to press into his skin, to keep him there, like some balloon that might float away else-wise.

Picked. He could have picked far worse than Steve.

Like he up and decided, recently, that he wanted to try sex with a guy, and coming clean to Steve in a rockslide of ineloquent feelings was somehow a secondary action. Like there was a decision made, first, and he'd considered his options, and picked Steve.

Picked. Steve.

The whole concept makes his thought processes come to an abrupt, bewildered halt, because, Christ, he really couldn't be more wrong if he suggested this was all Rachel's idea. What was it he'd said before? Maybe I never stood a chance. Saying he'd picked Steve is like saying he'd picked the bus that hit him, picked the bullet that brought him down. There's no picking going on here, no choice, no chance. Or, well. There's a choice. There's trying to be here, with Steve, and there's climbing the walls, miserable and furious with the world.

"Then you should stop looking at me like I said I'd like to try a hand at being a trapeze artist instead of a cop. What, you think maybe somehow in all this --"

He lifts one hand off Steve's shoulder and shirt to wave it in a general sort of loop, indicating this, them, the couch, the desk they almost broke, the conversation outside that still makes Danny wonder if he should have just tried punching Steve in the face again. "-- it would maybe just never occur to me that it might be nice to do more than blow you?"

Blunted words, brash with his own bemusement at the very thought that Steve might consider there to have been some sort of picking and choosing. As if falling for him wasn't like falling down a well. He's not on the market, wasn't out shopping, didn't decide to just try Steve on for size and see how he liked the feel of a body heavier than his, flat where he'd been used to curves, hard and hot where he'd been used to soft and yielding.

That's not what this is. If it were, he could have walked away. If it were, he never would have risked his partnership, his friendship, and his job all in one fell swoop by pinning his sights on Steve.

It's not like that. Couldn't be. He's tumbled down at the bottom of that well, now, and someone's pulled the ladder straight back out again.

Steve tries not to smile, but he knows he's probably failing it. Doesn't give a damn really.

He can feel the muscles at the edge of his mouth twinging the way they always do whenever anything even slightly irreverent comes out of Danny's pressed, pink, slightly swollen mouth. Anything that might be construed as lewd, or involve swearing. God. He should not find it hot and fucking endearing all at once, like a gout of flames from nowhere.

Maybe it's easier than hedging the bet on the one shard of chill that sits somewhere at the heart of the rest of wanting to groan, making him press his lips together look too pleased, maybe even a little stunned and left-footed, when it feels like not his throat, but his entire chest goes dry for second. At even the concept. That somewhere in here Danny has been thinking about it, envisioning it. Them. Fucking.

But the want that floods him -- the want to peel back the skin on Danny's head, and pry every word from his lips, of what he's thought of, what he wants, what makes his blood boil and his fingers shake, drives the most desperate longing into those blue eyes, who, where, what, anything he wants, everything -- is almost as staggering as hearing Danny's words the second before it strikes.

When maybe it's easier than what crawls up his throat. The words about to roll off his tongue like a smug banner following that arrogantly victorious smirk, that barely looks insulted or castigated for the point. That aren't the single word, settled like an ice cube in the far back of his throat, hanging by a noose down his throat, so that it can't swing there, roughly battering the side side of his heart and kicking the top of his stomach with too much honesty. That part of him that wants to just say 'Maybe.'

But never wants to either. Because it would be too much. Too small. Too true. Too real.

"You've done more than that." None of it is exactly marginal, but then, Steve's not really counting.

Steve's still trying to wrap his head around mornings, and burying his head into empty pillows when someone isn't there, and it has nothing to do with sex already, and when forcing this is not something he's ever really given a thought to. A frustrated want, yes. Once or twice. But he's had worse, and this. All of this, is more than he was ever supposed to have already. Is so much, sometimes he can't sleep for the exhausted fear it will all be a dream when his eyes open.

"Besides, I thought you just spent your last eternity of million years yelling at me about the fact I wasn't allowed to think anything about any of this anymore, because I was unequipped for that?" It's poppish and it's not exactly a sidestep. He knows it'll be right back there in a second, but only half an hour, if even that, Danny was yelling at him about not being allowed to think for them anymore, too.

It's ironic if nothing else. It's something to focus on that isn't the way his heart is pounding and his hand has stopped rubbing and is gently gripping into Danny's side and the way his mind is slipping in a direction he's done his damnedest to keep it from slipping toward with Danny here. And Danny wants him to. To go there. To think about it. With him. With him here. Pressed closed, messed up, and already flush with want.

Edited 2013-05-21 01:23 (UTC)

It's better when Steve's mouth starts tucking into that arrogant smile, like he can see straight into Danny's head and translate every confused thought into a compliment towards himself. Like he knows what Danny's been thinking, wanting.

Making Danny's hand find Steve's body again, aware that the temperature of the air has changed. No longer fraught and electric with tension, now warming slowly, back towards the slow boil of earlier, which means Danny's fingers slide down Steve's shoulder to his side, track five familiar paths to his hip, where they toy with the hem of his shirt, brush carelessly against warm bare skin underneath it. As Danny's unable to keep from making a face, because it's the only thing keeping him from grinning, hard and sudden and a little shaky. "So don't think too hard."

Always a dangerous thing to tell Steve, suggest to Steve. Steve's not really one for thinking to begin with, not much for analytics and digging out background and finely honing an approach mirroring it. Steve's the guy with the grenades, the flashbangs, the guns the size of his torso. He's probably not someone Danny should hand the reins to and say just go.

But he is. Saying it.

And while he's saying it, he's leaning up, to brush his mouth across the thin skin of Steve's neck, lips parting just barely, tip of his tongue sneaking out to taste salt and skin and Hawaiian warmth. Something almost close to familiar, because he's had his mouth all over Steve's body, tasted his skin clean and sweat-slicked and tired after a long day and covered in tiny crystals of salt. He's done that.

He wouldn't call it more. Knows that what they've done so far isn't anything like what he's thinking about now, like what Steve is thinking about now.

That he does, actually, want Steve to think about. Yeah. He wants that image burned into Steve's brain. Wants to watch it sit there and sink in like fangs, unshakeable in the middle of a workday. Wants it to be teasing, constantly, gnawing at him. Wants to see it flash in his eyes, and know it's unstoppable.

He wants it on Steve's mind. The way it's been on his.

It's like trying to hold the walls and floor together when a building starts shaking so hard you can watch the screws beginning to come loose, the cracks beginning to get serious. Danny's words followed spot on by the fingers that are brushing his skin, like it's an accident, that could never be an accident. Not when his hand skated there. Not when it was toying with his shirt.

Not when Danny's mouth is suddenly on his neck, and his fingers have somehow found Danny's hair. When he can't tell if he's leaning into Danny's mouth or pushing Danny's head up into his neck. While his heart richoet's like he's been shot. And god he might as well have been. Because fuck. Just fuck. Fucking hell. He can't even. The world goes fuzzy white at the edges of the stain.

Of the fire licking at his skin, and the way his finger are buried as desperate into Danny's hair and the muscles of his side as the sudden series of shaky, barely controlled, thrusts against Danny's still almost fully clothed body is. Because it's not like he needs help. Dammit. He doesn't, okay. He doesn't need any help with that. This. Wanting Danny. Wanting everything of Danny that he could possibly track across his head. Has mapped every inch of that skin with his mouth, with his hands, with his body.

Has watched him in the ocean, with shorts clinging, and in the shower with absolutely nothing, but water sliding down his dark gold skin, sleeping in his bed in the too early dark before he vanishes to ocean. Has thought, treacherous, traitorous thoughts about other hard rung activities to do before dawn, to chase the demons out of his head without leaving Danny behind.

Has though about every possibility for a smooth easier introduction to it than he ever managed, dropping a fucking bomb in Danny's last time. Which is what he did. Shoved a fucking bomb in his hands, and watched him turn white as a ghost, with terror and the realization of how many lines he'd crossed. The way he can't do that. He can't see that any. Can't force that, handle that, make that happen, would do or not do anything to avoid seeing that again.

Which is all splinting on a flare of white, and two completely different washes of want and desperation colliding like flint and steel giving way to even bigger explosion under his skin. When he's shivering with the amount of control it takes to hold back, eyes closing almost completely, barely getting out, "That didn't work so well last time."

Because it's not that he doesn't want Danny. God. Fuck. He wants everything. He's always wanted everything. With every part of himself, no matter what he couldn't have. He still does. But he's doesn't have to listen, doesn't have to have, couldn't doesn't want to make. Even when the temperature raising in his head, the shadow possibilities are each creeping closer, catching on everything spawning even, whispering in Danny's voice now, in his fingers tips, on his tongue.

When has he every been able to actually deny Danny? Not before he left. Especially not since he got back. Not tonight.

Edited 2013-05-21 05:24 (UTC)

There's nothing quite like the sensation of being wanted. Of hearing the way Steve's voice bottoms out, feeling fingers dig into his side and his hair, a long tension of muscle contracting above him, because of him. Because Steve wants him.

Enough to sound distracted. Almost drugged. Voice barely there at all, rubbing itself over sandpaper as his hips rub over Danny's slacks. Danny can feel Steve's pulse tapping hard at his tongue; opens his mouth to pull at the skin, rewarded with the hand at the back of his head pushing harder, the body over him trying to move, restless, straight through him.

It's such a high he's not sure he'll ever be able to come back down. Biting gently on the cord of muscle, licking at damp, flushed skin, is like having that one last shot, the one that's really a bad idea, that'll send him into a spiral of fogged up, boozy poor decisions. The one that unlocks words, drops filters, numbs him to the possibility of repercussion. How the hell is he supposed to think about next when right the fuck now is already smoldering impatient coals under his skin, shoving them into his skull and making every single bad idea he's ever had seem like fate?

"Yeah, well..."

The hand not currently sliding up under Steve's shirt moves to the side of Steve's head, tips it with blunt square fingers threading into short hair, so Danny can chase the line of Steve's rabbiting pulse up to the soft underside of his jaw. "Last time was a month ago, and you have to admit there was a lot going on at the time."

Like, for example, every barrier he'd held, smashed in the space of a few second, a few hours, a single day. Gone from bro hugs and back pats to trying to climb down each others' throats, unable to keep their hands off each other for longer than a ten minute stretch. The words I want you screaming like falling meteors in his ears. When, Christ, he never just falls into bed with somebody, works up to it through coffee and dinners and movies and a few sessions of making out on the couch.

But not one of his roadblocks stopped him, that day. Not until that. The kitchen. The look on Steve's face. The apology, when there wasn't any need for apologizing. Not having any clue of how the mechanics of it all worked, terrified at the sudden loss of all control.

And. Well. If he's being honest?

Terrified of putting it all on the line, in one day. That Steve would be satisfied with it. That one day would have been all there was.

His fingertips track along Steve's waistband, palm filling with warm, soft skin and firm muscle, light cotton an afterthought across the top of his hand. "But I'd hate to think that took any options off the table."

He won't lie. The whole idea makes him nervous as hell, skittery as a racehorse and just as prone to tossing himself into a wall. But he wants so much it feels like it's going to start cracking bone, splitting skin, wants it all, everything Steve's willing to give or show or do, with only the vaguest idea of what that might actually be.

Danny is trying to break him. Rip him open all along a vein of fire that feels like its getting everywhere. Gotten everywhere. Burning down everywhere that once existed in any other fashion before this. Before this wiped it out. Firm, soft lips and the rough drag of stubble and the way he feels his center twisting tight and knotting down.

Talking to him, while kissing his skin, while dragging it from his own neck. Sucking on his skin and making Steve's world feel like parts of it are shattering. Just because of this small touch. His mouth, and those hands. Pulling him pushing him, his head, when there's no fight. Danny is shoving him moving him, to do more, take more. Hand up his shirt, across the fragile skin at the small of his back. His side. His neck and his hair. Impossibly everywhere.

Trekking fire up his throat, biting at the muscle there and making him shake. Making him drop out Danny's name. Something like a warning for what he's asking for, prodding, poking, shattering all the walls around. But it's so bare, so base and the bottom of the barrel, everything he wants, everything that burns him alive at the center carefully trapped. But always there.

When none of this was supposed to be there either. Danny was supposed to be gone. He was going to be gone or pissed drunk at this point. Not here. Not having no understanding how the world flipped upside down. Doesn't understand when his breath is shuddering more in his chest that even making it from his lungs, up his throat to his mouth. Wasn't supposed to end up here. Not on top of Danny.

Not talking about sex, not thinking about flashes of every dirty, secret, fantasy born not of the last year, but of the last month. Of getting almost everything. All those touches, tastes, watching him when he falls back. Knowing to taste of Danny's skin, his cock, the span of his hips, the way he thrusts, slow from restraint and fast when control snaps. The way he shakes, writhes, drives glorious bruises in with his fingers and hands on Steve's own hips, the way he curls perfectly inside Steve's arms, how his own face fits against the back of Danny's neck or his shoulder.

The way he sounds when he's shattering, swearing, pleading Steve's name over.

Steve can piece it together like an op puzzle. Has. Hasn't tried. But he's only human.

And there is no one on the planet he's wanted as much as Danny is such a long time. Maybe ever.

Edited 2013-05-21 17:42 (UTC)

It's hard to say what that word is. That one word, just his name, just Steve grinding out Danny in a tone that's so close to helpless Danny thinks he must be hallucinating, because Steve McGarrett doesn't do helpless.

But it is. It's low and needy and threaded with desperation, even though they're both still mostly fully clothed and no one's doing anything worse than the tiny circular motions Steve's hips keep finding, as his fingers clench on Danny's side.

Which is good, but not enough, not good enough, and Danny snakes his hand out from under Steve's shirt just long enough to grab the one at his side, and drag it up to his chest, fingers fitting in a perfect curve over the slight rise of his pec, nipple nudging at Steve's palm. His own heart beating a frantic tattoo in nerves and exhilaration, hammering away against Steve's life line.

He wants to tell Steve to relax. Wants to remind him to breathe, in a way that doesn't feel like Steve is hitching air consciously into his chest only because he might pass out if he doesn't. Wants to point out that they don't have to talk about this now, that he's just putting it on the table, so Steve knows, because apparently Steve didn't know, Steve didn't assume, Steve took one kneejerk reaction as the absolute truth, and it was, that night, but maybe not anymore. And Danny's not saying they need to try anything new right now, tonight, this week, whatever -- Christ, he's not sure he's up for that, yet, no matter how hot his body burns --

He's just talking. Opening the door, or at least unlocking it. Like he feels he needs to unlock Steve, when his hand drops from Steve's wrist to find that spot at the vulnerable small of Steve's back again, licking a stripe against his throat, stroking firm fingers over bare skin, grazing teeth against the beginnings of stubble.

"I know my name. Tell me something new." Just as scraped out, and a lie, because he loves that hearing his name, two syllables that suddenly translate to Steve not being able to think, Steve laid out and wrecked, Steve desperate and shaking. A lie he tells, anyway, breathes against Steve's throat, the muscles that work there when he swallows, his back and core stringing so tight he can feel them wanting to give, to shake and roll apart.

Not yet.

"No." God. The word is breaking, all but literally dissolving down down his throat, in a flash of fire and whirlwind of ashes. In Danny's hands, and his words, and his mouth. While every rubberband and duct-tape in Steve head stretching toward a snap. Trying to hold, desperately begging to go. Being sabotaged with C4. And Danny does that. Says that.

Danny's heart beat is suddenly under his hand, fierce and solid, going so fast. "It's not. It's not off the table."
Not anymore than breathing is off the table. Or being able to live. Or being able to walk away from him.

When he's shaking free the shirt sides and hating his own shirt. The fact he can't feel Danny's skin everywhere. There's too much clothing, and too much air. Too much sliding out of his head like it's turned into a mudslide, everything from under the mountain of work and sanity erupting up from under it. Coming like Danny called it. Called him. Answers Danny's voice, like every part of his body answers every touch.

Like everything in him is keyed to the tone Danny uses and how much he's moving.

The way everything, everything is falling and he rips back from Danny's mouth at his jaw, lighting bonfires under his chin, dripping lava down his throat, to kiss him. Hard, this time. Fierce as the goddamn racing heart under his fingers. As the walls going in his head. A little vicious, and too hot. And over. Over in a flash. But without him moving.

The world is so still. Everything is everywhere at once. And nothing is. Because there's only Danny. There only ever is.

"It couldn't be." Words are tripping. "Won't be." Stumbling, falling, shattering like clumsy mortars turned to glass. When he has to pull back, drinking down air like it's become thick enough to be water, churning in his chest, making his chest rise and fall faster into Danny's when he pulls back just enough to see Danny's face below his. His eyes, his mouth, his while face. "I'll never not want you. Never not want-" God. He's. Fuck.

Digging his forehead in against Danny's forehead, thumb circling through curls on Danny's peck. Running the pad of his thumb back and forth across his nipple hard and faster. Faster than Danny's own heart beat. Hard the way he wants to clench his own teeth until they crack. Because want is not the word. It's so small compared to everything flattening through him. Through the way he would could will always consider throwing Danny over the back of the couch. Or shoving him into the pillows on the bed.

The porch. The chairs. The beach. The computer at work. A desk. Danny's sleeping form.

There is not something that isn't laced into there, feeling the stays rip, spilling organs everywhere. Leaving him breathing too fast and looking into Danny's eyes. Giving a shake of his forehead along against the way his body is tensing and shift already. Trying to hold on, hold off, keep his eyes on Danny, his forehead, the half finished sentence dangling on his lips.

That he'll always want that. This. More. Everything. Everything thrumming in every part of his skin.

Tell me something new, he said. It's hanging on his blue eyes. Tell me something new, he said. That fluttering line between fear and fascination. Tell me something new, he said. Clogging up Steve's head and falling out his mouth, like there's nothing left in his chest. Even when it's almost impossible to find one sentence in five millions images that flood his head, behind staring into Danny's.

"I want to watch the sweat trickle up your spine when you've lost the ability to even balance on your hands or your arms," comes fast. Almost too fast. Dark and thick and fast. "Watch your hands fist in sheets, unable to stay anywhere even two seconds, even long enough to hold on." Like any second Danny will change his mind. Any set of words will suddenly, so suddenly, drain the color from Danny's face and send his eyes wide. "To know-" goes hoarse, almost too big, too big, because he can't put it back. "What you feel like."

Either way. Both ways. Every single way. Every single thing that's every come in and dash or been bashed out. When there's a kind of panic squealing somewhere right at the bottom of this, that he could risk everything earlier but not this. Not like this. Not now. When everything could fall apart inside him, against Danny like this. In a way it never could out there, a way it never did with anyone else. No one who needed this.

Steps and words and slow, shoving new words up his throat, once he's barely even let paddle in the shallow of his head. Desperate, shower slicked and midnight dark secret thoughts. Working over a puzzle he already boxed up and put away, even if he didn't shut the door. Can't. Doesn't. Finds it there every single time Danny touches him. Until they are falling out.

"We could take it slow. Easy. I could, I would even go first." The words. The word slip out like a gunshot ringing in his ears. Because it's not what he said the first time, and it's not going to matter. Because what he said and he meant. They aren't there. Couldn't be. Can't be. Not now. Not here. Not Danny, who hasn't even. And he doesn't care. It might be so much easier for Danny if he started on bottom.

Because either way it's not going to matter. Either way, no matter where he is or isn't, top, bottom, position, no matter what he's going to have to guide Danny. But there's something tremulous and shaking in the center of his chest. Because he doesn't, wouldn't, hasn't. These aren't the kinds of offers he makes to people. Words. Words are never needed. Just skin, and the rhythm of need. Beginnings so far behind. Left in the dust. Trod on by time and experience

"It could be like this even." There's the first look away, with a gesturing to more of how they're positioned. The awkward fluttering desperation and overwhelming slam running his heart, tearing up his veins, making him nearly tremble with the force of holding still against Danny. "It could be as close to what you're used to as possible."

And he'll just. Pretend somehow, somewhere, there's even a feasible universe where his mind isn't suddenly full of the image of riding Danny. On his couch. Of Danny beneath him, shoved up inside him, like every piece of Danny he shoves under Steve's skin and never extricates, even like that, like this. Rising and falling. Of the way he feels a little too cut open while eyes stay settled back on Danny.

Edited 2013-05-22 01:49 (UTC)

Good, he wants to say, but it sticks in his throat. Good, it's not off the table. Good, Steve is talking.

Steve is. Steve is stringing words together like he's threading wires into a bomb, beading each one with shaking fingers and sliding them carefully along a wickedly thin cord, but then it's like they just all drop to a haphazard lump at the bottom, while he focuses on starting another, a newer sentence, leaving Danny with a pile of words like sticks the growing sense that this room has simply folded around them, completely.

Paused while Steve kisses him, and there's something so ragged and desperate in that kiss, Danny can taste it, acrid like the sting of salt water in a cut, fear fogging up behind his eyes, so thick in the room he's breathing it in like smoke. Only, it's not his. It's Steve's.

Steve. Who has now let go of one end of the string entirely, words clicking and lost as they slither off the end and he keeps adding more, before Danny can keep up or react, dazing him with couldn't be, tripping him with won't be. Slamming a stage door wide open, so hard cracks appear in the walls of Danny's chest, with I'll never not want you.

It's not. This isn't. That wasn't what Danny was. He wasn't angling for that. Hears the words, licks the kiss off his lips and finds them dry with his shock and surprise and the sudden shameful swell of sheer impossible hope. That it might be true. That it could, somehow, really happen.

That the things Steve said outside were a cold wind blowing, screaming outside a house that can't be breached. That they were lies. That this can't go anywhere. That it's wrong. That he can't give, be, whatever it was, that they should just wash their hands of it and let it go, pretend it never happened.

That maybe this could be the truth, instead. A place where I'll never not gets replaced with what that actually means, because what that means is years, not days. It means always. It means a life and a home with another person, together, in whatever way that might, could, maybe, come to fruition. It's not the thing you say to a casual fuck buddy. It's not what you tell someone you were just trying to push away.

Not when it comes with rapid-fire words after it, all of them dropped like sticks of dynamite that are so old no one knows when or if they'll blow, because Steve is, Steve is worried. Steve is shaking himself right into panic, desperation lacing every skipped-pebble word, reaching for handfulls of them and scattering them across the dumbfounded stilled pond that is Danny's mind right now. Sending ripples of reaction washing up and over him, and he could swear he's actually tumbling away on them, on this, this thing that's sweeping up and across him and wiping away all the bullshit and fear like a wave wipes sand off a rock, leaving him naked and feeling raw with how wide open his chest has cracked. It's vivisection. These words. Steve's half-wild eyes, the near frantic look on his face.

And all Danny can think of to do, all he wants to do, is cradle Steve's face in his hands, and draw him down to kiss him, kiss these words and that uncertainty, that, God, is that fear? right off Steve's mouth. Leech it out of his skin, slowly, Christ, slowly, while he tries to piece together the things Steve said that Danny almost lost completely after that I'll never, because, Jesus. He needs to sort them out. Needs to respond. And he wants to, has words, has an answer, somewhere, but everytime he thinks he can open his mouth to put them into the world, he's overwhelmed again, lost in a confused and grateful swirl of Steve's generosity, that stupid clumsy heart of his, offering this, offering to make it easy, to try to make it as good as he can, to make it something Danny knows, as much as possible.

Already bending over backward, words dropping rapid and awkward, like he's afraid they'll get batted away if Danny gets the time to react. Like it's something he's been planning, and now can't help spilling every tiny detail. Blue eyes wide, forehead heavy on Danny's, and, fuck, Jesus, he can't feel this way about his indestructible partner, can he, like he needs to protect him, needs to soothe him, while Steve is trying, giving everything he's got. As if that somehow isn't good enough. As if there's possibly a way Danny could find it, him, wanting. As if Danny could want more.

More than Steve doesn't exist.

"Slow," he says, when he can catch his breath, when Steve's not scraping him from the inside out with mental images -- his own fingers clutching sheets, Steve's breath hot against the back of his neck -- "Yeah. Slow. And easy. It sounds good. Jesus, Steve. It all sounds good. You sound good, just, Christ. Babe. Come here, breathe, it's good, okay, I want it too, I want you, too."

Drawing him down with every word, like he's talking Steve down the rungs of a ladder. Hands cupping Steve's jaw, lips parting to press soft and firm and perfect against Steve's still feverish one. A brain-melting image searing itself on the inside of his skull. Hot, firm, moist skin pressing, bellies and legs and chest. His knees hiked up by Steve's slim hips. The long expanse of Steve's back, flexing and curling in front of him.

He can't breathe, he wants it so bad. Steve. Wants Steve like he hasn't wanted anything in years. Maybe ever. Enough that it shakes like adrenaline in his muscles. Breaks down sanity. "I want --"

Steve. Wants Steve. But. No. It's more than that. To make Steve see. That's it's not just him, is never just him. They're in this together. "I want you to have what you want. I want you to feel good."

Breathe. Breathing seems impossible. Like his lungs are anywhere near under his control or something he can even feel attached to him, or his mouth, at this point. When everything he can feel is cataloged along the lines of Danny's body underneath him now. The hands that have gotten free and are almost too soft and still on his face. Framing his jaw, his cheeks, his mouth, the sides of his head.

When it's so much easier to warily eye the words coming back, falling up at him out of Danny's mouth. The ones saying he does want it. Or even more that he does want Steve. When those aren't new words, but they are in a new way, and not one that's been anything like clarified before. Not something that was supposed to happen today, tonight, now. When it's easier to let Danny just keep talking, to let Danny's hands on his face draw him down into a kiss again.

A kiss on the razor edge of everything too highlighted by the careful hands on his face. The careful way beforehand the word Danny caught on was slow. The first one he could give back. The way nothing in Steve wants to listen to that, wants to remember he said it. Wants slow. Goes slow. Ever remembers to check for anything before jumping in the way of a threat or dashing five floors and jumping out the nearest window if necessary. All without hesitating.

There is nothing about anyone he's ever had, or anything he's ever done, they've done that screams slow.

There is nothing about slow written in his blood. But he's kissing Danny, because Danny pulled him down.

Becuse be put it out there. Meant it. Or wants to mean it. Like a splinter, like the need for it be there in himself if he dug hard enough, force himself to hold still enough, be patient enough, willing enough. The ability to do this the way Danny could. Would. The way the word want keeps catching on Danny's tongue, being repeated, crashing a note in Steve's ears, causes his heart the pound harder, trying to ring a bell in Steve's heard. Like he's forgotten something.

When he's already proved it false, already said he wants more, he wants everything, always does, always has, always will, but nothing more is more true that the way he shakes his head a little at Danny's last few words. Without ever breaking the frame of those hands, and his words as simple and few this time, "I already have that."

Because of Danny. Because Danny is still here. Because Danny somehow didn't leave him when he shoved away.

Edited 2013-05-22 12:13 (UTC)

The first thought he has in response is that's absurd, because there's no possible way Steve already has what he wants, because what he has right now is Danny in all of Danny's confused and terrified jagged pieces, that keep trying to fit back together but just haven't quite found the correct pattern yet. Who would want that? And if they did, if Steve does, how could it, in any conceivable way, be enough?

That's what Steve is saying, isn't it? Giving Danny a non-answer, a shrug of words that says he's good, that he's set. With this. Already. Like just this is already enough, or even more than, which is exactly as crazy as it isn't.

Like Danny doesn't feel that way, too. Sure. He wants more, more touches, more contact, more of everything he can get, because he's greedy, selfish, always has been, and there's so much here to want and learn and give that it takes his breath away just thinking about it. But this -- just this, just getting Steve, who let him stay, who let him talk Steve down off the insane ledge of we can't do this -- is so much more than he ever expected, and more than he knows what to do with, aside from hold on as hard and stubbornly as he can.

And there are other things Steve wants. He just listed some of them, the things he must have thought about, wondered about, allowed fantasies to fill in blanks of actual absolute knowledge. He's not saying having Danny on his couch, pressed under him, breathing hard and dizzy with want, is the be-all and end-all of things he desires.

But maybe it's enough. Like it's enough for Danny. Something that wasn't supposed to happen, so how can he ask for more?

Which is insane. But Danny can't say he doesn't know the feeling, and when has this ever dipped back into the realm of sane, anyway?

"I can think of a few other things that might go on that list," he says, instead, smiling, because Steve isn't shaking out words anymore like they're coins stuck in his throat, he's not wired to blow any second, and when he kissed Danny back, it was rough and real and almost sharp enough to cut, but it wasn't the panicked grasping need of don't leave.

Which means his hands can wander back down the slope of Steve's spine, both of them sliding up under the hem to find skin he keeps leaving too soon, that should just be bared so he there's no single barrier between them at all.

It's easy to watch Danny's disbelief flash fast across his face first, like there's no way that's possible. Before it sinks in and Steve doesn't know if the expression following that one has any even vaguely deeper understanding of the fact it's true. Of how true it actually is. Of how it would take so much more -- a kind of more he can't even quantitatively add or point to, but more -- before they'd hit Steve needing anything.

Find something he couldn't live without. At least not the way how looking down in Danny's face does. The way feeling Danny's fingers smooth out under his skin invading it again, causing him to tighten his muscles and stretch his spine, pushing into Danny's chest with his own and hand still trapped there, does. When he was so ready to find the way to live without all of this only seconds ago.

Against the way right now he would snap someone's fingers and part the pieces of their larynx individually for speaking a single word against this or trying to pull them apart. When it feels insanely like Danny is the only thing on the planet that can anchor him to it. But Steve can let that though vanish like a balloon a child accidentally letting go of a ballon when Danny smiles.

The way the tug of his lips demands everything in Steve's head. Shoving awkward warmth into that tight space, tugging him from being that space and more pulling him out from being smothered by it. When he's not going to prove or make that same point again. Maybe not any of the ones that have left his mouth recently. When its easier to stretch his hand and shift so he run his fingers over the muscles in Danny's chest. His ribs. The constant heart beat rising and dropping his skin.

"Yeah?" Steve's mouth seems to be following Danny's, but when as that ever been news. That he's starting to smirk with an outlandish kind of exasperation that at the very edges might look like is only paint trying to cover very rusty affection. "And what are those?"

And whose are they exactly. His on his list, or Danny's own list and answer to that question? Any question.

"Yeah."

He wets his bottom lip, considering, relaxing a little further at the smirk that's pulling on Steve's mouth, backing them both a little further away from the wide-open bareness of a few minutes ago, challenging Danny to say continue, to -- what? Shock him, surprise him? Set a fire roaring in his head until he can't even hear his own thoughts anymore, let alone the things Danny's saying, or wants to say. Detail every fantasy he's ever had, that he's sure Steve's had, too? List all the things he knows nothing about, even after surreptitious internet searches that probably only confused him more?

He's not a dirty talker. There's a reason Kono managed to write a filthier text message than he ever could. Even with all the words he's got at his disposal, all his bluster and bravado, he's not. Hasn't ever managed it. Making sex just about the physical, which seems necessary for dirty talk to exist; or, at least, to shrug off the self-consciousness needed to say it all out loud.

Because, Christ. It's not just physical. It's visceral. The way he feels about Steve. The things Steve makes him feel. How he looks, how he sounds, when soft gasps turn rough and needy, punching Danny low in the stomach and twisting there, grabbing a fistful of gut and yanking it out.

And there's so much of it. That he wants. That he could list, if he could. Watching Steve's back arch, watching his arms shake and tremble with the force of trying to keep himself up. The way, when he wraps his hand around Danny, it's like the whole world shrinks to that fist, and Danny wants to know what it would be like with Steve's body, instead of his palm and fingers. Wants to know fast and hot and rough, wants to know mind-bendingly, screamingly slow. Wants to feel slick tight heat, try fingers, tongue, cock, everything there is. Wants to know what makes Steve shudder, what makes him moan, what makes him lose the ability to form words or coherent thought.

Wants to be able to say all that out loud, to him, for him. "You want to fuck me."

Everyone's got to start somewhere. He takes a breath, lets it gust out against Steve's lips, that are so close, the edge of Steve's jaw, that he considers going back to, hiding in without looking like he's hiding in it. Feeling a flush come up on his face that doesn't have everything to do with the long lean heavy frame of Steve on top of him.

But Steve talked, so Danny can, will, too. Because he's pretty sure this is something Steve wants, too. To hear it. To see it. To listen to Danny telling him it can, will, happen. "You want to make me lose my mind. You want to get buried so deep in me you don't even know where you start anymore. You want to make sure I can't even breathe without it coming back out as your name. " His heart is scattered and ramping now, beating like he's terrified, and he is, but he's elated, too, and Steve is, Christ, Steve is just so beautiful, lying here, every inch of him a miracle. Six feet of tanned skin, tattoos, and loyalty that never quits. A big stupid goofy heart that just wants to make the world safe, and never once thinks of himself.

So Danny will, for him. He'll try. "You want my sweat on your tongue and you want me to forget which way gravity is supposed to go. You want to have parts of me not one single person has ever gotten before. I bet you want to rip this shirt straight off and have me right here on the couch, and I bet you don't want it slow and easy, either."

His mouth is dry and his fingers have tightened gradually against Steve's back, until now they're pushing divots into firm muscle. "Or maybe that's all just me."

Things he wants. That won't, probably shouldn't happen right now, because it's one thing to talk about it and another to actually start down that path, and he's pretty sure neither of them exactly came prepared for sex on the couch tonight.

Which is maybe just as well, considering the way his heart's hammering, making him light-headed and forcing the room into a strange half-unreality around them.

He never sees it. Danny. Not Steve, Danny. When Steve can watch them almost like exact tics. The way his eyes and his face tip, just enough, like he's struggling not to look away, to burry his face down, the way there are fingers digging into Steve's skin. A little harder for every single set of words etching into his head with the kind of finite scorching fire and razor sharp focus, pain, precision that only comes from a tattoo pen.

The way every single set of words in painstakingly sure, even when Steve can watch being dragged out by a force of will that shows clear as day in Danny's eyes. Electric blue, electrified, scared. Scared, but not stopping. It's in his face, turning red. It's in his fingers, digging hard into muscle. It's in the way he's holding on to Steve for life, the way he holds on to the console, the door, his own legs, the dashboard when Steve is chasing another car.

Holding on to Steve, like he needs Steve to keep him from falling off the cliff, to be his lifeline, even when he's trying to shove Steve there the same time. With the exact same words. And it's not that it isn't hot. It's not that his body isn't on board with every single word falling out Danny's mouth, melting down that second, seconds ago, when he'd been smiling, slipping back to normal and social and here. It's that Danny does it anyway.

Even afraid, even terrified, pulse pounding at juncture of his neck, where the open shirt has left it frames, he's brave. He gives Steve's reckless a run for its money, and he never sees it. God. That's as clear as everything on Danny's face. His lips, his words, his movements. Want, yes, and fear, and god, the mouth on him. That Steve can't tell if he wants more to shut up or listen to or put to work on some part of his skin, tattooing any chance of any of that into him already.

Even then he pushes forward, brave and solid. And Steve knows he's right. Knows every single word is right. The redder fog in his head, the heavy move of his hand over Danny's skin, the way he's hard and his skin is steaming, suffocating inside his clothes, every single image bypassing his head and lodging in the melted silver pooling at the base of his gut and his spine, twisting him, stroking him like it might as well be Danny's fingers.

And still. Even with all of that his chest is flooded with this overwhelming feeling. Nebulous. Like he wants to jerk Danny up to sitting and just kiss him. Just somehow convey that he sees it. All of it. All of what Danny's doing. Whether he deserves it or not. Especially tonight. When he's stuck with that in his throat, along with the inability to deny anything Danny accuses him of. He does want all of it. He does want all of Danny. In every way he says.

Rolling words off his tongue that will never be silent, unspoken secrets again.

Because -- You want to get buried so deep in me you don't even know where you start anymore. is true, and You want to make sure I can't even breathe without it coming back out as your name barely begins to scratch the surface of the desperation laced in wanting to know what happens when Danny can't even remember how to talk.

Because he's selfish. Because he's fucking selfish bastard, who just tried with all his might to shove Danny, head and shoulders out of all of this, and Danny is still right. He wants every single piece of Danny no one has ever touched, not even himself. Definitely not Rachel or Gabby or any number of his past harem of slim, petite, women with bright, eyes and classic, restrained upscale fashion.

He wants to be first. The first person to take Danny. The first guy Danny ever fucks. Wants Danny to have to compare him to every single person who might come after and find them wanting, find them mediocre and himself aching beyond the ability to breathe or lie, for this, because it was all done better, best, first here. Wants to burn these people alive, for even existing in his head to touch Danny, fuck Danny, exist anywhere near him. Wants to be the only person allowed to touch, look at, have Danny. And he's never even had him.

Was willing to leave him not long enough ago that the burn marks aren't everywhere around him. The hypocrite.

Never let himself think he might still get to except in moments of weakness, want, desperation, the heat of the moment, the black of imagination. The burning edge of reality and whatever, whatever this actually is. That won't end. That didn't end when he left the island, or they came inside tonight. All of these words, thoughts, carved out organs of truths, like coals, shameful and dark, certain and beyond ferally possessive, set in his gut when Danny's words are ripping out the guts in the walls left, burning through his skin.

Turning his muscles tense and his eyes dark like Danny has found a way to name him truer than his own name is.

He's thinking about the fact that he wants something means nothing. Not with his family. Not with his job. Not with stupid jokes about rocket launchers. But the joke is dead in his throat, from Danny's words, breathed on his lips, and the only thing that tumbles out. Doesn't tumble. It's clear, and it's dark, scorched straight through low and blacker, thicker than tar, threaded with every bit of that truth. "Be careful what you ask for, or I will."

Lose everything. Lose every last shred of everything that is tremulously waiting, wanting, thrumming harder with every second when he has to kiss Danny now. Has to. Has to taste these words, and even the most thin possibility any of them are true. Has to have them, have him. Because the world can splinter, and fall apart, and be sucked into the sea. But he can't not be here, pulling Danny into him, as hard as the fingers digging into his back, demanding Danny say more, say it in a different way, back it up as more than words and wind.

That's the point, isn't it? Saying things out loud. So Steve doesn't get the wrong idea. So they're on the same page. So he knows, and knows that Danny knows, too. All these things that haven't been said out loud, clarified, put anywhere even close to the table since Steve slammed past both their filters that first night in the kitchen.

Asking for it, even when it feels like there's no air left in the room to use for talking, or breathing, so it's a good thing Steve doesn't wait for an answer, just slides to find his mouth, searing hot, like he wants to brand it on Danny's skin. Voice ripped slow from the bottom of a barrel, absolute, a promise, not a challenge. And it's so clear. It could. It could happen, here, now. Steve is resourceful. Danny's pretty sure there are ways to make it happen, rough and wrecked, a collision of bodies and sheer drive, licking electricity like he's wired into the grid for the whole city, all of Honolulu's lights and heat and laughing freedom shocking straight through them both in a wild ride.

But he doesn't think Steve would. Will. Not when Steve's voice was so broken before, not when he was so careful, words beating rapid and fragile as bird wings, trying to get them out, to make Danny see that it doesn't have to be like that. That it could be slow. Easy. Something like what he's used to. Even though Steve is the guy who rolls off building tops and leaps aboard moving trains, who could burn this whole place down without a second's thought if it needed doing or was in the way.

It's Steve who's hot and hard and heavy on top of him, and it's not weird anymore, watching his eyes go dark, blue swimming thin around black. Steve holding him down, while he's trying to shake, adrenaline winding a high-pitched whine in his head, that drowns out the last hints of the movie, if that's even still on.

He doesn't give a shit. He's got Steve, right now, and that's the only thing on God's green Earth he wants right now.

Fingers digging into Steve's back, before scrabbling at his hem, tugging at it, wanting this shirt off even though he doesn't want Steve's mouth going anywhere, isn't willing to lose any part of him pressed up against Danny's legs, stomach, chest. The leg that got pushed off the couch coming back up now, bending at the knee to push the inside of his thigh snug against Steve's hip. Pretending they fit on the couch. Pretending he's not at the jagged edge of some kind of severe cardiac episode, but how is that anything but the usual, with Steve?

Sex with Steve is like everything else with Steve: dangerous, a slam of adrenaline and excitement, and possibly going to kill him.

Steve is grateful when Danny doesn't pull back. When he doesn't simply kiss him back and keep going. When everything, everything winds to a snap and suddenly Danny is kissing him back the way he's kissing Danny. When words, words, seems shattered, scattered broken, even when each one if sitting in a cage, to be thought about later, to shove up under his skin in the wrong ways in seconds from now.

When Danny wants that to happen. Danny made that happen. Danny is shoving him closer and closer to it.

While Danny's hands are jerking at his shirt, and his legs are crossing around Steve. Where he finds the urge to laugh and almost let loose a noise from the bottom of his chest that will be more wild than sinful. God. He wants to dig his fingers into Danny. Bites his lip like a punishment, before that sound that comes out between his parted lips is more like dangerous frustration that he has to let go at all now.

Of Danny's skin, of Danny, to get his hands down there on his own shirt. Crossing his arms and tugging it off with the help of the other hands all over him. But not going back. No. No. He's not waiting. He's got no patience. He wants everything and he wants not to explode before he gets there in the fastest flash bright burst of a lack of any control ever. Wants him. Now. Wants everything. Every word. Danny.

"Up, up, up," word repeating, splintering, a hard firm, buck no responses, five AM, crack of dawn, authoritarian, order. While Steve's using all his strength and dragging Danny up from the couch cushions, by the edges of his shirt thrown wide open, wanting it gone next. Needing it gone. Wanting all of Danny's skin and his hands. Wanting everything he should never be allowed to have or touch or keep breaking, tonight, or ever, that keeps laying itself out in front of him like he's done something to ever deserve the best person he's ever met.

When he can't even wait. One of his hands is shoving at the cloth over a bicep and the other is at the side of Danny's throat, as careful as it is demanding and sudden, hair-fine-line controlled, palm wrapping stiff around the column of muscle, fingers in his hair, pulling his head one way, because he's already leaning in, finding Danny's shoulders, the solid muscle there with his mouth and pulling at the skin, like he's going to make Danny wear all of his promises.

So that Steve can see them every time he's certain he just went crazy again, and can't open his mouth to ask.

So that when he gets lost, and he forgets, and he sets it aside, he can find himself again, the way Danny always does.

Edited 2013-05-23 02:16 (UTC)

At least he has some purchase this way, foot up on the couch cushion, inner leg pressing hard against Steve's hip and the outside of his calf, but his foot almost slips back to the floor when Steve moves, a sudden slick powerful wave, allowing a rush of what feels like damn near arctic air between them at the loss of contact. While Danny's still dazed and struck from that sound, licking at his bitten lip and tasting the faint coppery sharpness of skin that's not quite broken, and they're both grabbing for Steve's shirt, tugging it off him, leaving him exposed, perfect, light glancing off his skin in the stuttered strobe of the television screen, flickering with every change of shot and scene.

God. Just. Fuck. He should be on that screen. He should be in a magazine spread. Steve's chest is heaving, stomach muscles contracting and loosening with each breath, and he's so beautiful it actually hurts, aches in a swift blow to Danny's sternum, sinks beneath the bone and clutches at his heart, that poor fractured thing that's bounding recklessly into the fray, keeps stumbling, fumbling, limping every other step, nowhere near able to fly the way it thinks it can. A sorry excuse for one, continually lost and bewildered, too easily stepped on, out in the open like it is.

But chasing Steve, and Steve's impossible beauty, is what it's doing anyway, hammering in his chest like it's trying to burst straight out, leaping into his throat when Steve pulls him up, can't even wait for Danny to get the damn shirt off his shoulders and arms before he's all over him. Hand wrapping at the side of his neck, fingers shoving up into hair. Making Danny shiver, a full-bodied hard shudder that feels like fever, a low groan pulling out of him as Steve's mouth falls on his shoulder. Trying to strip his suddenly clinging shirt off his arms, sleeves catching on his biceps and elbows, shaking rough and unsteady.

"Fuck, Steve."

He's already left marks all down one side of Danny's throat and onto the skin of his shoulder, but apparently that's not good enough, and Danny can feel the blood striking against his own skin as Steve pulls on it, mouth so hot and so good, fitting perfect and slick against bunching muscle.

His shirt can die. That would be fine. He's about three nanoseconds from just ripping the damn thing himself before he feels it finally, finally, slide off his wrists, letting him wad it into a ball and toss it aside, and his hands, his hands are free, finally, Christ, he can't get enough of Steve's skin under them. Sitting up, stomach crunching and back taut, arms circling Steve's ribcage, a wealth of warmth and smooth skin and shifting muscle underneath his palms, fingers, blunt nails trying to find purchase, scraping lines into Steve's perfect skin, soothing them again with fingertips.

Pushing his face into the crook of Steve's neck, trying for more, for closer, because he used up all the words he had, bottomed out, and all he's got left now is to listen to his own harsh breath and sink into Steve, smelling like salt and shampoo and sun-soaked skin.

Holding on. Hard. Like Steve is a life raft, and maybe he is. Danny was sure as hell adrift before they met, and whatever he has to cling to now is all because of Steve.