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 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.

That shudder is almost perfect. When Steve can feel it, against this mouth, against Danny fighting with his shirt and the one hand Steve is not using as well as he could when his vision is out of use, and his busy tracing Danny's skin with his mouth. Chasing down it. Staying only long enough to drag skin into his mouth, like he's collecting, tagging and cataloging all of it.

Like he's labeling each piece as his. Because Danny said he was, he wanted...

When his thoughts aren't even that coherent against the groan that wracks out of Danny's chest beneath his fingers and his mouth, while Danny is stil struggling with the cloth, tensing and shaking it with his own growing frustration and distraction under Steve's mouth, and Steve is seriously beginning to consider the necessity of a casualty. Because it would go so fast if he grabbed both sides and just ripped it down Danny's back.

But a wave of relief sags through Danny about the second after that thought and Danny is moving, finally shaking a hand free. An arm, moving to the other, before there's the noise of something being thrown and landing away from them. Somewhere away that Steve doesn't need to be looking, because Danny's hands are on him. There are nails digging across tight muscles, active, muscles making him shiver and stealing his breath, even when he's arching into them for more.

Even if he won't let go. Not really. Not long enough do more than look at Danny's chest, again. And his face, while Danny's getting his hands, his arms as far as they can go right now around Steve. When he's solid and warm, a matching frantic, shoving his face into Steve's skin and making his chest ache with a fierce spike because he didn't do it earlier, but suddenly he's doing it now.

More than those fingers. Hanging on. Hard. Holding. For dear life. Or something like it. Burying himself into, against Steve, in a way he hadn't done when he was blushing, nervous, and painting sentences with a bravery that Steve is not sure he even possesses except like this. Grafted inside his arms, to his chest, trying to choke his ribs, whispering that this is everything and not enough. That Danny wants him. And more.

Wants everything he can do, give, take. Even when it scares him, makes him nervous, sends him somewhere he's never been.

When Steve let's it hit, like a bomb, but doesn't stop. Lets his fingers card up into Danny's hair, from over his throat, almsot like a caress for only the space of something like half a second, before he's pulling Danny back down. By his hair, by his head, needing his skin back, needing to trace further. Keeping hims body a few inches above the cushions, while he keeps going, by the sheer strength of will and no want for Danny to be further, for Steve to have to contort more.

Down more skin, insistent and focus. The valley between his shoulder and his collar bone, the rise of his collar bone itself. The solid mound of muscle that is his pec. The flat of his breast bone. Running soft, half-chapped lips across that skin. Pulling it into his mouth, every second or other second, when he's made it too long ago. Before he needs the tang of salt and the flavor that is only Danny, burning on his tongue, against his stubble, filling his nose.

Like he's trying to find, with any of his senses, where something changed while he hadn't noticed. Going to make it so he can tell every place he's been with a mark, so he can know where every other inch of Danny he still needs under his tongue, in him, pulled up, messed up, torn apart, the way he just did to everything that even exists in Steve.

Setting about bagging and tagging all of it that he gets to, so he knows exactly which inches of Danny still might hold the ember of that elusive, burning truth that was shoved into Steve's body and is thrumming toward an explosion all it own. Dragging his mouth over Danny's nipple next and pulling on it. The taste of skin, and feel of hair against his lips, his tongue, when he's not going any gentler on anything more sensitive. When maybe it's a little harder, even. When he wants to everything, and he wants it now.

Because Danny said. He said so much. Him and his million words, and they are burning Steve alive.

When he's going to drink Danny in, burn Danny down. Fingers hard in his skin, arm muscles tense with the weight but not shaking and Steve needs, wants all of him, now, now, now. Wants every single thing that fell out of disown mouth, the Danny's mouth, rubbing on his skin and his mind like a match, that Danny just lit everywhere, all over him, on purpose.

Steve's mouth is going to be the end of him, he knows it. Every touch of it streaks lightning across his skin, chasing it with fire, like touching a match to a trail of gasoline, or lighting the smoke of a just blown-out candle. It laces across his whole chest, around his back and ribcage, threads into his stomach and hangs on as his muscles tighten and tighten further. Steve's marking him up, and Danny can feel it, feels the bruises forming, the scrape of teeth that will turn into pink lines once it's all over and leave him reminders in the mirror, as if he could forget.

As if there's any way to forget the fact the he didn't go anywhere. Told Steve he'd do whatever it took. Pushed into his space and said don't, said please, and Steve isn't doing anything nearly as polite as that. He's painting thick swathes of ownership over Danny's skin, leaving behind angry red marks that may actually muddy into purples and blues by morning, as if Danny hasn't had enough of bruises, as if the last few weeks weren't spent mostly recovering from the previous ones. Not that this is anything like being attacked in an alley, except that --

Well, it is kind of like being attacked in an alley. Able to fight back, but unwilling to, even when Steve's shoving them both towards the couch again, the fingers that had just been sliding up into his hair now fisting, yanking dull pain into Danny's scalp, dragging him down like an undertow. Mouth hard and hot, muscles flexing under Danny's fingers, into his nails, pushing up into his grip like he can't get enough of it. Even after almost shoving it all out the door, slamming it shut behind him. Trying to push Danny out to the car, out of his life, out of his bed, out of his arms, but it was all a lie, had to be, because it's like he can't let go, now.

Pressing Danny back down. Smothering the world in him, in Steve, scent of him and taste of him and the solid heavy reality of him. Dragging madness through his skin, mouth latching onto his nipple, tongue hot and wet and just this side of rough, enough to make Danny roll his head back from where his face was buried in Steve's neck, chest heaving without any breath finding its way through. Shoving up, mindlessly, hips pushing, core contracting so hard he wonders if it'll be sore tomorrow, the way it is if he does too many crunches or spends more time than he's used to on a surfboard.

Not that it matters. Not that any of it matters, except for Steve, and the way Steve's not arguing with him anymore, or trying to say he doesn't want this, isn't deflecting, isn't holding back. Spiking Danny's heartrate into the red zone, and he's not sure if his hands are all over Steve more for as much contact as he can get, or just to hold on, while Steve douses him in gasoline and lights a match.

Steve's a man of action, after all. Why wait and talk about it, think it over, when he can just throw himself off the cliff into the fire and drag Danny with him?

How is he ever supposed to make sense of this. Ever want anything else on the planet. Anything but Danny.

Danny with his Do you want me to go? soft and so bare it's gouged into the bare floors of Steve's head right next to I want it, too, I want you, too. Gouged in a way that will never go. That will still be there, dug in with stronger than a chainsaw and more deadly than a circle of landmines, that will still be there when all the red marks on Danny's skin are a memory.

Somewhere so deep nothing physical or debilitating could compare. Marking him aside, coloring him completely.
Putting itself somewhere he can never tear out of his own skin, or Danny's. Something wild and terrifying and permanent.

Lined in the way Danny doesn't pull away, doesn't tell him to stop. Grinding up into Steve's body, leaving him muffling a groan into Danny's skin he can't stop, because he never saw it coming, slamming his body, his chest, and his mouth with the speed of a mac truck going top end, careening. Making him hiss in a sharp breath and have to let go so he doesn't bite down on Danny's skin in shock hard enough to rip it or draw blood.

When. God. He can't even be fiercely annoyed for longer than half a heart beat, because he's rewarded, knocked out, with the sight of Danny with his head thrown back, the faintest sheen of sweat broken out on his skin, catching the low light of the lamps in the room and giving his skin a faint glow. Right up his chest, shadowing into his neck and his jaw, and his face. When Steve is floored by how gorgeous, how impossible.

That Danny wants anything to do with him. Especially tonight. Said all of it now. Still. After. Looks like this because of him. Is holding on to him like the world would shatter and fall apart if he let go of Steve now. Like he's falling apart inside his skin, flush and shining with antagonized patches of skin Steve shouldn't take such a visceral pleasure in, but he's so far beyond guilt or shame for that. He knows where that belongs tonight, and it's not on Danny's skin.

Maybe for caving. Maybe for wanting this more than anything else. More than he even wanted to be Good, to do Right.

But not for leaning into Danny's skin, licking a path up his breast bone to find his mouth again, while his hands are headed for Danny's pants. Tugging at the fabric with quick efficient movements while he's trying not to have to think about that part where he's going to have to move anywhere else to get these pants off Danny. That can wait, everything can wait.

When he's gotten the zipper and button, even with his mouth busy and his unwillingness to move yet from between Danny's legs. When it doesn't involve needing to move, to slip his hand in Danny's boxers without any preamble or introduction until he can get his hand on Danny. When knocking his knuckles against Danny's cock even before he's twisting his wrist to wrap his fingers around it and pull lightly already, is filling and fueling his head with dozens of images he'd never have let creep in this soon, this vividly.

Nowhere. That's what Steve said, before. This goes nowhere. Nowhere Danny needed, but Danny has to disagree with that assessment, would suggest maybe Steve can kindly stick his opinion of what Danny does or doesn't need where the sun doesn't shine, because, Christ, this is need.

This, shaking, gripping, grabbing for Steve like a junkie chasing down a fix. Feverish and flushed, so deadly addicted that the idea of letting go is insanity, because Steve is gravity and air and the electric shocks shooting under his skin; he's boiling Danny's blood and evaporating his brain into a fogged up cloud of steam. Danny can feel the path of his tongue, striping his skin, like Steve's tracing that line with coals, and then his mouth is under attack, the button and zipper of his pants. Steve is besieging him, like Danny is enemy and ally and objective all at once, and, Jesus, Danny would slow him down if he could, point out that there's no need for desperation, he's right here, isn't going anywhere, isn't planning on it, obviously just proved to Steve's thick head that he means to stick around as long as he can, but that would require talking.

Which, still, stupidly, needs breath. Oxygen. The ability to sift through his vast mental dictionary, find words, string them together into what is traditionally known as a sentence.

Something he was maybe still able to do, before Steve shoved a hot, impatient hand into the sudden space in Danny's pants, and that high-pitched whine ringing in his ears screeches a few decibels higher, turns into the kind of white noise you know is there but can't hear clearly anymore, the sound equivalent to watching a muted explosion, and, Christ, Christ, fuck, he couldn't give this up. How could anyone give this up, Catherine must be dumber than he thought she was, how could she just let Steve go?

Steve, who is making Danny come all undone with a single hand, and Danny feels like a hockey skate being unlaced, swift, Steve's long finger hooking behind his bellybutton and yanking him into clumsy loops. His stomach clenches so tight it feels like being punched, and his groan interrupts Steve's mouth in its mission to seek out and destroy each remaining individual braincell.

He'd love to be able to talk. Would love to try saying a few more things, see what reaction he'd get, working Steve even further, pushing him, coaxing him, needling him, but he's not sure he'd survive it, isn't positive he'll come out of just this in one piece. His hands are making a frantic study of Steve's back and sides and hips, coasting over his back pockets, palming the curve of his ass through too-thick, too-annoying material. Trying not to pull him and erase the space Steve's putting to use, but hating the way they aren't pressed skin-tight to each other, like he wants.

More than this. He wants more. He wants it all, everything Steve might want to give, everything he can offer up, wants to know. Being with Steve has always been a singularly new experience; this is just one more, something else he can trust Steve with, wants Steve with him for, at his side, always.

Making his voice come threadbare and pleading, no matter how he tries to shove it back, pace himself, saying "Jesus, babe, that's so good, Christ. Steve. I can't --" With a petulant tug on Steve's pants. "These are in the way."

It's a head rush, it always is. Watching Danny react. Feeling it across him. When sensation shudders through Danny's body. Against his hands, against the stiflingly restrained area inside Danny's pants that Steve's hand is now taking up the rest of. Against his legs, the leg clutching around his. The immediate shift of touch, before it's broken the next second with the groan that reaches Danny's mouth finally.

Dragging his mouth from Steve's, and leaving Steve with an explosive bubble of gritty satisfaction exploding inside his chest. Too fast and too big to even really get out a laugh or a snort at it. Running out and wanting more, just as those hands get in on it. Suddenly sliding everywhere, like the objective is for Danny to touch all of him and there's just too much of him everywhere, or like Danny just can't get enough of everything, all at the same second.

Ghost hands on his skin, against his bones, digging into the thick muscles on his sides and across the curved slope of his back. The frantic edge to them probably being the best. When Danny can't even seem to decide whether he's pulling Steve closer, or holding him still, digging fingers and handholds into him. His ass. When there are words, breath-less and thin, and so god damn glorious Steve almost wants to stop just to listen to it. Almost.

Words falling out, pleaded and then petulant, pulling at his clothes and startling that laugh right out of his chest
Caustic and mocking like it got poured out of rich sunshine, slow roasted until it could burn brightness even in the dark.

"You can't what?" Steve asked, with taunting kind of insult, the way he asked Danny anything during a day. In the car, at work, on a case. Prod at his skin, his rants, his heart, his feelings. Scoffing out right on it's heels, "Your hands don't look-" There's a telling half second pause and pressed on addition. "-or feel, broke from here."

Which might be two comments he doesn't actually need to make. Because he gets it. He does. God, does he.

All of these clothes could be gone. They could be doing so much more. Might be. But then if he was going to to play anywhere near fair his fingers wouldn't still be stroking up and down Danny's skin, without any pause for the antagonization or the way the movement is running a raw line along his own wrist against the back of Danny's boxers and zipper.

Edited 2013-05-24 23:51 (UTC)

"Yeah."

Comes out heavy on a breath, against Steve's mouth, where he's leaning up to find it again, kisses getting clumsy and thoughtless. "They're not."

Broken. Not like the rest of him feels like it will soon be, but he's not there yet, and even though Steve's carding madness through his bloodstream, making crazy bubble through it like carbonation, Danny's not actually helpless. Steve may be bigger, taller, heavier, but Danny's not wilting daisy, and, more to the point, he has something Steve doesn't.

Leverage.

Which means he can push up with the shoulder closest to the TV, the foot that's flat on the couch cushion, and roll them both towards the inside of the couch. One hand is on Steve's hip, shoving him without preamble, unapologetically, toward's the couch's back, even as stars white out the inside of his head at the shift of pressure, at too much touch, at sudden space appearing between them.

The lack of continuous contact means he can work at Steve's belt and buckle and zipper, though, without trying to contend with Steve's weight, without getting his hand caught and crushed between them, and pinning Steve to the back of the couch means he's got more say in how this all goes down, too. Sure; they don't exactly fit like this, either, packed like sardines, but he just hooks a leg around Steve's and shoves hips, belly, chest up against him, and calls it a draw, hand snaking down once he's got Steve's belt and button undone, tugging at the zipper, the tented fabric that he runs a palm over in a way he tells himself isn't punishment, but isn't a hundred percent sure he isn't lying.

Not that Steve doesn't deserve everything he gets.

Sure. One arm gets partially pinned, but he solves that by sliding it under Steve's neck, slinging it around his shoulders, tugging him tight and close as his fingers navigate cotton to find skin, slick smooth hot hard, and he actually breathes out a sigh into Steve's mouth when his hand wraps, starts moving, up and down, thumb nudging the ring at the head before circling the pad around.

"They seem to work just fine. Huh?"

He doesn't fit, but really he has to give Danny points for just going the hell with his decision, flipping Steve and leaving him with almost nowhere to shove his legs that isn't still hitting the arm of the couch with the foot of the one under him now, leaving it cramped and bent, and one that magically somehow ends up with his foot off the couch, stretching calf and thigh muscles that haven't in long enough there's a low grade burn in with the surprise.

But none of it. Not Danny rearannging him like he's furntiture, like this a wrestling match, and throwing him at the couch, that he's certain moved an inch or two there, with his weight tossed at it. Not his shoulder smacking the couch. Or having to negotiate Danny's knees, and the damnably important part of managing not to tense his hand on Danny the any more than tense handshake.

None of it is as problematic as Danny's fingers ending up on him, rubbing over his pants.

In the way his shoulders re-shifting, twice, is the first sign that he'd shuddered hard enough it made his own teeth snap. When there's blinding inferno lighting itself up and down every inch of his skin, taking out his vision, and his body doesn't need reminding, doesn't need prompting or leading. It's so ready already, after his own words, after Danny's, that it's a miracle he isn't just gone the second Danny touches him. Making a mockery of every ounce of his claim at self control over any of this.

When it's so strong he might have been thrown into a wall and not a couch. Not Danny's mouth on his, working smug words into his mouth, and forcing him to come back. To dig his fingers into the wall of his head, of thoughts over sensation, like icepicks and make it back. To where he can make his vision focus on Danny's face. On the words shoved into between kisses Steve can feel himself returning even before there's any thought about doing so.

When that's only going to increase, because Danny isn't even touching his skin but he's aimed for it. He is. Making him tense his core, his stomach, pushing down through his thighs with something like a desperate silent prayer, shifting into arms pulling him closer, and dragging Danny against him, half wondering too many things. Losing them in Danny's mouth, and moving his arm now. Shoving the one under himself out under Danny's side, to curl up around his back and drag Danny even closer.

Fingers of his hand, wrist, shifting, trying to find a more comfortable way to keep his hand in Danny's pants. Even when his hips are moving half without his say so -- shifting and push-pull through the cuff of Danny's fingers, up into the movement at the top -- and he keeps returning each of Danny's kisses, a little more ragged than he'd already been, he finds the breath to say, sharp and snappy. "Yeah. Sure. Danno. That looks great."

Just the edge of too tight, when everything, everything is Danny's hand and his eyes, how close his mouth is. Words grated out saccharine sarcastic, and maybe overly supportive, like you'd say it to a child, about an art drawing. Except that no child does what Danny's hands are doing, what Steve's mind is bolting toward, hard and fast. "This looks so much like you managed to get rid of my pants."

Maybe parts of his spine. Parts that are melting into the already boiling center of him. But not his pants. Which he'd really be grateful to have spontaneously combust at this point, honestly. He's got dozens more upstairs. Like he's got smartass to spare, while he's pretty sure the tips of his ears and the edges of his vision are burning. But he's not about to give. "I think we need to revisit your having any idea how this works."

He wouldn't put it past Steve to just tip his weight forward and roll both of them onto the floor -- the thought crosses his mind that the beer bottle will be a bitch to land on -- but Steve doesn't.

He makes kind of a surprised noise, and his muscles and fingers tense, but he doesn't actually fight it, or push back, or wrestle Danny back into the couch cushion. All he does is slide an arm underneath him, so they're both hanging on to each other, bicep and forearm muscles bunching, fingers grasping for purchase on skin that's growing slick with sweat.

And, of course, talking out his ass. Still. Because Steve never tires of criticizing Danny. There's always something about his clothes, or his social life; his taste in food, music, or alcohol, his vocabulary, for Steve to pick apart and niggle at, like he's auditioning for the role of Danny's mother. Nitpicking decisions, commenting on the length of his toenails or his choice of lunch food, picking at every detail until Danny bursts a gasket or two and tells him off. Steve will argue with him about literally anything, so it's no surprise he's been found wanting, here, too.

Except he knows it's a lie.

He knows it, because he can hear, see, feel the way Steve's whole body goes suddenly tense and still, coiling in on itself like a struck snake, until he lets out a breath the breaks against Danny's mouth, carries snide words that smudge against kisses, getting sloppy, open-mouthed, catching each other after every other word.

Making Danny laugh, a deep chuckle that resonates in his chest, because Steve is good, Steve sounds happy, Steve is mocking him and that's so much better than the distance of before, that felt like Steve was shoving a javelin into Danny's chest and using it as a guide of how far he should stay away.

Instead, Steve is gripping at him, pulling streaks of lightning up and down his spine with each shift of his hand, and Danny can feel him swelling against his palm, which is, fuck, unbelievably, unfairly hot. "Yeah?"

As conversational as he can make it, when each word feels like a match striking somewhere down deep, lighting tiny fires in quick succession. "I didn't think we ever got off that topic."

Everything is getting lost in a blur of Danny. The couch isn't big enough. The movie is playing somewhere feet away, another pointless fight scene no one cares about. Busily jammed into this space that one of them barely would fit in no less two. And certainly not two people, their size, doing this. Which should dictate something else to happen.

Something that isn't catching Danny's mouth between his words. Dragging them on to his tongue, sucking them down like the acrid air for a volcano he's teetering on the edge of falling into already. Or maybe he already got burned alive and he's just letting himself think there's still a rim and a chance. There's still anything, anywhere, in the world that isn't the rises and fall of his fist, of Danny's.

The way their chests bumps, and the speed of everyone's breath, mingled as one. Sharing the exact same few feet of air back and forth between themselves. While Danny is laughing, bumping into his stomach and his chest, shaking with that brightness, that Steve swears lightens everything about him. His eyes, and his face, and his hair, his skin. It's like the world reacts to Danny when he's happy.

It all changes, it all stops to pay singular pay attention. Or maybe that's just Steve.

Steve who's keeping his head about the water, above the flames, taking Danny's words and throwing them back.

"If you're get off in your shorts, you're failing it." Steve smoldering, smug smirk is winded only by the constant need for air. The way it feels like his skin can't decide between the want to lose cohesion now and the decision to try and blunt it out, knock focus down, hold out. If should, if they're, whether.

Images crowding Steve's head. Logistics, pants and shoes, stairs and lube, things that aren't staying, because of the warm wide expanse of a palm and the pads of fingers rubbing his skin, which in turn are gouging nails through his ability to think. Melting the wall of wanting to think. To do anything but keep meeting it. To hitch his hips faintly faster. To pull Danny closer. To have more of his skin.

"This-" Which as a single word, is almost more of a grunt when Steve emphasizes that word with thrusting hard into Danny's hand, dragging his hand fast up and down over Danny's skin, and kissing his mouth, like he was going to take Danny's air, and his lungs, and his heart straight up without asking. Which maybe doesn't surprise him that everything burning when he's shoving out the last words like they more than half melted on his own point. "-isn't a discussion."

"So, you want me to stop?"

Said with a twist of his hand, a long slow stroke up, and he can't stop grinning, the kind of stupid, goofy grin that fills his whole face and makes every word sound like it's supposed to be laughed. He can't help it. It's insane. This. Steve. Him, with his hand down Steve's pants, jacking each other off like they're teenagers who snuck into school after hours and are afraid of getting caught by the janitor.

As an experiment, he pauses, and loosens the cuff of his fingers, just to see what Steve will do.

It's not a discussion. None of it is. They're well past the discussing stage for pretty much all of this, and they're only getting further and further now that shirts are going and pants are undone. Steve's hand is merciless, squeezing mercury into his veins, making the muscles between his shoulder blades pinch and roll, seeking out more, more contact, even as he teases at stopping, at letting go.

Like he could. Like either of them could.

"Who started this, huh? Who out their hands down whose pants first, here?"

Without bothering to get rid of them first, because Steve doesn't bother with details like pants when he's got an objective in mind. He goes straight in, never mind they were just talking about more than this, and Danny's already shaking, hard, desperately calling up old baseball and hockey plays to keep his grip, not suddenly skyrocket into oblivion, no matter how good it feels, no matter what Steve's words did to him before.

About not remembering how to speak. About his fingers fisting in the sheets. About not being able to so much as hold himself up.

Christ. Steve's mouth, Steve's hands -- they should be weaponized. Illegal to use. They're unfair, like Steve himself is unfair, GQ looks and a body that won't quit and, Christ, that smile, that scraped out black oil tone of voice. The way Steve keeps pushing closer and closer, even when there's nowhere closer to get. Arm hard and stubborn around him, responding in tiny tics that are starting to become familiar. The doped look to his eyes, heavy-lidded and blown dark. The faint tremors that mean strain is starting to tell on him. The flush that creeps up through his chest to his throat and cheeks.

It's an effort to tease a stop, but worth it to see Steve eat his words.

He's honestly not sure if Danny's face or Danny's hand is worse. The first looks so pleased, so golden and gorgeous, Steve wants to press it into himself, sear it into his skin, so he'd had something to even point to for how when his brain is trying to melt out his ears for Danny's hand, that thing in his chest is just fighting expanding, sloppy, stumbling, exuberant, shoving everything out for that smile, for his tone.

He never wants to stop this, because Danny should look like this at all time.

It's almost painful for a moment, painful air bubbles in his ears burst when he breaks the surface of water after being down too far without the exact proper preparations, disorienting, making you want to slip right back under. And it's not calm or quiet, like slipping under water. This about wanting to step back into fire. Into the twisting slow surge of Danny's hand, and their knocking, crossed forearms.

It would be easy to let it go. His own words, Danny's, to give into the tremor shivering under his skin, the way his body pushes against Danny's impotent fingers, almost making Danny's point for him. Except Steve didn't throw his back into it, or any of the rest of the muscles. There's no denying it feels good. There's no denying he wants to get off, want to come breathing in Danny's voice calling his name.

But it does beg the question, or a thought, and thoughts aren't staying. They don't land and slip slowly through him. They run, carrying torches, burning everything out as they go. Caustic, flippant, and fast. Leaving only a throbbing longing pounding under every inch of his skin. For Danny. For Danny's hands. For Danny's mouth. For this. For everything. For more.

The turn to his expression is dangerous and fast, sharp lines in every inch of pleased derision, dripping with the kind of warning signs that should come before anyone's pushing off a cliff. "You saying you're following my lead now?" Which doesn't even come on it's own whenever, does it.

When does Steve ever fight a war only on one front? His fingers having loosed from a sheath but not stopped moving. Dragging, pushing, cramped fingertips further in, lining his forearm up, so every time it moves, it's friction against Danny's cock and the pressure of pushing it flat against Danny's own stomach. When his fingertips are pushing a line, fighting against the strain of cloth, across Danny's base, across his balls, with only a momentary roll of skin, and the thin, sensitive skin behind them.

To the place right where his skin divides, rising against the fabric, for the twin curves of his ass starting.

This is the problem with Steve.

Or. Well. Not the problem, exactly. More like the trouble, this is the trouble with Steve: that there has never been a single moment when he hasn't been able to adapt his angle of attack to anything and everything the world has ever been able to throw at him.

Danny turning him against the couch, or threatening to take his hand away is only the cue for Steve to reconsider his offensive, to try another tack, pressing smug words against Danny's mouth as his hand, fingertips, start to wander.

Down. Where it doesn't seem like there's any space, and Danny's already shifting, opening up his legs to give room, every nerve in his body tracking the path Steve's taking, screaming new and no and yes all at the same time, confused and short-circuiting, because Rachel never, Gabby never, he never, and it feels weird. Unwelcome isn't right, but weird, tensing up his body, locking up muscles into sudden bewilderment, fighting the impulse to shove Steve back with the one to drag him forward.

Knowing without a doubt he'd have decked other people for less, for assuming, and clamping down on the reaction of but that's not right, because it doesn't feel wrong, either.

Just. New. Different. Steve's fingers moving to spots Danny barely even thinks about, let alone touches, considers. Wondering if Steve really means to follow his lead, right now, because Danny's pretty sure he's just about got his hands full with trying to force himself into relaxation, which works about as well as might be expected.

But. "When have I not backed you up when you do something crazy, huh?"

Pressed. Pressed against Steve's lips, in his tightening throat, in words that feel compacted and heavy, pieces of lead bitten off and swallowed hard. Fingers curling around Steve again, needed, that touch, reality, everything that's happening and everything he wants but doesn't understand.

It's important, okay. He always backs Steve up. Always. Follows his lead. Even when Steve's lead sends them both into the bullet-torn fray, crashes planes, gets them tied up and beaten, spares their lives by the fraction of a second and the thankfully dense material of Kevlar vests. Because trusting Steve isn't about always thinking Steve knows best, or never questioning him.

It's knowing Steve will always try. Will do anything. Always. So Danny runs a nervous thumb up Steve's skin, wraps his fingers around Steve's shoulder, and holds on, nudges forward, the absence of breath knocking holes in the walls of his chest, shrinking the world to something that lands between his shoulders and presses there.

He said he's not going anywhere, and he's not.

More than anything, probably than is even apparent, Steve is paying attention.

To way Danny's knees move, thighs open, even as he seizes up.

Freezes in place, only to tremor, tightening muscles Steve's hand is pressed against.

The way they tremor with a fight Steve can't even see, but he can feel it. He can feel it when he does nothing more than let his fingertips wander in half inches of space they barely fit into already, with Danny's hellaciously tight pants, and him hard, and a good Steve's forearm down his boxers. The way moving, even to open his legs strains the fabric of Danny's pants and space available in them even. And, god, but these pants need to go sometime soon. That's the thought when Steve makes himself take a breath.

Straining to keep ahead of the voice in his head telling him to stop, stop now and the one whispering go, go, go. Trying to shut both of them behind doors. Made of only the sound of Danny breathing, the silence of his living room and the movie he wants to throw something at the tv screen so it'll shut up. So he can only hear Danny.

The way Danny swallows. The way his breath rushes through his nose. Gets stopped. The way his hand is tightening on Steve's shoulder, but also in other places it hasn't left, other places where it's whiting out his vision a little, pressing his fingers tips a little harder on Danny's skin in new place while he's trying to steady his head, his pounding pulse, but he should be okay, right? Even with that. Unless Danny starts fisting him suddenly. But that really doesn't seem likely.

Not with the fingers in his shoulder. Not with the way Danny is clinging closer, jangle of impulses and reactions, while Steve is stroking thin, sensitive skin soft as he can manage like this. What he can reach. Not that he isn't consider the possibility of, or possibilities of, a few seconds or minutes from here. But for this second he's not. Not aimed at shut gunning to a point, not at fucking crashing through walls with as little restraint as possible.

Not aimed for shoving himself someplace he's not wanted. Not aimed for slamming doors that had only barely cracked.

Not aimed for making Danny back up the words he threw everywhere. Not this exact second at least. Not when Danny is nudging him forward, nudging into him, even with those tremors. Like he's holding on to Steve, because Steve is the only thing he can hold on to, trust to take care of it, him, everything. When Steve can hear the uncertainty and the lace of fear, that was barely a whisper earlier, and even the utter honesty of the words smacked right back to him.

Keeping him focused. Tracing the place where Danny's thigh joins his body. The skin right over his prostate in the middle. The curve right where his cheeks start. Two rising mounds of muscles, from the thin, smooth skin right before it, pushed together by the weight of laying sideway. That he can only barely even touch much of like this. But only just touching, even when it's making his own heart pound hard. Nothing else.

Touching Danny and trying, to shut out the tide of everything else hammering louder and louder, to hear only Danny.

"Nah, pretty sure I missed that all with the yelling and henpecking," Steve offered, sharp insult against Danny's mouth and face so close and pressed up against him, like the rest of Danny pushing him into the couch, maybe like the words were a lifeline. When the only thing he's doing is willing Danny to breathing, to relax even a little, waiting for him. Even if it feels like he can't decide if the waiting is impossible, or the fact he's touching Danny at all is.

Edited 2013-05-25 17:52 (UTC)

Steve's being careful, and Danny appreciates it.

Steve rarely is, after all. Careful. Normally he's tossing himself at every breakable thing in a five-mile radius, busting through walls, leaving a trail of broken glass and skewed, abandoned vehicles, but he's not doing that, now. He's not burning Danny down, taking him systematically apart, like he was before, with nothing more than a kiss and hands at his shirt, pushing him into the couch. He's not saying anything, asking for anything.

He's just being careful. Exploring, as gently as possible when his hand is pinioned by slacks that were too tight before and now feel like they're about to split completely open, making Danny shift a little uncomfortably and wonder if they should just give up and get naked, right before his heart makes an anxious little stumble, and he catches himself on the meathook of this, whatever it is, fear that is anything but defined, that's a combination of the unknown and the known but misunderstood and all the things he'd made fun of as a jackass teenager and an insecure adult, nursing that tight little ball of fear behind it all. Fear. Of something different. Something faintly mysterious. Something he never understood, because it just never seemed appealing, seemed wrong even without being wrong, until he figured out there's no wrong things, just things he'd never tried and had no idea if he wanted or not.

Which is striking home in an unprotected spot deep in his chest now, aimed with breathtaking precision, and, no, that's the wrong way to think about this, Steve is not attacking him.

Steve is touching him with care. Fingers gently stroking, pressing. It's not an invasion. It's an exploration. Pads of fingers, rough calluses, moving over skin that's never been touched with deliberation, and that's new, and different, but when Danny takes a deep breath and lets it out again in a rush, forehead pressing against Steve's and his eyes closed in concentration, it doesn't feel bad.

It almost feels good, even. Once he gets past the weirdness, and, yeah, it'll probably be a little while before he gets past the weirdness, but he's glad to see he didn't inadvertently lie to Steve when he said he wanted more. While Steve is criticizing him, words sharp and fond, puffs against his lips, and all Danny can do is hang on, and shake his head against them, against the idea, because he's at a loss, right now, isn't sure he can pick up the usual banter, make this something it isn't, distract himself into believing it's not happening, that Steve isn't, that he doesn't feel more than a little curious about what it would be like to do it to Steve back.

Danny isn't quiet unless there's a problem. That fact is coded somewhere in Steve's DNA now. He knows it like breathing.

It prickles up under his skin, when Danny's fingers stay buried. When Danny shifts, irritably, fighting with his clothes, or maybe Steve's hand, only to go still again. When Danny's breathing only when and where it seems absolutely imperative to his body taking over. Which keeps going. Danny not speaking. Danny quiet and trapped somewhere behind his forehead digging into Steve's, and his eyes closed so tight there are creases at the edges of his eyes and between them.

When Steve can't tell if he should breathe, or he should stop. Can't look away from Danny's face, because it's the only handhold he has left, with Danny's mouth tight and closed and silent. When he's running out of space, but Danny isn't pulling away. He isn't frozen solid. He's just still, just focusing. That it goes like that until he'll let a breath out and suck one in, until he's shaking his head at Steve.

When Steve has no idea if that's good or it's the lid top on a panic he can't see, can't read. He doesn't think it is, but they've already covered that Steve's judgement here is broken. Beyond broken. In what he wants, in what he assumes, in what he tries to do when he thinks. Of knowing what Danny thinks or wants from him. When he's sliding his middle finger back, pulse pounding in his ears, between Danny's ass cheeks. Following the flat small valley of skin there, even when it's pressed together due to this position.

Letting his fingertip skate across puckered skin, and almost feeling the temptation to close his own eyes. Because there's so much else, so much he could, he wants, holy fucking god he wants, all of it, everything, Danny, to be touching him, to be fucking him, for any of it to be true, and not back to gone in seconds, to have it all. It aches through his chest, screaming in the awkward position of his arm and his hand, when all he's doing is the same.

Letting his finger tip run over Danny's skin, trying to hold himself still. Keep himself in check against the reaction to Danny's skin. A smooth, small valley of skin, starting and ending with a puckered circle of skin. That it takes all his power not to spend more time focused on immediately. When his voice is broken, and a little hoarse, trying for solid, when he's saying against Danny's lips, "We should get rid of these."

Which comes with the motion of Steve letting his arm strain outward, in direct motion against Danny's boxers and pants. It's the closest he's going to get to a question, and he doesn't think ripping them off would go so well at this moment. Even if the image is violently splashed in red and gold paint behind his eyes, making his voice thick and tempting him more with a grain of sand slipping through his head every second.

Jesus. He might actually come undone just from this -- not the finger pushing slowly back, or Steve's arm pressing him into his own stomach, but this. Steve's voice. Winded and hoarse, like his throat's gone dry, and, Christ, he's not sure he's ever really heard Steve want before.

Not like this. Not with his whole body tense and withholding, restrained in a perfect straitjacket that only allows the faintest of tremors to show how much control it's taking, how telling it is. Not when he's trying to sound normal, and only succeeds in sounding like a man lost in a desert, offered a way out, and it scrapes over Danny's raw nerves like sandpaper.

Everything seems so quiet against the buzzing in his head, the jagged attempts at breathing, the low panicked hum of he's touching there and it feels weird and it feels invasive and it feels kind of good at the same time, while he wonders in a tilting carousel of detaching thoughts what the protocol for this is. Like...is this clean enough? Was his shower this morning too long ago? What exactly are the expectations for unpleasant surprises, for body hair or lack thereof, for...seriously, how does anything fit?

There might already be something wrong. Hell. It's not like he woke up today and decided it was a good day to ask Steve to start fingering him, he's got no idea what level of preparation is necessary or, you know, polite.

It's the whisper-lightest of pressures, but enough to make his whole body clench in confusion, muscles not sure why it isn't being rejected, head pausing, considering, it's Steve, so he needs to wait, to listen, to pay attention. And Steve is shifting, tugging at the lack of room in Danny's pants, and, shit, it's about to get real, if they lose clothes it's really happening and he has simultaneously never wanted anything so much and never wanted to run so far away in his life.

Which is a shitty, cowardly reaction to have. He's still breathing. Steve's still careful, even with the toll it's taking, that he's trying to pretend isn't there. Asking, without demanding. Letting Danny bring this as far as he wants, without pushing him any further. Which means when Danny nudges experimentally against that finger, it's because he wants to, trying to figure out how this feels, beyond strange.

"In that case, we may as well go upstairs."

Where there's space. Room. A comfortable bed. Not a couch they might roll off any second, even if he's compelled by more than just lack of space to hang onto Steve, fingers curling against bluff muscle.

But upstairs is something else, too. Upstairs is bed. Upstairs is reality. It's not just fooling around on the couch, which has the sheen of casual to it. And his heart's hammering against his ribs, in his head, but he's not about to back down, either.

The muscles in his arm actually shake. Not from surprise, but from how strong the reaction after the first one, but the reaction to try and make himself hold still. How strong that one has to be. While Danny is wiggling. Just a little. Just enough. Pushing back and down against his hand. His fingers. Finger. This isn't the angle. This really isn't the space to. But it's still there. The second Steve's jaw locks and his head is still leaned in, and his eyes clench closed a second.

And he's trying so hard not to shove forward, not to give up on, give a damn about Danny's pants. Let it all fall by the wayside like the buttons they've scattered all over his house in the last month. Like every inch of Steve that's been scattered and burned. Shove for space. Shove against Danny's skin, the ring of muscle not far from him, without anything on hand, on his own hand or Danny's skin to make any of that easier for a first time.

When he knows it's only been a month. Which might at times feel like an eternity to him, but sometimes it feels like seconds. And a lot of the time it still feels like never, if Danny isn't nearby to blunt that. And Danny doesn't even approve of coffee with people he's actually flatfooted and tongue tripping over. Which doesn't change the way he's pushing down against Steve's hand. Careful, uncertain, like someone holding on to a ladder testing the ground.

But still doing it. Shoving a spike of overwhelming fire anywhere Steve had air seconds ago.

"Couldn't hurt," Steve said, agreed, like there was any option in him not to, any air to use to speak. Like he wasn't fighting back an incredible world of options that shoved at his head, like a torrent on top of Danny's movements. His bed. The things in his room. His bed table "More room." Danny on his bed. Bereft of clothes and. He doesn't even know how to finish that. There. There. Possible. Something. Maybe. When he can't help the way his fingers curl against Danny's skin.

Tracing with a pressure that isn't as light as it was, but isn't as focused either. Because they're talking to. Tearing a divide in his mind, that he knows his mouth is losing out to his hand. To his couch. To not letting go yet. Even when he adds, like it's important at all at this second. "A lot less Tarantino."

"Room would be good."

Of course, there's a flaw in this plan, this half agreed upon plan to get off the couch, go upstairs, and lose the rest of their clothes, which is that in order to get there, he has to let go of Steve, and Steve has to let go of him.

It's not an appealing thought, for a number of reasons. First, naturally, his mind and body both rebel at the idea of actively letting go and stepping away from Steve, like they would at the thought of leaving a campfire on a snowy night to wander the cold woods alone and freezing. Secondly, all this momentum comes to a screeching halt, and while that might not be such a bad thing -- he's seen how Steve does with stopping once he's gotten started, the guy's like a hurricane that just keeps feeding itself -- it's going to feel a little like stepping into an ice-cold shower.

The hand he's got around Steve squeezes, and lets go, reluctant, slides up the clutched muscles of Steve's stomach, along the biceps of the arm that's currently halfway down Danny's pants, a fingertip there pressing closer now, striking nervous fires into life. It's not immediate, intense good like it is when Steve's got that hand wrapped around him, pulling and stroking, dragging insanity into his bloodstream, but it's not bad, either.

He wonders what it'll be like with no clothes in the way, when they're not lying on their sides, when there's all the room in the world to lie out and open up, a though that heats his face, spreads a slow feverish flush through his chest. Having Steve. Having all of Steve, which as a concept is both terrifying and exhilarating, shouldn't be possible, should definitely not be available, and yet here it is. Steve. With that dragged-out, scraped-out voice, and thinly disguised want that sounds a whole lot like need. Faintly distracted, like he's already three steps ahead of Danny, considering what comes next, after pants are gone and they have room to do this without breaking any furniture or pulling any muscles.

"This movie's always on replay, anyway."

As if the movie matters. As if either of them were even paying attention to it to begin with.

Danny is helping and he's not helping. Talking about letting go, and making the first motion toward that giving Steve's body a warm, almost reluctant, squeeze that leaves Steve feeling like a bubble of adrenaline was shot directly into his stomach, snapping a firecracker inside his ear drum. Which makes it even more confusing, sort of like a slap of air, when that next thing Danny does actually is let go.

It's. He. Steve can't figure out if he's more grateful that he can tell there's air, or more annoyed that Danny let go. But Danny's fingers are catching on his forearm and his bicep and it is, if anything, a quiet sign, along with his words, to let go. To pull back. To be with him. To follow him now. When even half of his head is saying this is about letting go, to get to more, and something else, visceral and base, possessively doesn't want.

To let go. To pull away. To even hold a candle of belief that if he steps back, he'll get to step right back up. There is every chance that with air, clothes, another floor, breathing, thinking, Danny will change his mind. And he hates the part of him that knows, sweating a slick oil into the molten pool of his stomach, that Danny has every right -- he even needs Danny to know he has every right -- to do absolutely nothing. Even now.

But he is at least listening, unable to tell while Danny's talking about the tv-movie, if he's tightening his shoulder because he needs to move or because he needs to relax the muscles in. Shifting to drag his hand out of between Danny's thighs, holding that thought. Pulling out, and flexing his wrist in a circle twice, amid rubbing his fingers and his palm, the back of it, on some combination of his pants and his bare side.

Before reaching up to rub his face, trying to take a breathing, trying to remember that last thought. When the only thought that stays is that that was probably the very singular thing he should not have done. When he's suddenly breathing in warmth, shared sweat and a strong musk off his own hand. Breathing in Danny and Danny's skin. Setting a hive of bees buzzing in his ears, in his teeth.

When he can't even tell if the landstrike in his stomach, tightening his ab muscle in and down hard, is trying to make him groan in frustration at his own stupidity or with the way his body suddenly aches like someone is shoving a sharp blade through his flesh, smooth as butter, as he never can fight Danny. When he truly meant to just sort throw his hand away, like somehow he could cast it off his body to help, but it just ends up scrabbled on the next closest thing. Danny's chest.

Settling only for the briefest second, when his body decides far faster than his mind. The hand sliding up to catch Danny's chin, pushing up at the same second and leaning in to find his mouth. He's. Moving. He'll get there in a second. A moment. Another. Whenever he stops feeling like something just burrowed in right under his breast bone, and stopped his lungs, and this is the only thing, the only way he knows how to breath.

Catching Danny's lips, without even responding. Needing to pull him in. To push over him halfway, legs still tangled.

Edited 2013-05-26 22:45 (UTC)

It takes Steve a second, but he does actually move. Let go. Slide his hand out from between Danny's legs, leaving him feeling strangely bereft at the lack of warm pressure, careful fingertips.

That's a good sign, right? It must be, when he sort of misses Steve's hand there, wants to feel it back again, if only so he can figure out whether he likes it or not, so he can figure out how to do the same thing to Steve, if Steve wants him to, and he thinks Steve probably does.

He wonders how many times Steve has done this, with who, and feels a sudden sickening flash of jealousy that shoots into his stomach and leaves him feeling shaky and more than a little unnerved, because whoever it was, they aren't around now, no one's around now, except for him. Steve said so. Said he wanted Danny. Only him, and Danny doesn't think he was lying, or exaggerating. He's not sure it's possible to fake the kind of desperation that was in Steve's voice, in the way he kept himself between Danny and the door, in his eyes and frustrated arguments. No one else. Nothing else.

Steve. Trying to push him away, because he thought it was the right thing to do, for Danny, for Grace. Holding onto him, kissing him right into the ground outside, vicious and possessive, laced with loss Danny never wants to see on his face again, ever again.

And now finding Danny's chest with that hand, warm palm over Danny's sprinting heart, eyes wide and looking more than a little crazy, faintly unhinged, like Danny hit him in the temple with a rock instead of suggesting they take this upstairs, but Danny only sees it for a second before that hand is moving again, and Steve is kissing him, tangling them up, pushing Danny back and making the world and all his reasons for moving vanish in a blip like a soap bubble popping. Danny's hands move over his back, wide expanse of skin, rolling muscles, and for a minute, there's no fear. No panic, no nerves.

Just Steve, everywhere. All around him, over him, wrapping around him with long octopus arms and legs, dragging him close and tight, owning him like Danny's damn sure he's never been owned before, like Steve is staking a claim, won't ever be satisfied with the marks raised up on Danny's skin or the fact that he's the first to do so much of this.

They may not be moving upstairs, but it's not like there's any huge rush, right? It's still early. They have all night, and that might have been presumptive before, but there's no chance Danny's heading out that door before morning arrives. No chance he's going to give Steve the space to think and reconsider.

And he's not exactly dying to pull apart and take the few minutes to walk upstairs, either. Appealing as the thought of getting there is, he rebels against the idea of letting go, of being able to breathe, to think, to move without tripping over his own heart or Steve's obnoxiously long limbs.

God. God, fuck. That. That is perfect. That snaps something in his head, with the kind of relief that feels like a dam is crumbling like someone took the key stone and the whole wall is failing without a fight. When Danny's mouth opens under his, and his hands are suddenly sliding on Steve's skin, trying to touch his whole back. When it's like diving into the ocean, and having the waves wash right up at him, around him, everywhere. When Danny moves, and he feels like something in his chest is so overwhelmed its full stuffed with cotton.

Almost immobilizing him, even when he doesn't stop. With Danny still there. Not only the fingers carefully digging into his shoulder like that grip on a rock cliff. Not the careful touch of anything else, like the uncertainty the ground would still be there any next second. Not the perfect silence. Not his closed eyes. Not that that fraught stillness, from a man who is almost never still, never silent. Who literally surges to life under his mouth, like he's never stepped out, like he could never leave Steve alone in the fierce, uncontrollable all of this at his fingertips.

Literally. Had been at his fingertips. Crashing like waves on his lips. Making him disoriented, giddy, buoyed.

When all he wants for a moment is this. To kiss Danny and to feel Danny kissing him back. Fully engaged, involved, unafraid. Pulling Steve down at the same time as shoving into his space, into his chest and his face, the way Danny always has, since that very first day. Going toe to toe, dangerous and endlessly, heart always sloppy on his shoulder, so honest, so Good. So unwilling to give anything less than his all, demanding to be seen, recognized for all it, blinding Steve with it every day.

He wants that. All of this. Wants this in everything else. For Danny to be able to breathe, laugh, and spend his time lobbing insults at his head the whole way. Even if it won't, it might not. He doesn't know. But it's still here. It's still here, when he can't tell which of them is gulping this down like water after being dehydrated for days more. When Steve is more clear, more drive for the static shorting it all.

Even when he's letting go of his grip on Danny with the free hand not wrapped under him, and reaching out blindly. Searching on the edge of table for the god damn remote, without a single part of him that wants to let go of Danny's mouth or Danny's hands now that he's reclaimed them. Now that they aren't lost, and Danny isn't still. Doesn't want to let go of it, anymore than he could let go of the sea, or breathing.

Edited 2013-05-27 04:34 (UTC)