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 kind of hates the way his shoulders drop and he breathes in through his nose, intimately knowing he doesn't actually have to say anything to Danny right away. That the man will toss out his greeting, and question, and keep rolling on into something else. The way Steve feels like that voice yanks a string and all the hard lines of cement between his ribs collapsed, leaving him dropping against the wood with a silent huff.

And still holding on to his voice. Like he's fifteen somehow, and it hasn't only been two days at the most, and only, really, if he counts the hours from when Danny left work to get Grace on Friday. In any other context it hasn't even been two full days. And. He's not supposed to be thinking about that. He's supposed to be thinking about the other part. Grace. Who is the entire reason Danny sounds as light and as down as he sounds, all at once.

It's a familiar tone. It's a tone that usually lasts through a good half of Monday, if not all of it. That comes out for hours, again, if someone forgets to ask about how the weekend was until later in the week. When he becomes lighter, lights up, getting to talk about her, and, also, more distant, because it's over, and it's done. He's back to having to wait to see her, again. Until the next time she calls to even hear her voice again.

"Yeah. Sure." The words fall out, more common and heavy rote than chosen, or even thought about.

When he's half listening to himself and half wondering if he should have said no. If he should start saying no a lot more. Should start putting space between them. He has all the reasons. They are the right reasons. Even if when he's rubbing his mouth, his chin, his cheeks with long fingers and a broad palm, looking at that empty chair? They don't feel like the right ones.

Maybe he's just a selfish bastard. Maybe he just wants Danny here. Maybe he just wants Danny somewhere he can see him, before he's actually considering it. He doesn't even have to be within reach. It's not like Danny'll have much more on his mind but Grace and the weekend with her, and maybe Steve needs that, too. A reminder of what actually is important in Danny's world.

The most important thing. The one thing he could actually damage and would have no way to put right.
The way Danny would have every single right to hate him if that did happened. If he lost every single chance.

"I've already got most of pack here." Because why not, shove your hand in the fire, to think about not getting burned.

"Okay, see you in a few."

Easy. Just like that. Like there's no question, and even though they see each other all the freaking time, Steve still wants him to come over...or, at least, is okay with him being there, which. Danny will take what he can get, and that mention of the mostly-full six pack is about as close to an engraved invitation as McGarrett gets.

So he swings into the turning lane, hits the blinker, takes the next left that will take him to Steve's place instead of his own, and tries not to think too hard about how the car suddenly feels less close, how the radio is a friendly white noise instead of a disembodied and lonely voice. He puts the phone down in the console, and doesn't feel the need to immediately pick it back up, call Steve, call Grace, call Kono or Chin or Kamekona, because at least he's not headed back to his shoebox apartment to pick at leftover take-out and hate his ex-wife a little more with every cold lo mein noodle.

It's only been a month. But it's not...this, that he's going for. Not only. Right? He's spent plenty of evenings with Steve, always had, well before this got started, well before any of it happened at all, and this is just an extension of it. A chance to unwind, before their 9-to-5 gets shot to hell, like it does every week, and the entire concept of a weekend goes out the window. And there's nothing wrong with that, with just wanting to see him, talk to him. Find out what he did with himself. Pry him out of the dead airspace that is wondering about Doris, about Wo Fat, because Steve's been by himself, presumably, and frankly, having time to sit and think is maybe not the best thing for him, in this particular instance, with this particular situation.

He's about ten minutes out, turns the radio up and lowers the AC; the sun's going down, smearing the skyline with bonfire shades, and the temperature is dropping to something almost like hospitable, and it's quiet as he heads through town, towards the water, towards the quiet street with the houses set so far back, lining the beach and the little shell-curves of coves. Fingers tapping on the wheel. Foot carefully not pressing too hard on the gas.

There's no rush. He tells himself that, every time he makes a turn and something clutches gently in his stomach, telling him to go faster. He ignores it.

(Mostly.)

So it's turning to thick dusk by the time he pulls up, gets out, jangle of keys loud in the quiet, and he doesn't bother going inside, just heads around the house to the back, the lanai and the curving stretch of lawn, shoes soft on the grass, hands pushing into his pockets. "Yo."

Steve's there, in his chair, and Danny stands for a second, considering, before jerking a thumb at the house, heading in to grab a bottle of his own. "One sec, and I'll get on the same page."

Steve's sure he said some word or made some affirmative noise, or at least that Danny got the gist already, before the phone was resting in his hand. Call clicked off, staring at the water, second guessing whether that had been wise. Whether he should have given more time and more thought to Cath's words. Instead he spend far too long going over it, in a circuit.

Trying to turn it outward or invert it, but it doesn't work much. He's still staring at the ocean waves lit on fire with the sunset. Turning deeper oranges and heavier goldenrod, that diffuses at the edges to muddier blues and purples, darker and darker at the edges. That remind him of bruises more than skylines. But not yet. It's not taking over just yet. The faintest frame heralding the end of the day. But it's got time. He's got time. To figure it out.

Or he doesn't, when Danny's steps make him still and then his voice is breaking on the lawn. Sending a zip up and down Steve's spine, ending in that clutching of all the muscles in his center tight, like he should sit straighter, but also like everything in his stomach vanished for a second, before steadying. When he takes the second to breathe in and turn his head, slow, maybe like it's all distraction, over reluctance.

Getting there when Danny's already jerking a thumb, waving a hand, turning away and walking off toward the house, a world of color and retreating movement, jerking something out of Steve's chest with a hard, sharp sensation as he does. Goes. Just. Just to get a beer. And that's not something that actually needed a response from him, either, was it, really?

Nor is the way his brain actually supplies those aren't blue jeans. Not that there was any reason they would be. Steve reached a hand up and rubbed at his jaw, before reaching down for his beer, again. Palming the top, popping it and pocketing. Before he's letting out a breath, taking a drink, and waiting. Again. A minute, a few at most, and that chair will stop annoying him at least. And Danny ranted that he couldn't be positive.

The house is quiet, clean, comfortable in that old-fashioned way it always has been, with the little curtain-thing over the kitchen window that Steve can't possibly like, must just be used to, and the counters wiped down, the sink empty, because God Forbid the Navy should ever show up out of the blue and glove-test the place for dust or dirt.

Which is mumbled out loud to himself and the silent kitchen as he relieves the pack in the fridge of another beer, swinging the door shut and blinking in the lack of light as he finds a bottle opener, snapping the cap off and tossing it in the trash.

And maybe his eyes track back towards the lanai, the yard, the stretch of calm, open ocean which Steve is watching -- not intently, if the set of his shoulders is anything to go by, but with absorption. He'd barely glanced over when Danny first arrived, and that's not so weird, but maybe the quiet of the house isn't the only thing that feels too settled, around here.

He heads back out, stride swinging, easy and firm, meanders his way to the empty chair, to sit down and take a sip, cold bubbles bursting on his tongue, citrusy and with a faint warm wash of spice, leans back, and lets himself take an idle glance over his shoulder.

At Steve.

Steve, who hasn't moved, or said anything. Sitting there staring out at the water like he expects it to do -- who knows. Something. Vomit the sun back up into the sky, or suddenly freeze over. But like it wouldn't surprise him, anyway, because he's not there. Watching the water. Right now. It might as well be a screensaver for all the interest it seems to hold, and Steve's got that pre-occupied, inward look to his eyes that's an invitation for warning bells to start ringing, for that tiny needling voice to start whispering.

"Hey," he says, shifting, bottle landing on his thigh, where he holds it, light. "Don't talk my ear off, okay, I can only take in so much at any one time."

He returns and settles. From footsteps to the edge of his vision, and Steve doesn't know which count he's actually more curious about. How many seconds it will take before the next thing Danny says or how many seconds he'll last before he has to turn his head and look at Danny. Take in the face he's here, at the house, on his beach, at his side, end of the days, the weekend, at his side, again.

It wasn't unheard of before, but maybe it wasn't the first impulse, especially on these Sunday nights, unless they were really bad, before things changed. Before --

-- And Danny wins. He's so surprised.

Even if Danny talking means his gaze flicks that direction and his head turns, like it's fine to forfeit.

Or like if Danny gets his, that Steve gets his as well. The wry tug at the edge of his mouth and the gentler curve to his eyes, that never quite becomes a smile but the amusement is there. Quietly apparently through the distance. When he's taking in the wrinkled up expression and the pointed point.

The way the wind is trying to toy with parts of Danny's hair, already. The way he's already poured himself into that chair like he owns it. No longer empty. Claimed. Like it's his, more than like he's borrowing it, and Steve wonders if that's just him. Not Danny. Him, trying to figure where he, or they, lost the line. No, not lost. Buried in. In among their fuck this and that, that pertained to every topic but the one in his hands.

"If you wanted some quiet," Steve says, like he's only going right off what Danny said, like there was anything before it, the mirage of something long winded and worthwhile, that wasn't the topic pressing in on Steve's ribs only steal through like air that couldn't be kept out by chain link fence.

There was the turn toward half a smirk, about as present as the smile ever had been, as he gestured toward the endless waves, and Danny's eternal nemesis, with his bottle. "This probably wasn't the spot."

"Yeah, it's a real party over here."

He looks, an exaggerated sweep of eyes across the quiet lawn, and holds still for long enough to make the soft rush of waves, the unfurling cry of some seabird, obvious as the only sounds around. It's quiet, and still, and Steve's at least smiling enough to probably not be totally mechanical, though there's a slightly robotic quality to it that's enough to supplement those still whirling warning lights, add a low hum of sirens.

Because there is something. Something that makes Steve's smile come a half-second too late, that takes the words he's springboarding off Danny's comment and makes them sound strangely distant, like Steve's pulling out the "RETORT" stamp and checking off boxes with it.

While he's still sitting there. Motionless. Relaxed, but in a way that feels like he's just checked out, isn't just enjoying himself or taking in the view like a normal person would, at a normal backyard, one that isn't thick with the ghosts of betrayed McGarretts past. He's calm. Is it too calm?

Or is Danny just looking for the things he knows should be wrong, when Steve's whole world is cracking and it wasn't exactly ever that solid to begin with?

How long has he been sitting here? Was it from before Danny's call?

The glass is wet and cool and slick under his fingers; he rolls it gently around itself. "What's up? You look like you accidentally swallowed the key to wherever you lock up all the really dangerous weapons."

Danny watches the ocean -- exaggerated movement for exaggerated words, letting the silence slip in, except this time like it's a third person, with it's own sound and presence, filling up all the spaces, all that air -- but Steve finds himself watching Danny. The loose catch of his own fingers on the neck of his bottle like the loose catch of some other hold on his chest, his lungs, his thoughts watching him.

The dusting of day's stubble, and the confused tension in his posture. The blue of his eyes, that out does Steve's ocean too easily for there being so much less of it. Press of his lips, pink, dry, and certain even in uncertainty. Steve can almost see Danny trying to figure out. Well, whatever he's trying to figure out. He's not sure Danny will want to know really. Even when Danny is looking back over at him, again. Checking him over, like a through and through. Like he could find it.

Written on Steve's skin. Like so much else that is. Written on Steve's skin, and indecipherable. Stories trapped in secrets.

He's not sure that would ever be a good idea. A spot on his body he could look at and basically see initialed Danny Williams was here. Like the scars that said this case, or that tour, this fight, or that bout of capture, or holding out for reinforcements. All the rest of it. Not if it all should go. End. Not if moments like this might go with it, too. Not if everything except what had been there before went with it.

Steve gave him an exasperated look, all pointed eyebrows and the press of lips, canted one odd direction for Danny's example there. When he's giving an inch for one, but not quite for the other. Doing what he does best, of course. Pulling apart the things Danny says, that he thinks make any sense and don't stand up next to it. "Heavy artillery and ordinance weaponry needs a better security system than a key."

Because that's totally the point, Right? "Pin tumblers can always be picked, and cracked, too easily."

Edited 2013-04-24 02:35 (UTC)

"Oh, good, so that's not the reason."

Steve doesn't deflect well. It's a little like watching him tossing a grenade at a mini-golf course, just to keep the ball from going in the hole, because he'll slide straight past whatever the actual pertinent point is, and -- what, assume he can just distract Danny by mocking him?

If that were true, they'd never get anything done, though Danny would be the first to admit that there are times when, heavy-handed a tactic as it is, it actually works.

But those are times when they have other things to concentrate on: cases, or immediate personal tragedy of the kind Steve has actively avoided talking about. It's anyone's bet what happened between Doris and Wo Fat in that room, but even a month without her isn't long enough for even the most stable of people to wrap their heads around the idea that their mother, dead for twenty years, has actually been alive and well the whole time. And Steve -- Steve doesn't deal with things. He locks them up in neat little boxes and stores them in his bunker, and keeps going, and that was probably all well and good for the SEALs, but he's in a messier world, now, and Danny's not sure those boxes are doing such a bang-up job of staying airtight and sealed away.

Or if they should be, at all.

"So there's another reason why you're stoically contemplating the waves on this fine Sunday evening? You know they probably won't spontaneously evaporate into steam under the force of your stare, right?"

The hand that's not holding his beer gestures towards the water instead, and he leans forward, getting a better angle to watch Steve's face, because he's not wrong, there's something there, he knew it even before Steve tried any attempt at entirely transparent deflection. It's written in the line of his shoulders, the easy blasé regard, bland non-interest. "What's on your mind?"

"You do know most everyone else on the planet actually likes the ocean, right?"

Steve batted it back, droll unimpressed rise that actually makes his mouth tug a little tauntingly crooked and edgily expectant. "That they consider it calming? Rolls in and out. Rhythmically. Looks nice. It's actually suggested as a meditation technique. To help with breathing. Relaxing. Several types of therapy."

Not that Steve would count it as one himself. And he's had enough mandatory therapy to last a long, long while.

That he's not about to go near with a ten foot pole where it comes to Doris, or Danny, at this point. The ocean isn't that to him. It's too many others things. It calls to him in a way that house doesn't. Maybe in a way he thinks the house, and Hawaii, should, but doesn't. Especially not after Doris turned out to be alive.

It has less weight, less history, attached to it, even if it drags heavier the long he's grounded.

Which is another thing he really doesn't think Danny understands. Anyone understands. Except Cath.

Cath who has the thanks for everything else going on in his head, and who, probably, isn't wrong either.

"Steve, I say this with affection: the level of therapy watching the water can provide you would be like someone blowing on a forest fire to put it out."

It's barely even exaggeration, and it's not like he thinks it doesn't, in some way, help, but Steve's got kind of a twisted relationship with even the inanimate objects in his life. Just look at the house, how it hasn't changed, aside from being cleaned up, from when Danny first saw it during his sweep of the crime scene years ago. Look at the way he attacks the water every morning, like he's still got to beat some personal best. Look at how he keeps trying to will that monster of a Marquis into compliance, even though it burns through gas and oil like it's single-handedly trying to raise the global temperature by ten degrees.

And Steve doesn't really go in for that kind of thing. Sure. He relaxes, from time to time. He even relaxes on the beach, or in the water. It might be that he finds the sound and sight of the waves therapeutic. It's possible. Danny is willing to admit to the possibility.

He just doesn't think it's likely.

"So what you're saying is there's nothing rattling around that barbed-wire trap you call a brain? Nothing bugging you? You're just sitting here enjoying the sunset and watching the water, because this is a totally normal Sunday night and that's what people do in Hawaii on Sunday nights, is that it?"

Steve screwed up his face, hard, almost instantly, at last a click or two above the necessity of the offense from Danny's first statement. His belligerent, assuming, misunderstanding of Steve's track record there standing out like a spotlight against the night. That even if that hadn't been his point, Danny missed that some days it was the only thing keeping him in check.

From a reign of rage so thick there were mornings he didn't know how he was going to get behind or beyond the red to get his work done. To even get to work. To even stay on this island. To not go after the twin forces dominating his head when it wouldn't clear: Doris and Wo Fat. To clear the books and set things straight, the way they still weren't. Hadn't been. He failed down.

The way acknowledging it as such was tightening up every muscle in his body. Making him settle back in his seat, tenser, staring out at the ocean harder this time. Like his vision could drill holes in it. Like the holes this whole thought process, the whole weight of the house behind suddenly dug into his bones. The things he owed, the way he'd so far only gotten this close to solving before it slipped out of his hands, again.

The way his jaw aches and he needs to unclench. Lifting his bottle of beer and taking a long drink. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe there'd be more than this one needed, even after earlier. Especially if Danny kept on like that. Prodding fingers, and those words that were still going on, that he finally lets out with some annoyance, when his lips released the top of the glass.

"That is what people do around here." Everyone, tourists and residents, who was not Danny. Steve would be hard pressed to say if he stayed here another hour, two, three that he wouldn't be calmer, even from the endless loops of thoughts. That he didn't come back in the morning's again razor edges of sharply manageable instead of about to explode. Even he couldn't fight the pull of the ocean.

The only person who did that was Danny. Danny who he continue to toss words out at like pennies, without looking away from the water now. "I haven't been here that long." Long enough to be cool and calm and mellow. An extension of the rolling waves. "I only got in from dinner with Cath a little before your call."

He considers it a positive sign when Steve gets irritated enough to snap at him, self-defeating as it might seem. He's always done it; poked and prodded until Steve dropped the robot act and lashed out like a human, angry at being dragged out from under his safe walls, reluctant and pissed off from his bunker, every time it was obvious to everyone but him that he was making something personal, still trying to save his father and never able to get back to that moment, so saving other fathers, instead, rescuing kids, salvaging families.

And coming back here, by himself, to drink beers and look out at the waves and have to stay afloat in a world that killed his father and hid his mother for years.

Danny isn't unsympathetic. He feels for Steve, aches for him, hurts for him in a way he's not sure Steve is fully capable of allowing himself to feel. He doesn't want to make things worse, wants to fix what he can, but when there's nothing to do that can fix, the best he can do is to try and draw out as much poison as he can, be there for whatever might help.

So he's unfazed by Steve's tone or words, because it means he's getting closer, wearing down the walls Steve keeps stubbornly adding bricks to almost as quickly as Danny kicks them back down, and he'd comment on it, but Steve actually keeps going, and Danny has to take a second to tamp down on the sudden kick of worry that's decided to use him for punting practice.

Cath. With whom there is nothing happening. Because Steve stopped things with her. Cath. Who knows about them. Who Danny has happily managed not to think about, too much, since two weeks ago, for this exact reason: the filtering sense of dread that's starting to shade his thoughts, the clutch of nerves in his chest.

"And how is Lieutenant Rollins?"

One finger is tapping against the side of his beer bottle; stopping it just starts a bounce of one knee that gets smothered when he leans his weight onto it, forearms barring thighs. And if he sounds a little more cautious, well -- Cath knows. About them. She's the only one who does, and Danny can put two and two together, alright, that's his job, and he doesn't think it's a coincidence that Steve had dinner with Cath and then came back here to stare moodily out at the ocean like someone on the other side of it owes him money.

The rate gets the smallest shift of a glance, when Steve does actually question it, standing among the shards Danny already stepped on and woke up, again. Whether he's trying to see that's just Danny being roundabout or if it's actually distancing. Doesn't like the idea he's playing one of their opinions off the other, or that he should believe one over the other.

Still it gets the flash of a look, before there's a rough roll of his shoulders back, out, stretching muscles rolling and popping, resettling himself with a absent sort of frown toward the sea, and Danny's hate of it, and Cath's loss of it. "As well as any sailor docked interminably, while waiting for their ship to be decommissioned."

And if that sounds a little pointed, and entirely applicable to himself, that's fine. That's good, even. It's still true. It's one of those things that will never stop being true as far as he's considered. It hasn't really in three years. It didn't entirely ever leave during missions abroad for years. Which is where SEALs were, just as much as the water. It just settles like a bruise a little further under. Taking special skill to hit just right.

Which Danny has always had a speciality for. "She says it's giving her a chance to see more of the island."

Alright. That one. Wasn't exactly true. She may have implied that about this whole situation more than hers with the Navy.

Edited 2013-04-24 17:01 (UTC)

That seems like it could be a really involved metaphor, but Danny's not going to try wrapping his head around it just now, as regards Steve, because he's frankly never been all that excited about Steve's drill weekends or the possibility that he'll get called back into full time service, and that's what Reserves means, isn't it? That they call, and Steve goes?

Why would he want to think about that, right now? Isn't all this complicated enough?

But he can't miss the pointed tone, or the lack of specificity in Steve's other comment. He bets she never got to see much of it before, aside from the view from Steve's bedroom window, but that's actually cruel and unjust and not fair to Catherine, who has always been nice enough to him. He can't pretend to completely understand whatever it was the two of them had, but Steve said it was done, so that's good enough. Right?

Which still doesn't explain the way Steve is still eying the water speculatively, conversation still just skimming the surface of whatever's going through his messed-up head, that he won't tell Danny.

Which only makes Danny want to know more.

"Is that what she says?" He shifts in his chair, shrugs, turns to look at the water with an air of I guess this isn't so bad, if you like that kind of thing, waves one hand towards the long open stretch of rippling waves.

"Is that why you're stuck on watching the waves with that look on your face, or was it something else she said?"

Danny is shifting around over there, not sounding the slightest bit calmed and relieved for any of the answers. If anything his tone is lignering on, poking at the whole reason Steve is sitting here thinking. When he's pretty sure Danny wouldn't actually enjoy knowing what that point of fact was.

"She said a lot of things," is blase and a little sharp, with a half roll of his eyes. "It wasn't all that important."

Not all of it, you know. Some of it was work related, and some of it was updates on both sides. Since she's here long enough to actually be getting them, and not for it to be six or eight months later. When you just wash the deck, of whatever the statuses and horrors last were, and start with how everything is all over, again. She actually is here. To ask about how Malia or Kono's recovery is.

To prod, carefully, into how he's doing, even though that remains to be the same answer, for the most part, so long as he's standing and breathing. Everything else is just a wash, a flash in the pan. Even Wo Fat and Doris, though he can not let go of them. So. Yeah. There was a lot. And some of it, Danny'd just nod through, not that Steve owns him a play by play.

The whole idea is spiky and somehow also frustratingly slashed with something like guilty ownership. Because it isn't the other thing. When he tilts in his chair, More his shoulders, and is looking up at the trees not far to the sides, considering the removal of a branch before he glances back at Danny,

"I mean, she even thought it was cute to take a page out of your book and refer to you as my boyfriend for the first part of dinner." There have an example, Danny. Of the things that hadn't actually carried much merit, but were still there. Overdone and overreaching, and somewhere still stuck in his skin. Maybe not even knowing how much until it was knocking boots against that other thing in his head.

He should never be surprised at Steve's ability to pick the most efficient target and hit it, but it does, occasionally, mean that conversations with him are like getting punched in the kidney, because, well, boyfriend. That word sticks, like he's trying to swallow around a piece of raw turnip suddenly shoved down his throat, and he feels it like a lump behind his breastbone.

Boyfriend. Which is. It's not. This isn't. Right?

It's not like working up to that word with Gabby, finally admitting to it after a few careful months of cautious and low-key dates: coffee, dinner, more coffee, a lunch now and again, a movie once or twice. Riding the line between 'hanging out' and something more, unable to even call it being good friends, because they are, were, but they never built up that desire to just be around each other all the time, never felt the need to let the other one know, first, whenever anything interesting happened. It was easy. 'Boyfriend' fit, after a while, even if nothing else really did, and he's a pretty good boyfriend, when the job allows him to be. Enjoys spending time helping someone unwind, likes sharing coffee in the morning and doing dishes together at night. Is happier just having someone else in the room, even if they aren't paying attention to the game or his conversation.

But that's not. He isn't. It's only been a month, and he doesn't even know where to begin crossing that line, here, or even if one exists, because he's pretty damn sure Steve doesn't do the 'boyfriend' thing and frankly the thought alone is bizarre, to say the least.

They're partners, best friends. There doesn't need to be -- they aren't at -- what's the use of another label, anyway? Who needs this tightening in their chest, the sudden desire to get up and walk around, just to clear their head? Danny sure as hell doesn't, not added to the usual sense of sharpened aggravation and clinging gray tint to all his thoughts that comes from dropping Grace back off.

"So what you're saying is, some of it was important," he says, after a second, hauling himself back to the point at hand and gripping it tight, stubborn perseverance pushing past the lump of granite sitting in the hollow of his throat.

Keep on point. It's the best thing to do.

It does at least shut him up. For enough seconds Steve knows it hits. For enough seconds he actually considers a glance over and whether he should feel like a dick for chucking it at Danny instead of any other option on hand. But the other options aren't any better. In fact, they're worse. When Steve feels like he's holding a grande in his hand, like maybe he always has been, but until this second he let himself be distracted by everything else.

Not like this was that. Not like it's an option. Cath's term. Something all three of them were aware of.

For among other things, the exact reasons sitting on his other hand. All the walls, reasons that it shouldn't.

The fact he could deal with all the rest of them. Still half didn't mind his whole mentality being a fuck it, fuck 'em all sort of rote towards the papers, with a tense, sort of reluctant distance toward half his team, that got too complicated about complicitness and deception. Things he put aside for getting to dig his fingers into Danny's hair, or giving in to Danny showing up seconds after he was done with everything else.

Reveling in the fact Danny wanted to be here. With him. Not just when he had a second. Was free. But all the time. Maybe he doesn't want to know how much of that would go. Could. Will. Slipped through like the sands in the desert, tearing off skin, reckless and heedless and heartless, while you ignored it and pushed on through for the right reasons. Maybe he wants it to stay a few minutes longer. Even if he can't see anything but the grenade.

Selfish Bastard, point two. Steve reached up and rubbed at his jaw, before giving Danny a look over. Again.

"No, I'm saying it was a dinner. There were a lot of things said." Goes pretty flat. Generic, except for that too fine edge. Like all dinners there was a lot of talking. Except that it wasn't like all dinners. It was someone who knew. It was Cath who knew. Cath who he still wasn't sure he would have told if he had the option. He might have. But he might have not, just the same. Because maybe he hadn't wanted to hear someone else say them, someone else who wasn't also saying fuck those rules and holding on like everything in the world had gone to flame.

"You probably had a more interesting time with Grace." Steve said, flipping it back on him. But without stopping on that reference either. Wrangling even more toward something else. Because it has been a month, because she's probably old enough to know something is happening. "How's she?"

"She's good, which is why I am in a relatively decent mood tonight, unlike you."

It doesn't take much to neatly turn that question on its head, because as distraction tactics go, it's pretty damn blatant, and unworthy of Steve. It's like tossing a tennis ball in front of a dog, or holding out a treat; assuming that the topic of Grace will get them on less rocky shores, but that's not how this works. "Come on, what's going on? You look like you want to go out and bust some heads; you're telling me that's a normal reaction to dinner with a friend?"

A friend who knows. The only friend who knows. Who was previously pushed aside specifically because of this, because of him, and Danny feels a little sliver of ice slide into his heart.

He resists it. Tries to, anyway. Cath had been amiable that night, and he's got no reason to think she and Steve even discussed it. Right? Maybe they talked military nostalgia all night. Or considered the various types of supercomputers available.

All of which is easier to consider than the fact that she had Steve for years, and he can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to put up a fight against the guy who's snuck in for a month.

He's watching Steve now, with no pretense of even glancing at the water, leaning over his knees to peer across his shoulder, at flat look, tight jaw, mechanical drinking of the beer in his hand, when he remembers it's there, and that's not right, none of this is right. He's happy to talk about Grace, but not when she's being used as a diversion.

"What gives? Hey." He shifts a little, leaning slightly towards Steve. "Talk to me."

So much for a few minutes, given that Danny gives that answer in two words. Off hand. Like it's an obvious detail. And it is. That Grace is good. That he's happier and lighter because he got to have a weekend seeing her smiling face. That it was finally her in front of him, and not the idea of her he was arguing with someone into a phone, or setting up out lying court dates for the battle over.

It would be easier to go out and beat someone. Not that it is a worthy thought. But it's there. It would be so easy to take someone apart, methodically, until all that was left was pieces. Bits of bones. Smears of paint. The empty, echoing silence after. Something that is just as coldly clinical as it is appealing as it is appalling.

When it says something that he'd rather be there than here. This second.

But he doesn't give himself the liberty of that thought. When has he ever. He licked his lips and he turns his head, meeting Danny's flat stare. That obviously annoyed, pointed look, that says Danny thinks he has his number, even when he knows nothing. Or only just enough to be dangerous, but not enough to know what the hell he's pushing for, stepped off the cliff edge toward. What the hell he keeps asking for.

And he is. Asking for it. Already set aside the chance for extra seconds. A few more minutes. He already made that decision. Him and his face. And his hair that somehow catches the light, no matter the time of day. And his eyes, blue blue, best seen far closer up. That Steve does not look away from, nor specifically want to watch his face change from even this level of peevish annoyance, that's still soft at the edges.

Like it could easily dilute away if Steve gave him something else. Anything else.

Anything else, except, a flat, even, "We shouldn't be doing this."

Maybe he should have been expecting that.

Maybe he would have. Was. Definitely was, except then Steve said things like I want you, and did things like stayed all night when Danny could barely move.

Wanting Danny. Only him. He said so. Just inside, after Cath left, because Danny was, he'd felt, reasonably concerned that Steve might have changed his mind.

The way he has apparently changed his mind.

He gives it a moment, watching Steve. Focusing on the faint remembrance of a cold beer bottle in his hands, that he knows is still there, even though it's barely a dull echo of sensation, battering moth wings against the thick glass that's cutting through all his thoughts and leaving them severed. Twitching. "No?"

It's measured, because it has to be, because Steve said, he said, and Danny hadn't wanted to believe him, but he did, because Steve kept saying it. And even Danny told him. They know the rules. They know exactly how they're shattering them. It's not like they're pretending the rules don't exist. They're flying in the face of them, painting across them, flicking on a lighter and letting them burn.

Are. Were?

"Is that what Catherine thinks?"

He measures it because the alternative is to get up and yell, to argue, to fight, and he can feel it already starting to squirm, the need to get up, to pace and walk, to let his hands move and words fly out, but he might say anything, do anything once that happens, and he can give it a minute's worth of rational thought. Right? He can.

He hates the way it catches Danny. The way there is a pause. An honest, to fucking God, pause. From Danny. From Danny who always has the words to answer. Always has the words to coat someone in. Always has enough words to douse anyone within spitting distance in the length of a dictionary and breadth of a squall whether he's happy or angry. And he pauses. He pauses, staring at Steve. Silent.

In a way that makes every alarm in Steve itch to go off. Deafeningly. Going, rolling over, under his skin, like bits of glass and splinters of metal, because he's refusing to pay attention to the fact that isn't right. Because he's the one doing it. Because it means it hit. Because as far as tactical moves go, he'll always shoot center, whether it's with a gun or his mouth. And when he speaks first, it's still only a single word. A single word, with two letters. A farce of sound.

And Steve wants to take them back as much as he wants to build cement walls with them. Needs to hold firmly to the fact it's true. More true than anything else starting slimy and slick building in the bottom of his stomach. Needs to stare with a kind of blank, sympathy. Because he doesn't want to hurt Danny. He is. But shooting someone in the kneecaps, is still leaving them their heart. Their brain.

There's so much more Danny could lose than one month. It's not like they won't still have work.

It's not like it was much. A good dream. A dream too real to be true, with a price too high to keep forgetting.

"It doesn't matter what she thinks," Steve said, sitting back in his chair. Fortifying against the wood. Shoulders a flat board and spine straight as a line. Unblinking, like its facing down a gun. Because Danny deserves more. He deserves everything. And Steve can't take that from him. He held all of this for over a year, but can't even hold this idea. Not even for two hours. "You know it's true."

Edited 2013-05-02 01:21 (UTC)

"No."

The leash is already starting to snap, because he can't hold that one in long enough to give it a once-over and make sure it doesn't snap too clearly, or leave his chest with the force of a fired bullet. He can't quite keep one hand from lifting, either, to make his point, though he can, still, keep the rest of himself down. In the chair. Like he's tied there. Which Steve said not to do, but fuck that, because he knew it and Steve told him no, told him yes, told him I want you and stay, wrote him an invitation.

If he didn't know it would get him made fun of, he could probably pull the damn thing out as evidence. Come to bed, ~~idiot~~ ~~Danno~~ idiot.

Written. Because Steve was impatient and Danny was hedging. But Steve knew. Steve didn't change his mind, turn around and show Danny the door, and now this?

No. No. Everyone has the right to a change of heart or mind, but no. He needs to stop the freeze creeping up his ribs, shattering icy fingers towards his heart. "No, no. I don't, actually, know that. I remember saying something similar weeks ago, and I remember that conversation going a very different way, and I very much do not remember you thinking this on Friday, so color me curious, Steve, about your sudden about-face, here."

Because he doesn't appreciate being dropped off a cliff, when he'd previously been assured he was in a nice, level, safe field. Doesn't like Steve shoving him there, or the freefall his stomach is taking, and, really, this isn't even the pertinent question.

But Danny can't ask. Doesn't want to know, hear it. Whether it's not shouldn't, but can't.

"So unless you're going to follow that up with 'we shouldn't be doing this, but I don't give a damn,' then I, for one, would really appreciate some clarification."

Edited 2013-05-02 01:45 (UTC)

And then there it comes. Words that slipping out. Scatter shot, echo, like the hard cracking of thick ice. The constant chatter of a machine gun, when those three words come so fast finally. And Danny thaws in the snap of the sound. Suddenly forcing words out, and his face finally moving. Hands, hand, moving.

"We've already been over all the reasons, Danny. It's not like they've changed."

They had. They already said all the reasons. Every single one in the dark.

They already whispered each one into the void, into the night, tattooed them on each other's skin, with lips and teeth that are sharper than any burning hot blade, to leave scars that will be worse than any weapon, because they'll hover like untraceable whispers, keeping time and company with all the ghosts. Close enough to taunt and haunt, but never close enough to reach out and touch.

"And you know you don't actually not give a damn about any of it," is pointed, and sharp. It has to be. It's too true. It's the reason the words, get dropped on skin, in the middle of a forest fire of fingers. Because it matters. It all fucking matters, and they just kept letting this matter even more than that. For stolen moments. For kisses that branded skin and seared out thought. Because every single thing mattered. Every single rule had a reason they lived.

There would never be a day their jobs didn't matter. They would never be a time it wouldn't destroy everything.

Because Catherine was right about one thing. Even if she never latched on to it, if she only dropped the crumb for Steve to find.

Piece by piece in this god forsaken house, with an empty chair next to him. Danny couldn't be that term. He could never offer him that. He can't actually offer him anything. The couch, this chair, to fuck him, to make him laugh and leave him gasping, for a few minutes, that always end, always have to be put away and forgotten, like they are somehow wrong, something to be ashamed of, that Danny is, ever might be.

The iron clad promise that if it got out, Danny could, and most likely would lose his job, his case, his little girl.

And none of that is okay. It doesn't know how he let himself be, but -- "It's not worth it."

Steve said it, having to push up out of his chair, taking the beer with him. Because that was true as everything else. This isn't worth Danny losing everything. This isn't worth Danny losing the job he said right here he needed to have, needed to be good at and told he was good at. This isn't worth knowing, learning, what it look like if, when, it comes out and damages every shred of credibility between Danny's character and Grace.

Being the single, absolute canon ball to any slight chance. It's not worth it. Steve's not.

"Oh, I don't, huh?"

Snapped out, pissed off and more than a little afraid, because Steve is looking -- Steve is looking grim, determined, and Danny has a sudden vision of a letter landing back on his desk, of Steve saying I had to do that as justification for some damn crusade that's only going to get him killed, because Steve has never cared about that. His own death. Just getting the mission done. Bringing the villain to justice. Doing the right thing. Doing his duty, like a good little tin soldier, even knowing he might get tossed into the fire at any second. "Thanks for clarifying that for me, I had no idea. I'm pretty sure that's not what I said before."

When he said those rules could screw themselves. When the reasons couldn't, didn't stop them, even for existing, swatted aside like so many aggravating mosquitos.

The reasons haven't changed, but something else has, because Steve didn't give a damn before, either. Not enough to stop. Not enough to do this, this...it isn't even pushing. It's like watching Steve methodically cut away his own lifeline, hanging from a sheer cliff face, and Danny wants to know, needs to know, because he can't let this happen. Not so soon. Can't let it slip away, sand between his fingers, not before it has to be. Not the way Steve smiles, or the warm puff of his breath against Danny's over-heated skin, or the tracks his fingers have traced over muscle and bone and limbs. Something's wrong. Something's off. It's not the reasons; it's Steve, and Danny wants to keep going, but Steve gets up and that's like loading a spring, pushing Danny out of his own seat.

Beer down on the tiny table, every muscle suddenly singing with readiness and temper, hands up, like a blocker, like Steve might be trying to make a break for it, and Danny can't let him, has the sudden frantic feeling that if he lets Steve walk away, this might actually be it. An end. One he'd had no idea he was walking into, and he's just so suddenly sick of that, of continually walking into a slamming door.

It winds him up, sends him across the grass to park himself in front of Steve, who isn't moving, but it's pre-emptive, okay, and so is the way one hand finds Steve's arm, the other his hip. "It's not worth it?"

Actual shock and hurt in his voice, in his eyes, wide and creasing his forehead with surprised lines. "Jesus Christ, your head is a piece of work."

Not worth it? Steve? In what fucked up world is Steve not worth the price that comes with him, huh? Where's it written, where's it been rung up? Does Steve think Danny somehow fell into this without a clue about what it might mean if things went south? Steve. This. Not worth it. It's an equation that strikes itself out, is so wrong Danny's not even sure how to argue against it, because it should be, is, obvious. "Do I get a say in any of this, or are you just gonna decide for me? Because, I have to tell you, I'm really getting pretty fucking tired of people telling me what to do or where to go, or what I think. Not worth it? Are you insane?"

His fingers tighten, and he gives Steve's arm a little shake, tiny compared to the one he wants to give, to rattle Steve's brain back into place. Voice gone intent and still sharp, eyes fixed on Steve's face, bewildered but determined.

"It's worth it."

Edited 2013-05-02 03:03 (UTC)

The fingers on his arm are worse than an actual burn, and he can almost hear the way his jaw snaps tight suddenly and his muscles go rigid, shivering. Half from reaction, and half from the control it takes not to send Danny shoved in other the direction instantly. When the man is in his face and trying to get in his way, and doesn't understand he's already there. Wherever the hell there is. Danny is already there. Under his feet. In his skin. Burning him alive.

Making him want to be more and better than he's ever thought he was capable of before.

"No." He spits it out, cold and a little too sharp. Surprised, defiant sharp. "It's not."

Not every single kiss. Not knowing the way his face crinkled so aggravatedly in the early dawn hours crawling into bed. Not knowing. Not trusting Danny to catch him if he lets go. Not trying to find his foot in whatever the hell this had become, that he could breathe and sleep easier because of, even when the whole house was a hell ripping apart as its seams.

"You wanna know where this goes, Danny?" There's a jerk of his arm, trying to shake Danny's hand. That makes him feel sick. Because it's shoving into his arm, up his skin, his muscles, and filling him with a kind of sharp, screaming dread. One that wants to pull away like he's on fire, and the other that is - that he can't. He can't listen to the rest. He can't. Needs to keep rolling.

"No where. Absolutely no where. It'll be never become anything else you need it to be." Danny. Danny with his cups of coffee and a real life, and can't be not serious. Well, he can't fucking give him serious either, can he? Because this can never be serious, and it can never be Real.

"And when someone finds out, because they will," It's vicious, and it even comes with a step into Danny's space, leaning in while standing too straight, too tall, like this was anything and anything worth reaming in uniform. "Because secrets always get out, then what? It'll stil be worth it? When Five-0 is under investigation, and possibly shut down? When you're out of job, and maybe Kono and Chin, with you?"

"And your case-" And Steve's tongue stumbles on that, like it's a damn brick in his throat because it is. Because he could be the one piece of debris to start an avalanche for all of them. And he's the only one with a safety net that will save him while they smolder in rubble. "Grace." God. He doesn't even want these words. "Is it still going to be worth it when every single thing you've said or proved on record is thrown out as inadmissible?"

It not a question. It's not a damn ultimatum. He just wants to, needs to walk away. Because Grace is everything. More than the job. More than the parts and sum of everything else. He knows that. He's known that since the first day he met Danny. Since the first, awkward confusing, eye-roll worthy, but utterly clear and sincere Danno loves you. She's the the pure and untainted center of Danny's universe. The one thing no one should jeopardize and everyone does.

And Steve, God help him the selfishness, does not want to ever be lumped in with Rachel and Stan that way. Or ever.