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's quiet. Or, well, operatively, it's quieter. Not quiet. Not gone. He hasn't checked out. He's wiggling around. Jumpy as well...a teenager, almost, though Steve tries to squash that thought. Because Danny is nothing like a teenager. Danny Williams. His partner. The most loyal, bull-heard, loud-mouthed, entirely failing but not failed at being self-sufficient, partner. Who is anything but a teenager.

With his damnedable wardrobe that is nothing like a teenagers and frequently make Steve feel like someone turned back the clock and made him one though. Made it so he can't deal sometimes with a pair a perfect sized pants and a long set of shirts that have to be custom made. Nothing fits like that. Even when custom isn't Danny, and it leaves Steve ache everywhere from his chest to his pants, like he just hit fourteen again, he still doesn't want them to go.

Because nothing about this is about teenagers. But Danny is in the middle of something so new Steve isn't even quite sure he can remember how 'new' felt the first time. Awkward? Strange? Odd? Rushed. Not the first time. But definitely the second first. When he knows it's all new for Danny. Every reaction, every impulse. When he's momentarily tensing his jaw when Danny is shifting his hips and moving against him, where Danny doesn't even seem to know, but it's tearing showers of electric sparks up the center of Steve's stomach, hazing out his vision for at least a full second.

Making his grip stick for a second, as Danny's is pulling on his face. Danny. Danny who suddenly needs something to move, to do, there's almost a frantic energy to it. His words, his face, the way he's breathing in and our faster than would have it getting much to his lungs at all. When he's kissing Steve like somehow he's going to miss all of this. Miss how he's cataloging the sprint of Danny's heartbeat into a slow racing gallop. The more serious, necessary grip of his fingers. The focus of his mouth. Needing Steve.

Needing Steve's attention, Steve's mouth, Steve to be there with him, have him, keep him floating from both ends. Even when he's returning the kiss rather than finding words to give back to Danny's. How he's shifting his finger in a wide circle, before pulling out. Before rubbing at his pointer finger before he's pressing down again with both. Stretching his fingers apart at the same time as pushing down now. Because this is only going one direction, now, and it's not backwards or slower.

It's a good thing. Steve coming down when Danny drags him, because they need to be on the same page, need to be in this together, like Steve said, like Danny said. It's not Steve doing this to Danny, it's both of them, doing it together.

Right.

Which is all the more necessary when Steve's finger slips out, leaving him feeling strangely empty, and then pushes back in, with another, scissoring apart and ripping the first true tear of actual pain through him. Not just discomfort. Like tearing skin, ripping stitches, and his breath catches in all the wrong ways while he rides it out, muscles thrumming and fingers white-knuckled against Steve's skin, breath shoving straight out of his chest.

It doesn't last, thankfully. Pain dulls quickly and it has a way of carting away even the memory of it as soon as it stops being felt, but his body is cautious, uncertain, unsure if it's going to happen again, if it'll be like that every time, even as he starts adjusting to further intrusion, two fingers stretching parts of him that's he's pretty sure were never meant to be stretched. Steve's palm cupped between his legs. A low groan that's more reaction to discomfort than it is to desire, but it's getting better.

More quickly than he'd think, though there was definitely a backwards step for a second, there, muscles clenching hard, body freezing up briefly, breathing against Steve's mouth as his eyes close and he focuses. Lets it roll through him. Makes relaxation a conscious effort, breathes it in and out until he can feel himself opening up.

And maybe this is the flaw in his plan, because he's good at talking Steve over a ledge or off one, but this is verging into brand-new territory and he needs a second just as much as he doesn't, as much as he's sure it's probably better to just shove ahead and damn the consequences.

Or maybe not. He doesn't know, which is sort of the point.

It happens in a flash. That freeze that hits his body like a bucket of ice water. Danny seizing up around his fingers, leg muscles clenching suddenly into something far closer to clinging around his hips. Fingers digging into his back with the kind of force to bruise small dots into his back or arm, but not in the right way. Not like this. Not when Danny's pulse is spiking harder, but it comes with a gasp for air, sudden flinching and that sound that stumbles out Danny's mouth.

That nearly makes Steve's chest try to jump outside of himself. Idiocy and concern vying for each other, against something slick, oiled, and stupid clawing its way up the inside of his chest, inside of his ribs, his spine with long needle like claws. Something like desperation smashing in those waves rocking up from the pit in his stomach that has nothing left to stand on.

"Hey," Steve said. Firm, firmer than anything feels in him. Moving a little slower, a pacing consistency, but not stopping. Not about to stop. Not about to let Danny's seize up entirely and undo all he's already done, doing so well with, pushing into himself. Not until or unless Danny asks him to. Needs him to. Which isn't quite yet. He thinks. Hopes. Pushes. Himself, and Danny, fingers still moving.

When he's licking his lips and talking into Danny's mouth. Keeping his voice that way. "Stay with me, Danny."

Here, with him. Where Danny drug him up to. Here, with him, where he keeps telling Danny he is. Where he keeps shoving everything else out for, no matter how loud and dizzyingly distracting it gets, or how much it feels like he's going to combust if something doesn't happen, because he wants Danny, here with him, wants to be here with Danny, more than he wants any of the rest of it. Because he'd still choose to be here, here with Danny, even if he hadn't said anything on the couch downstairs.

Which makes him all the more of fool for pushing and then needing to say it. For needing to find his way into Danny's mouth, pulling on his bottom lip before kissing him, like an even more immediate request, or demand, teasing drag to pull Danny's focus back to him, back to the better things. Because it'll get easier. He knows that. If it doesn't stop, it'll get better. Along with the list of reasons he doesn't do this kind of thing, but would rather have his skin boiled off before he'd leave Danny or stop or want it to be anyone else.

Edited 2013-06-02 05:39 (UTC)

There's a lot of give and take, with the two of them. There always has been, but it's never felt like anyone was taking, never felt like either of them was holding something out for it to be snatched away. It's more like tides, rising and falling. Or like shadows and sunshine, one pushing forward, the other giving way, until it gets turned around again.

A partnership. That's what it is. A good one, the kind where they trust each other, know how far the other one can be pushed, be certain that they always have each other's backs. A friendship where they share everything, triumphs and problems and losses.

And now Steve wants to share this. Wants him here, present, right now, in this second, which means Danny needs to drag himself out of his preoccupied focus, the way he'd dragged Steve earlier, and respond, letting out a breath he didn't know he was holding, pressing up for a kiss, letting his fingers let go, even when it feels like prying them off Steve's skin or moving them to another spot is just asking to slide right off the cliff face.

Except he won't. Because Steve's got him. Steve's right here. Moving careful and slow, without stopping, pushing in, and Danny's struck for a second by how right it is that Steve, who's been metaphorically shoving himself into Danny's chest and head and under his skin for two years now is the one to be doing it for real, to slip inside and make room for himself where there wasn't any before.

Making his voice hoarse when he answers, but it's there. He's here. Is along for this ride, just like he said. He's not leaving Steve hanging out here alone, no matter how strange it all feels.

"Okay," he says, lets his iron grip relax, spreads his fingers, skates palm and careful fingers over Steve's skin instead of digging in again. "I'm here."

He isn't surprised it's an effort, even when the muscles in his own back are probably listening as well as Danny is. Detaching slowly, feeling Danny prying up his fingers from those muscles they were gouging in against. Which doesn't hurt, not at least the way he thinks about things hurting. The caustic pause between his words and Danny's, his words and Danny moving, those are more concerning than a little pressure.

He'd rather it was him than the bed. Then pulling way altogether. Than it happening at all.

He breathes out. Danny. And the words come, almost the same as the fingers. But they still mean something. Because Danny's words always do. They don't always mean the words he's shoving out. Whether it's millions, or three. But they always mean something. They always reflect the color of everything inside of him. The ways these ones, and his hands, carefully spreading on Steve's skin do.

Danny careful. Worried. Uncertain. Skittish. Possibly scared. Clinging, but not clinging, against that edge he doesn't mind shoving Steve right over, but that isn't as easy to shove himself straight into. Steve doesn't know what the greater urge is his head is. There are so many of them. Defeat isn't an option. Is. isn't. Should be. Except he isn't stopping, is working against the way Danny is touching him.

Trying to take Danny's words for face value against his body's coiled tension. Continuing to push with his fingers, in and out steady, stretching muscles, pressing in and up, against the wall of skin, more and more. Stretching the rope in his head that gets thinner and longer, patient to a patience he doesn't have, always has, has in the kind of spades that makes other people go insane, because he already is, and needling all at once. Tilting his head and kissing Danny's lightly and sloppy before saying.

"That wasn't it, you know." And he could say those words like an apology. Like a concern. Like he's explaining. Comforting. When all of those might be somewhere buried under it. But he doesn't. He drags it him up on sheering, sharp meat hooks from somewhere.

That tone he uses when Danny needs something to attack, something to focus on or tear apart. So he isn't focusing on himself. Tearing himself apart. Steve prodding at him, a little goading and little taunting, half bland like it's obvious to everyone else on the planet. Raising his eyebrows from a faintly smug flicker to toss it's hat into the ring, too.

Always giving him a better target, a better distraction. Even when his hand never stops.

Beat. "The way I'm going to make you shut up."

It helps. The challenge. Danny grabs onto it with both hands, hauls it in, something he recognizes, knows the shape of, the steps to. Not like he knows the mirrored version of what's happening now, knows it's not actually that different, right, except he's on the receiving end instead of giving, but it's all mechanics, right? What the fuck does it matter, as long as everyone involved ends up feeling good?

And it's not like Steve hasn't left the door open for escape if it's necessary. He's not trapped, no matter how much weight is on him, or how they might be wrapped around and in each other. He could call it quits, and hopefully Steve would get it, would recognize that even taking this step by step in one night is a hell of a lot faster than Danny ever goes, that he hadn't really expected to get further than talking about it tonight, that each push for Steve to do more was as much testing himself as it was encouraging his partner.

Like this. Like Steve's rasping voice and messy kiss, which makes Danny's clumsy heart go tripping all over itself again, stumbling off the rungs of his ribs into some soupy mess that he, embarrassingly, can't seem to get rid of around Steve anymore.

Even when he's being a dick. Maybe especially when he's being a dick. When he's doing it on purpose, like now, but Danny doesn't care, can't care, is too grateful for the distraction, the new target to focus on. "Yeah? Good. I was getting worried you lost your touch, there, buddy."

Ragging on him right back, like Steve doesn't have two fingers up his ass and Danny's not trying to figure out how he feels about it all, along with how it feels, to begin with, because the physical reactions are all snarled up with everything going on in his head and his stupid floppy heart that just keeps taking hit after hit, too dumb to run away. "I mean, no offense, but I'm still capable of coherent speech."

EVen when it's an act. Even when his heart is jackrabbiting all over the place, skittish and bewildered in his chest, and his muscles keep trying to tighten around Steve's fingers, even while they're starting to give. Starting to feel better. The pressure and strange feeling of fullness doesn't feel good yet, but it's got that edge that he knows probably will, if he rides it out, bluffs long enough to make it real. It's edging into that feeling, into something to like, something recognizably good, maybe even fun, if he can relax, and just go with it.

He's trying. Steve's helping, but first times are rough all around; he knows, he remembers, has all too many memories of previous first times that were nothing like this, physically, but full of the same uncertainty, not sure where to step and where will send him crashing to the ground or the other person off in a cloud of buzzing frustration.

But he can go with it. Now that it doesn't actively hurt, he can feel panic and worry subsiding, concentrates on Steve's mouth instead of Steve's fingers, on Steve's weight and the slickness of sweat under his hands, on the way Steve looks at him, careful, with a held-back wildness that shows in the blown-out retinas of his eyes, the flush Danny can't see but knows is there, climbing his chest, neck, cheeks. Mocking him, now, in this moment, when it's the best damn thing Steve could be doing for him.

Steve snorts, easy, fast, keeping his mouth light and loose against Danny's words. Against Danny kissing him back. Against Danny grabbing on to something to act out toward like it's life raft, which makes it easier. Slowly ramping up the pace of his hand, that is causing a pretty semi-constant burn in his inner wrist and the first part of his forearm. But ignore it. Ignoring a good half of that. Or at least pretending to.

As much as he could ever ignore this. Touching Danny. Danny on him. Around him. His fingers, his hips, grafted close with just a much fear about the whole thing as trust that Steve isn't going to drop him suddenly. Steve who's pushing through the feeling clouding up his chest, surprising him for it happening now, again, to swat back at Danny's complaints about his style, about the time he's taking, about firsts and Danny's own reactions, like smacking a fly.

Steve says, heavy and sarcastic, sharp insulting bite to his words, "You haven't been coherent a day in your life."

It's not entirely untrue that Steve misses the looks people throw Danny. But he does catch some of them. The ones that get made because of that. Because Danny is mouthy Jersey cop, with a flash-paper short temper and hands that act like planes. Who goes off at the drop of hat, ready to throw several volumes of a dictionary at unsuspecting people's head, with those dangerous hands flying everywhere.

That it can confuse people just as fast when he's happy as when he's angry. Because he's kind of like a massive wave, just hitting you and drenching you with everything all at once. Just keeps coming and covering everything. An onslaught. A squall. Maybe Steve didn't mind because he learned how to stand all those things before he got to it. Or maybe because he catches on to the pea sized matter behind Danny's bluster every time.

Catches on to the way it matters. All of it, even now. Needing to be coherent, needing to be sure, needing to push forward as much as not say he's obviously thought about running away. That it's not easy. And running would be, stopping would be. That easy just took a dive off the cliff Danny shoved Steve over, and he's still gripping the top with his fingers.

Clutching every single known thing he has to consider normal, right, something he already knows and knows he's good at.

All of those things Danny Williams likes having as his foundation. The things he's good at, that he likes to hear he's good at.

"Just because you don't use words longer than two syllables doesn't mean I am incoherent, okay, it means you need to invest in a better dictionary."

God. It's relieving. He wishes it weren't, wishes it weren't so, but it is, having this to fall back on. Insulting Steve like always, getting it tossed back at his own head. This game of ping-pong they play constantly, well-oiled and practiced, and as much as he hates to admit it, it helps.

Helps loosen him up, in more ways than just the one Steve is working at. Starts unlacing his back, his hips, the wide space between his shoulders that had grown uncomfortably narrow.

But it's a blip. Right? It can be, is being, moved past. They've got it under control. Danny's got it under control, is a grown man and a competent cop, one who's seen and gone through far worse than his -- than someone like Steve wanting to sleep with him, and walking him through a first time that in any fair and reasonable world would have happened in his teenage years, like everything else did.

No such luck, but at least he's not going into this completely blind or totally unprepared; at least there've been a few weeks of fooling around, enough that he knows at least some things that Steve likes, that feel good.

Like when he moves his hand off Steve's back, shifts himself a little further away, not to disrupt those fingers stretching and loosening and -- Christ, there before it's gone again -- working him over with ruthless concentration.

No. It's to get enough space to slide his own hand between their hips, because Steve is pressing up against his stomach, hard and insistent, and there is seriously no distraction better than concentrating on someone else, on making them feel good, because that makes him feel good, and he likes to think that he's not a totally selfish bastard in bed, that he can give as good as he gets.

Which is why his fingers are curling around Steve in a warm, firm cuff, sliding up so he can rub his thumb over the smooth head, back down again, picking up the pace of Steve's own fingers, feeling a rhythm, and that helps, too. Moving together and making it seamless. Closing the circuit, so it all goes from Steve to him and back again, and he gets a sudden, mind-melting vision of this, but without hands involved, with Steve, or him, buried in each other, rocking into tight perfect heat. How it could go both ways. Which is. Which is perfect, somehow. Equalizing.

Once he's past the rookie bump, anyway, but nobody could ever say Danny Williams is not determined.

To say the world shudders or snaps or obliterates would be an understatement.

There were words on his tongue a second ago. There was a goal in his head. There were careful, precise rules somewhere under them. Trigger-wire specific about what not to do, again, labeling half of half everything. There was even some semblance of caustic frustations-patience-want and a whole new card hand of belligerence distracting him as much as it was distracting Danny.

Before Danny's hand. Before every inch of his skin -- already screaming at a pitch he had marked down for ignoring, like it was thing he'd seen and left and maybe even locked away behind Door 1 while he was standing over in 4 or 5, with the more important things happening -- seemed to spasm like a single large living organism cracking, crashing, giving birth to wave of overwhelming fire that slammed with as unexpected a force as being punched in the face in in the middle of being dead asleep.

There is no stopping that sound being torn from the bottom of stomach, or his feet, or peeled off his spine, when his body shoves into Danny, Danny's hand with, there, the undeniable response not too unalike to being electrocuted. Which. Which is all in good. All of it. If any of it hurt. If what was crumpling his thoughts, his very want to breathe or remember, whatever he was supposed to be remember that was empty, blowing away, blown out, if it hurt. He could handle that.

But it doesn't hurt.

Nothing hurts.

Nothing.

There's fire crackling in his vocal cords, behind his eyes, filling up his nose and his mouth, every vertebrae in his spine with a burst of blinding light, rolling fog, the sensation that feels so good, so complete and indestructible, unassailable, it nearly might as well be pain. Nothing that overwhelming ever isn't, is it? Tearing him apart. Shoving into every atom of space, laughing in the wake of destruction like every wall and door and plan and thought had been made of plaster and well-drawn on parchment paper.

When he can't tell if he's shoving into Danny, or dragging him closer, can't control for a moment the speed or depth or grip of his hand, because every other fingers in that hand is presently busy. Grafting his fingertips, fingers, palm, into the mound of muscle under it when he's shaking. Thrusting back, muscle control a memory. When the world is only laughably beginning to give him windows that imply he had eyes, or the capability for vision from them, a second ago.

It's a little like he'd touched Steve with a taser, instead of his hand; muscles tighten, lock up one by one, and Steve shudders and jerks, that dark molasses sound ripping out of him like threads are being pulled from every spine, like nerves are fraying and sparking with ragged ends. It's all sudden instinct, rutting into his hand, fingers shoving, grasping, hard, and he is going to be sore as hell tomorrow, but it's worth it.

To watch Steve lose it. Making Danny wonder how far out on this plank Steve walked, telling himself he was in control, ignoring himself so he could focus on Danny, because it hits like someone jumping through a plate glass window, unexpected and complete. Landing like a boulder in his chest, that starts rolling casually around that crammed space, crushing everything it comes across, flattening him out leaving him as winded as if it were Steve's hand on him, instead of the other way around.

Making him, wildly, want to call a halt to everything else, push down, get his mouth there, reduce Steve to a shaking, groaning mess, every constructed wall tumbling away, every barred off door ripping off its hinges. Lay him out on the mattress, sweat-slick and beautiful, with no one else's hands or mouth and no one else's name dropping off his lips in restless moans. Because no one gets to be here. If they're stupid enough to let Steve go, they've lost their chance. Danny's made plenty of mistake in his life, but this, this is not one of them, he knows it down deep in his bones, knows it like he knows Grace is beautiful and brilliant and best of all good, like he knows coins will drop and birds will fly.

It can't come to nothing. It's already this, and this is already too much for him to hold without being terrified it will fall out of his hands and smash on the floor; this already shoves his hapless heart out of the way to make more room for Steve, for Steve's smiles and frowns and testiness and the way he knocks the cap off a bottle of beer without looking at it, for the larger than life Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett who is too big for every room and takes up too much space in the car and the bed and the couch, who only seems to fit when he's out on the ocean, where the horizons are boundless and the sky gives him all the space he needs.

That's what tries to fit inside Danny's chest, in his head, and it will never, could never work, but it's there anyway, and Steve should never be surprised that Danny wants to touch him. To make him make that sound. To reduce him to trembling muscles, snapped self-control, rasping voice that lacks any kind of sense or words.

Like this. Shoving deeper, harder, into Danny, and it hurts, but it's good, too, making his eyes squeeze shut and his breath grow labored, shallow pants gusting against Steve's lips, chin, cheek. Racing up his spine in looping threads that squeeze, pushing everything out of the way except Steve, who really is everywhere, now, around and on top and inside and if Danny could fit all of him under his skin, he would.

He can't, though, so his fingers just tighten, and keep pace, and his hips are moving, pushing back and forth, asking for more, more, more Steve, more of this, more.

It's a little like clawing back up a cliff, and more than Danny should ever know, like coming back from being minorly deafened. That doesn't always come back gently either. One second it's all gone, ringing, endless bubble and sometimes it just snaps, everything flows back in like water. This cascade of indistinguishable screaming cacophony. The way the sound of Danny breathing hard into his skin. Short, heavy, restless breaths invades Steve's awareness first.

Danny and Danny's breaths. The fingers sheathing up and down his skin, dragging madness, bumping and bungling knuckles into his stomach as it goes. The thigh clenched over his skin. Not because it's clenched. Because it's moving. Because it connects the fast shifting dragging along his leg, hips pumping against his hips, making him realize his own hips are, and that those other hips, their butting up against his hand. His hand, moving at about the same second as the realizing its attached, buried, that Danny is pushing against it.

When everything comes back with the kind of burning sudden intensity it failed, fled, burned out with it's almost as staggering. Even when rationality says the whole of it can't have been more that seconds, it still feels staggering. Stay. Is building. With each move of Danny's fingers, and his hips. That is being matched very suddenly by a drive. To keep up, to run beyond, to push deeper, more solid. When really the rest of him doesn't give a single damn about where his head is or whether he needs it. That. That can tatter and tear, be lost in the wind.

He doesn't need it for this. He doesn't need it to figure out how to move his hand, his wrist like a pistone. Like the reverse of the one his own hips are pushing into Danny. His hands, his body, the movement of his hips, the drag of him hard and solid pressing into Steve's own stomach, and those hands, and himself. And he doesn't. He doesn't need to think. Thinking. Thinking is hard and high and so overrated it could be sold out and he wouldn't remember to care right now.

He wants this. He wants that indescribable madness where it's blurring in his head. The feeling of his fingers getting lost in Danny's skin, with the one where there's tension, tightness pulling, grasping, warmth cuffed all around him. Almost. Almost like. Close enough it seems insane, and not insane, blurs, bleeds, desperate wants and blinding bursts pleasure. And all he wants is this. All of this. And to move his head and find Danny's mouth. To give up on that, too.

Because he doesn't need to breathe. Anymore than he needs to think. But he needs Danny.

Needs to know. Needs to feel him, touch him, taste him, check in with him for even losing it for a single second, find the only air and answers that even matter in the world, on his lips, his tongue, in the air and the words he has, shove everything into him, to be there with him, drag him down, make sure he's here, in this sudden set of stairs that turned into a tilting carousel, sudden drastic, tipping, sliding toward free fall.

It's almost too much. Too much sensation, knocking out bundles of nerves like he's blowing multiple fuses all at once. Steve in his hand, him pressed between their stomachs, knuckles brushing himself and dragging white-hot sparks across his vision. Steve's fingers still there, pushing harder, faster, the slick searing warm from friction and body heat. Steve's mouth finding his, shaky and half-missing it at first, and Steve is getting sloppy, starting to lose that iron control he'd had all night, that blinked on the beach in a kiss that felt like a SOLD sign was being hammered into Danny's back, again on the couch when Danny couldn't keep his damn mouth shut.

He almost can't breathe. Can't figure out if he needs to stop, or if there's nothing at all to do but keep going, push into Steve's stomach and feel his own bottom out, leg hard around Steve's hip, the other leveraging against a blanket that's rumpled and half shoved down the bed, under them. Nothing left but sprinting blindly forward, in some clumsy wending way, tripping over himself and feeling all turned around from the finish line. It's not -- it's too much, everything hitting all at once, and Christ, Christ, he's glad he pulled Steve up when he did, because the thought of this and Steve's mouth at the same time makes him despair, like being touched too soon after coming, every cell in his body still on red alert, screaming sirens into raw nerve endings.

And Steve is barreling into him, loose and long-limbed and doing his best to screw Danny straight through the mattress, bed frame creaking alarmingly against their weight, skin brushing skin and making Danny's head pop in a silent implosion that then rushes in like a dam breaking. Free hand finding Steve's face, feeling it warm under his palm, his hair damp with sweat. Fingers moving. Pulling. Tighter. Harder. Shoving recklessly forward, feeling like they're about to go smashing through a brick wall, and he doesn't care, can't, not when Steve is wanting him like this, like he's sanity, like he's air, and when the hell has anyone ever wanted Danny like that, like he wants Steve, whose name is starting to come in tight, gasping swallows of air.

The one touchstone he's got. The one goddamn thing on this whole island that's supposed to be here, when even Grace could be taken away.

Dizzy, drunk, spinning on the way everything is speeding up, tensing up, moving faster. Hooking into the base of his stomach, the bottomed out, melted core, on whatever is left at the base of it and cranking fast and hard, winding it tighter and tighter. He can feel the sweat dripping down his back across his spine, across that have shot straight past burn into a land where everything just moves because it can, because it has to.

Especially when his name is cutting the silence only broken by fast, gulping breaths and the sounds of the friction between their skin. Everywhere. Wage separate wars, that are all one. That are all yanking the drain at the bottom of whatever all this is that's left of Steve's head. When everything he breathe and thinks is heat, tight, harder, faster. When he isn't distinguishing between whether that's his hand or Danny's. Or Danny grinding into him, too.

This mad jostling, ricocheted thing of too much movement and not enough. Not enough now, not enough hands, not enough air left in the entirity of the world. That is winnowing down to Danny's face, and the hand slipping slick on his face. When it feels like an entirely different shard of himself, almost not related, not connected, when he's turning his head. From Danny's mouth. From his name falling out of those lips.

Those words being ripped out, torn out, thrown out, pleaded out. Causing him to ache more still. Somehow.

And still turns from it. Into that touch. Into those fingers. Kissing the inside of Danny's palm, his fingers, whatever his mouth ends up against. Warmth from body heat, and slick with salt that could be from his face, or back, or Danny's skin. Could be both of them on his tongue, on Danny's skin, gotten all over Danny. The way Steve wants it to be, whether it possible or not.

Digging his teeth in just barely at the top of Danny's palm, but without biting down, before kissing more of that skin, hand.

Wants that flicker of a thought, too. As badly as this. As everything else. Agressive as compound, decked out like a lethal announcement every person on the planet could see with a look. That this is his. Danny is his. Crawled in his chest, and demanded his honesty, his trust, broke Steve wide open, wider and deeper than any person to torture him ever managed, got into every fractured place, got Steve all over his hands, his life, his body. Got this. All of this.

Salt and sweat and skin and fingers and lips and hips and breath and drive. That leaves him pushing Danny harder, chasing Danny's touch faster. His own hand shrieking but it's easier to pay attention to when nothing else is sticking. The world is shaking in him, through, hips snapping, meeting, driving themselves, filling his head and his chest threateningly with lightning, shoving clarity along with insanity into over drive, and making him shove Danny, then, too.

Over. On to his back, Steve pushing him into the bed, pushing on to him, wanting him, all of him, everything, nothing else in the world Danny gets but him, covered, with the only words coming being, "Knee," like a sharp fast order, or a decree or a suggestion, he can't tell when he's leaning in to find that space at the side of Danny's neck. Because he'll keep going, fingers not even slowed for the offensive, even with the weight of Danny's leg trapping his forearm and elbow to the bed under Danny, quirking his shoulder something hard, but it would easier without that.

That's it.

The thing that actually makes him forget how to speak, what, words vanishing from his mind like soap bubbles popping. Just like Steve promised. Threatened. He can't. It's not the fingers. It's not the kiss. It's not the volcanic heat of the room, twisting up into a tornado that's trying to rip him apart piece by ungainly piece.

It's this. So simple. Steve's lips on his palm. Steve's face turned into his hand. And a look. A look of such perfect, sweet concentration, brow furrowed, eyes closed soft against the dark and the push and the pull. A single second, moment, heartbeat, that stretches for years, flashes Danny straight out of this bed and into everything he could want, wants, can't, won't admit to, because he could be gone, soon, soon, Vegas and Rachel and Stan's hotel, his case that looks worse and worse every day, but Steve --

He wants this. Christ. Fucking Christ. He wants it more than he wants anything. He wants Rachel to stay on the island, and he wants to be more than a shadow in his daughter's life, and he wants Steve. Needs this. To breathe. To balance. For himself. This selfish, greedy thing he wants. Bursting painfully, splitting him wide open, leaving him aching, limping.

Because Steve is kissing his palm. Nipping lightly at it. Like he. Like it's. This is. Like Steve feels this. The thing Danny can't say, can't look at, shoves behind every locked door he can, piles furniture in front of them, and still, it's banging there, waiting to be heard and allowed.

He can't. Not if he's leaving. It isn't fair. But it's so hard to ignore, so hard to pretend what he's gotten so good at pretending, when Steve does this, makes Danny forget all about the discomfort, the heat and the dripping sweat and the burn in his chest from a lack of air, lips feeling swollen and tender. When Steve cares about his hand. His throat. Shoulder. The bump of his hip bone.

He's still staring when Steve shoves him over, moves his leg when the order gets snapped out, and he'd keep staring if the new position didn't lay him open and, God, there's suddenly so much space, Steve's fingers working, angling, there, fuck, Christ, there, driving his head back into the sheets -- the pillow's gone, somewhere, knocked away -- hitching his whole body like he'd just been caught on a hook, dragged in some speedboats wake. Hissing "fuck, Steve, that's --"

And still lacking words, because they're all surrounding his heart where it stumbled, tripped, rolled down a cliffside, is dizzy trying to get up, keeps foundering. Hand tightening despite himself, in reaction, and it would be so much better, wouldn't it, if their hands were free, if they were just sliding into each other, could hold on as hard as they need. It's Steve. Steve could never take away anything from him. They're better together, always have been.

He has to rely on Danny to help. His weight, his knees. The forearm over by Danny's shoulder. Because his hand is busy. Not that he's discounting the whole idea of his weight being on and against Danny, either. Not even with the leg wrapping back around his hip, upper thigh, sliding and clutching, following his order, and the faint twist of his own body to make sure there's nothing in the way of his hand, of the way Danny's body reacts suddenly like he's hit a live wire.

Shaking his skin, and the bed, between both their movements, and shattering out those words, hissing that Steve wants to go down breathing. If he ever goes down at all. It may never happen. It feels like fire and gasoline and helium are expanding as at an explosive rate when Danny's voice is like that. When his words can't even finish and Steve shoves into them, the way he shoves into everything else. Can't stop pushing into Danny.

"--better?" Steve opts, mouth pushing the word into Danny's skin with something like vicious success spattered all through with the burning oil of a black sort of laughing smugness, agreement, soaking his words without even shaking his chest. When he's moving only to find Danny's face, again, shifting his arm, and readjusting around Danny digging his head into the bed.

Burning, "Told you," without any remorse or restraint into Danny's lips with righteous fire.

Fingers slamming into skin, thumb rubbing down harder on the flat over his prostate above that.

All of that is somewhere far, far away from this. Remorse. Regret. Second thoughts. First ones. Tossed off the bed, with dignity, fear, sanity, sense. When he can still feel the burning muscles in his thighs, his hips. Reacting no less to Danny's fingers squeezing into a fist, bringing him burst of pain that is standing on shards of pleasure. Hazy explosive mixture making him groan into Danny's skin even as his spine straightens and he thrust harder. Into that tighter circle of fingers.

Into Danny's solidness beneath him, the way it should be, could be, almost is. Burning through the edges of his vision. Feelings like the plug on his vision is being yanked on again. Leaving him with the awareness of Danny's skin. Around his fingers, around his body, against his forehead wherever it's fallen to. But pushing, sprinting, shoving everything that's left into these movements. Aiming to snap, aiming to go hard enough, fast enough, long enough he slams into a wall.

Knowing that it's chasing him, pelting his last thoughts, ambling toward clobbering him and all control left already.

"Wrong."

Gasped, shoved, strangled. Pushed out into the world through sheer willpower, when Steve's hand is driving madness and fire straight up his spine slamming over and over, glass shards that splinter everywhere, blinding him. "You never said, you never said anything."

Steve didn't protest when Danny dragged him up, or rolled onto his side. He didn't say anything about what they're doing, what he's doing, what he was planning. He just did it, and this is what's left, a screaming confused explosion of too much sensation, so good it's too good, lacing lightning along stripped bare nerves, burning him out, pressure and pain and pleasure all gnawing on each other and doing their best to crack him wide open.

It's a shame he can't relax and enjoy it more, but it would be like saying he can relax and enjoy being run over by a Zamboni, or by a stampede of wild animals. He has no idea if he likes it; it's too much like being caught in a wicked hurricane and whipped into the side of a building. His hand is moving erratically, and he's barely conscious of the effort or rhythm, just that it's more, it's faster, it's in tune with Steve's ragged breath and the way his hips push.

Dragging them both closer to the edge. Of something. While his body tries to decide if this is good, or bad, if it's too much, if it's not enough, and it's a little frustrating, getting dragged beneath the surface, but the white-hot molten lead ball in his stomach is sitting there, getting hotter and more insistent by the second, while he tries to ride the wave and keeps getting dragged along the sand instead.

Maybe he hadn't.

Maybe there's a grating note, crumbling glass dust under his feet, the length of his skin, going wanting for the necessary focus to wonder if that wasn't right. Maybe hitting as not much more than a blip somewhere in there. When the only thing he space the do with right now, the only space he has left in his head is taking Danny at the same sharp, smarting pace he has since there were fingers lodged in his back.

Which is take it and spit it back out going, voice caked in derision, if you can even call the smolder wreckage happening under it, against, trying to overtake his vocal cords and make them hoarse, "You are the only person--" there a pressed, not exact pause, like a hard breath, against the movement of a hand, his hips, Danny, him, himself, them. "--on the planet who'd rather stop and talk at this point."

At a point when Steve doesn't even know if there are breaks on this thing. Ever were.

If things like breaks ever existed as walls somewhere in his mind.

Somewhere before the point when Danny got his own hands involved and took off every ounce of restraint Steve had towards training wheels. Being a thing. Existing. At all. Before it was the madness of Danny's uncoordinated movement between them, under him, dragging him down, and under, and in, and through, now. If there have ever been, will ever be, training wheels or walls.

From the second Danny twitched wrong in that restaurant, said those words in his living room, kissed him back as the world he knew, that hardly even had cohesion again even, split and broke, shattered and faded away, as ruined and intractable as though it had been exploded, never returned again. Replacing itself with this. With the way Danny fights back, pushes forward, demands and denies all in one breath now, had screamed at and pleaded with him earlier, making Steve feel like even if he's over, he's being bowled over from the inside.

Where for a second searing too hot, everything goes hazy with clarity, even amid the heat and rush, and it's not just this. This moment, this night, this thing that Danny is doing for the first time that is threatening to tear him apart. It's Danny. Danny Williams with his five million words, scathing temper, rushing at him, like a twenty-footer, aimed at drowning every single carefully laid line and wall in his life, and the feeling there is nowhere far enough he could run to stop it, nowhere he wouldn't go he wouldn't see it hit and drenched and took everything out with it too long ago.

And nothing, and no part of him that's willing to take the first step, when every other inch of his skin is screaming, pushing, shoving, into Danny's hands, catching on the skin of his shoulder, sliding slick into warm skin. Gone, gone, gone, already. Without having ever given a damn in the first place about order and regiment and rules. So long as it was Danny. Always Danny. Being the one breaking every single thing apart. Even if he may actually be the next thing to slip right through Steve's hands.

"Shut up."

Steve's hand shifts into a new angle, and the words trail off into a desperate moan, as the ball of lead in his stomach melts into a sudden pool of lava, licking at his insides and melting away guts, burning ribs and air and thought. "Just -- Christ -- fuck me."

Which he is. Which. God. Steve's fingers filling him up, and hitting right there, every slam like liquid fire dissolving his spine, and, yeah, okay yeah, he's getting it, it's there, the focus point, starting the bloom like a lit match catching on tissue paper. Hips jerking, helpless, trying to get that angle again, that spot, where it felt like every joint came unhinged and every muscle lit like a fuse, and words evaporated like mist.

There. And there. Like getting shot repeatedly in the stomach, shifting his leg off Steve's hip to push it out, find more space, find it. That. Steve's fingers, thumb on flat skin, gut-punching him with something he's never felt before. It's different from a hand or a mouth. Different from everything he's ever had before, and Steve is kissing him through it, mouth heavy and hot and needy, breaking his concentration, his tension, cutting him loose. Like a trapeze arcing down towards the net, only to find it's been set on fire.

A first time, and he can already feel the ache of bruising starting where there's never been bruising before. Stretched muscles complaining, while his nerves spark in a lunatic frenzy, shrieking a high-pitched tea-kettle whistle into his ears.

Everything else is gone. The bed. The mussed sheets and blanket. Gravity. The sweat clinging to his skin, dampening his hair.

Everything except Steve. This. Steve everywhere, crawling under his skin, lighting him up, and, God, who was he, what was he doing, how did he breathe and walk around and talk and act like a normal, whole person before this, because he had all this empty space, was he just rattling around in there like the last toy left in the attic, half a person unless he was with Grace? How else could Steve shove himself in there, take up so much room, and still make Danny want more, want it all, want this, just for him. Want Steve. To be the one who gets to touch him. Kiss him. Argue with him about takeout and how to treat witnesses.

Wants it to be his. This. Steve. Steve is his. Should be. Danny's hand dragging him down, at his neck, the other running hot and steady along his skin, driving them both closer and closer to the edge.

Steve would groan, if there was anything left in his chest or stomach or head to groan with.

At those words, that tone, the image they shove into his head on razor blades and bloody want at the same speed as the hand shoving madness into his veins, hard and harsh into his hips, his desires. Danny's hands or his own, both, this endless loop of frantic building fire. But there isn't. There isn't air. There aren't vocal cords. There just this stutter of a breath, at Danny's words, and the feeling like something snaps.

Like a bridge giving way. Like the keystone in an arch dissolving as though it were made of sugar, caving and vanished, like an axe head cleaved straight through it and found not stone there to begin with. Steve's head, what's left his control, of the feeling of Danny's mouth and his hand, his body, goes with it. With less warning than even a whisper. Crashing through and down and out everywhere. The smallest flick, and then everything is going.

Walls like pushed over bookshelves slamming through him. His stomach, his hips, his head. Moving him, when all he feels is jerked along by it, brought up only for the next shelf, the next wave, the next wall to slam into his face. Wave on wave of white light and an inferno of heat. Sending him reeling, running, jerking into hands, stomach, the bed that gives too easy, even for as solid as it is, groaning and grinding out a noise against the floor for him.

When there isn't even enough of his head left to whisper Danny's name, or do more than catch breaths against his shoulder, against the madness toppling, crumbling, exact every inch of revenge for each slight of control. Pulling him down, down, down, the drain in his head, in his stomach, in his feet. Every born in his body turning to molten puddles of molten steel, even when he's trying to keep going.

Banging out a useless war against the tide, because Danny told him to. Danny gave him a directive.
Two words in a place where words and voices aren't even registering. Two words. An order.
He's not about to forget. Not about to let it be wiped out even as he's shaking, sweating.

Because he's not going anywhere. Not without Danny. Not even if he's already gone.

There. Like that. He loves this. Seeing it. Making it happen. Never sure how, or why, blown away by the fact that his hands, fingers, voice, body, are pushing Steve to the brittle edge and then blowing the floor out from underneath him.

Making Steve lose all control, body moving in a shockwave, all instinct and pure animal want, searching for that last push, that just right spot, the switch that gets flicked and melts him down. And it's. God. Glorious. Like someone doused him in gasoline and tossed a lit match his way. Exploding, not crumbling. Hard and hot under Danny's hand, and he can feel it, the way Steve tightens. Coils. Releases in a snap that feels like getting slammed by a truck.

He wants to be there. Feel himself snap apart, have nothing but Steve, hands, weight, scent. Lose it all. Stop thinking so much, about what they're doing, how it feels, how it doesn't feel, what it isn't like. What it won't ever be like.

Later. Later. He can think about it later. Steve's still pushing, shoulder shaking with the struggle of moving on now, and Danny's got no idea how he's doing it, he should be collapsed, out for the count, done, and he's still moving, muscles standing out in sharp relief, slicked skin, harsh breath.

It's so close. There. Almost there. He opens his hand, widens it, wraps around them both. Enough slick and sweat, and heat pools, sudden and sharp in his gut, gives him a second's warning to close his eyes, before one, two, just a handful of strokes and it drops out from under him, shoves him through glass. Everything coils together, hard; his fingers, around Steve's fingers, stomach, chest, and rushes out again like a bullet from a gun barrel, melting everything in its path, sending the world into a cartwheel, heart catapulting, flying out of his chest.

Relief is dizzying, exhaustion ultimate and overwhelming, like contact with slamming the ground from too high up, when you lose the ability to see straight, to hold your own weight, to make the bones in a skeleton connect right, be used at all. He doesn't fall. He already fell, earlier, he thinks, doesn't know. Care. But Danny. Danny is shaking, starting, shoving, hard, harder, and then clinging, and Steve can feel the iron will, shoved into his shoulders by every last drop of a thought, vanish.

Weight caving from his shoulders, his spine, thighs. Rolling outward, crashing like waves outward across his muscles. When Danny's fingers are still tangled between them, while he shudders, and Steve's hand is still well stuck between four pairs of legs and Danny's skin. Warm, loose, there as much as everything is nowhere, is nothing. Is floating away on that. Relief. Exhaustion. The aftershocks of his own orgasm still too great for smug success even.

The burn in his shoulder, the strain of awareness obliterating like flood, like a popped bubble. The endless fog angrily, absolutely filling his head, his veins, his thoughts. Even when there's sparks of sensation, severe and sharp, so hot it's nearing painful, going off somewhere at the other end of his skin. Still touching. But nothing matters. Nothing exists. Everything, everything rolls away into an endless emptiness, so full there isn't the space for thought, for breath, for movement. Clogging up, shutting out, existence.

Laying him out, aware oddly enough of the quiet, distant beat of the waves for the first time in hours, fading in and out, rolling into and out. Against Danny's breath, against his own, the bubbling, failing existence of thought, awareness, against absolutely nothing, and the silence that rings through all of them like knoll of absolute stillness after a building is brought down.

Steve's heavy.

Steve's always heavy, but he's especially huge and immovable when he's been smacked over the head like this, unable to make his arms and legs do anything but collapse, a human landslide burying him against the bed.

It's kind of nice. He's adrift on the floating, comfortable waves of total relaxation, and after he pries his fingers open and slides them clumsily out from between the two of them, riding out the unpleasant shock of too much sensation and the way they make him jerk and twitch, he slips back into it without effort. Eyes closed. The air in the room soft and thick as cotton. Smelling like salt and sex and Steve. Sweat sticking between their bodies, bellies pressed together, matting coarse chest hair, cooling on his forehead, neck, shoulders.

The descent of silence. No more rush and push of breath, rustle of sheets, the pounding roar in his head, thundering pulse.

Just quiet. It's almost peaceful, would be, were he not starting to feel the discomfort of this, now that he's not caught up in a tidal rip of sensation and momentum. He grunts, low, and deep in his chest, protesting, edges his hips away from Steve's hand, which...feels weird. Still.

Even weirder, now that there's nothing to distract from the weirdness of it, and he'd appreciate it just, not. Existing anymore. So he can relax, and become one with the mattress, like Steve's weight is slowly threatening him with.

He can't actually, actively ignore that. Not for longer than a second or two. The more and more noticeable twitching and shifting. Which hits not only his hand, but also most of his lower body as Danny is shifting in a very insistent way. Making him shove, exhaustedly at the cotton balls. Wanting to smother Danny's face with a pillow only for a brief second. Before he moves. Like he has a choice. Like he's even willing to let his head, or his body, or all of this think it's has the ability to control his choices and his actions.

When Steve is pushing Danny's thigh with the back of his hand, sort of settlingly, but also to have anywhere to drag him hand out to, from, before he's got his hand away. Before he's resting is awkwardly, on it's heel side against his blankets and giving a sort of cracked-eye glared toward the part of his head that is suddenly so very much not anywhere near silent, bowled over, and caved-in. When he can hold for a few more seconds, but really it's just starting to harp and grate between his shoulder blades.

There are things he's willing to wipe off on his bed, and there are things he's jut not going to. At least not right now, not tonight. The mess between their bellies he could deal with, deal with sleeping on and in even, but there are some things that don't get that. Not unless he's just so slammed under, or passed out, circumstances demand it, and he's nowhere near so checked by the bricks that still have a hold on that grey space between orientation and disorientation, that he can't handle it. It's not like it was so hard he couldn't move or think or make himself get up if shooting started.

He shifts his weight, catching his other hand on the bed the other side of Danny's arm, finding his legs. Pushing off the bed, with one hand, and the wrist-heel of his other, with something too fuzzy to even really equal a sort of muted resignation or frustration. His throat still full of wind and gravel, the all too unhelpful gentle sway of the room and the way none of his muscles really want to pretend they're attached to any of his bones currently.

Edited 2013-06-05 20:45 (UTC)

Okay.

That, he actively dislikes.

Steve's fingers sliding back out, with an unsettling motion that feels like his guts are slipping out along after them. It leaves him feeling wide open and empty, and uncomfortably slimy from the lube, and this is probably going to take some getting used to. It's a strange, slick feeling, slippery between the clumsy fingers he's got trying to chase it down and grab it, and he doesn't like it. Things he's never done, before. Things he would never have let anyone do to him, before.

That he offered. And got. Gave permission. Asked for.

The whole thing is turning his usual doped-up drowsiness into something that settles wrong in his stomach. Bad mayonnaise, or shellfish that wasn't cooked quite right, jostling sudden jagged edges against senses that should be too dulled to feel them, or anything else. He feels like he needs a shower. He feels like he needs to -- what. Get up. Go home. Go downstairs. Anything, other than stay right here testing out the strangeness of shifting his hips, the loose slippery feel of muscles that were never meant to be stretched or pushed or slammed into the way they just were.

And Steve gets up, moving like all his body parts aren't quite connected to each other, feet shuffling on the floor, looking like he went ten rounds with a bottle of Jack Daniels or that cage fighter from last year, or both, which is both relieving and also more than a little annoying.

The best way to quit these thoughts, push aside this feeling of being not-quite-sure, is to let himself flop into Steve's warmth, close his eyes, and let sleep pull him away from all of it. Isn't it?

For now, what he does is let Steve untangle from him, shove one hand up by the headboard to find a pillow, and drag it under his head, lets the other come to rest high on his stomach, settling himself. Re-settling himself.

And again.

The ceiling's going to have to do for interesting things to look at until Steve gets back, apparently.

Edited 2013-06-05 22:17 (UTC)

It's not that far, and he's made it to his bathroom in such worse shape. Drunk, and beat to hell, and he can handle sex and standing, if he can handle those. Doesn't even angle for any lights, even though the living room lights through the hallway into a cascade of grey and yellow shadows. Still he just makes his way to the bathroom, blinking his eyes and mostly knowing it the way you know anything that doesn't change in almost forty years, by memory more than by sight.

He washes his hands, even uses the soap, and grabs a hand towel to wash off his stomach, because, what the hell he's already there, he might as well. Plus, maybe it runs the water a little longer like somehow it'll out run the strange echoing silence after every sudden sound of shifting about Danny is making. Without saying a word. Is just about to throw the washcloth back in the sink and deal with come morning, when he thinks better of it.

Runs the water again. Rubs it at least minorly clean. Wrings it out, gets it just to point of damp and shuts off the water. Then heads back from the bathroom. Awareness settled in through something like a scope, close enough for the little he has needs of. Enough for operations. Enough to operate a gun and survey his living room for a second on the walk back, even if it doesn't stop him. He's head right back for his bed, and for Danny, who is staring at the ceiling.

It's more than a little underwhelming. A little nerve-spiking. That staring. The stillness. That silence. But he settles, hard, on one side of the bed like isn't, jostling it and Danny, forcing his voice out and into saying, "Hey." And following up with, "Here," when he's offering Danny the damp rag, like newest thing bring him fully back into awareness, seizing his stomach in tight with tight fingers, is that maybe this is when it happens.