(no subject)

[gonna_owe_me]

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.

Comments

[haole_cop]

There's a bottle pressing against his side, light and insistent, cool glass and heavy liquid, and Steve's fingers, too. Blunt and warm, seeking out his shirt, contact. Him.

Which is maybe the sign that things are turning around, because Steve damn sure hadn't been reaching before, had been completely self-contained, blankly compassionate with no warmth behind it, and he'd stayed so firmly in his own space that even when Danny was gripping his arm it was like he was already gone.

Not this. Hand at his side. Fingers tipping Danny's head in a way that's turned familiar, after four weeks of starting to recognize it, the way Steve pushes, gentle traction, making Danny wet his lip instinctively just before soft lips find his. Soft, in a way that keeps surprising him that Steve can be; soft, gentle, even. Barely a breath of a kiss, that splits his ribcage wide open and exposes the raw interior to potential destruction, because it's so tentative. Like Steve doesn't know what his reaction will be. Like he's trying it again, for the first time.

A kiss that doesn't feel like an apology, but maybe it's backing down, maybe it's Steve agreeing, maybe it's Steve not leaving, and that makes Danny reach up, one hand lifting and the other sliding, to cup Steve's face between them and press forward, lips parting, warm and wet, because if Steve is going to kiss him instead of leaving him flat, then Danny's going to kiss him, and leave no room for doubt that this is worth it. That he couldn't leave Steve for a threat to a case he probably won't win anyway. That there is no losing this, as long as he can stand here and Steve lets him, allows touch and shouting and all of Danny arguments.

Feeling his heart falter back into something approximating a normal pace, from the panicked fluttering of earlier, muscles still twinging with the shaking remains of the instinct to fight, to bear down, to bull his way through, now focused into this, Steve's mouth and breath and the tiny hesitations of them both, the way Steve isn't pulling away, isn't pushing him back, isn't going anywhere, and Danny is so fucking relieved that it rushes in like pouring hot water into a mug, lapping around the walls of his stomach and making him feel almost dizzy with it.

[thebesteverseen]

He doesn't even know if deserves it, but Danny moves with him. Follows his hands, tipping back, staying close. There are no words, when Danny's lips part and Steve, if Steve ever had anything to his name, can't even watch the boards on the raft he was clinging to fray at their lines and divide, floating away beyond him. They are just suddenly swallowed whole.

There is no raft. There are no boards. There are words and there are ideas, they were so important, but they all falling away, slipping, falling, escaping, like water and sand through his fingers, when Danny's lips open. Taking more. More than a brush. More than a exhausted, scattered search. When the only reaction is instantaneous, and overwhelming, and obliterating.

Stepping even closer, until his knees are brushing Danny's, and his chest is bumping into arms.

Letting his hand slide back, into Danny's hair, to cup his head, and pull him closer, higher, up, more.

When it's insane but there's suddenly too much space in the world, too much space between them, when it wouldn't even explain it enough if he could carve himself open and pull Danny inside him to make him understand how important all of it is. How it's more important than anything. When he can't even thinking it, only feel it. Sudden, caustic and desperate in his veins.

The loss of him today, the loss of him a few months, the empty nights without him before he ever got back to Hawaii. All an endless slate of the same, that he's emptying into this kiss Danny opens. Because he gives a damn what happens. More than he knows what to do with it, or how to sleep or work with it at times. Because it would kill him, when decades of solitude and even prolonged torture hasn't killed him.

Because there's too much and it's contained in such a small space. In the hands of all the wrong people. But for this second, this one and maybe another few following it, Danny is back in his, and the words are gone, and he's still trying to say the very same thing in a way he doesn't even think he gets himself. Only that he can't let go, suddenly. No. He can't let go. All he can do is keep pulling Danny closer, like he might vanish if he does.

[haole_cop]

It seems like no sooner than his pulse fumbles back to a natural pace that it picks right back up again, because Steve's moving in, pressing close, bumping up against Danny's arms, making one of Danny's hands drop to give him room, to slide a firm possessive palm and trailing fingers over neck, collar bone, chest, stomach, side. Flattening against Steve's back, arm wrapping as far around him as Danny can get, because there is no such thing as too close or close enough when for a second he'd lost this, completely. It was gone. Out of his hands. Not even a possibility anymore.

When it's been his for a month, and he's honestly not sure what to do if it were taken away, left behind, forced to a breaking point, because it's not coffee and dates, it's not the heady, giddy uncertainty of dancing around each other, trying to gauge when or if you've started falling.

It's already the ground he walks on. Depends on. Needs. Needs. He needs Steve. Wanting seems like such a fragile, bled-out word in comparison, because wanting has nothing to do with the cold sick panic that settled like heavy gas in his chest at the words we shouldn't. That isn't wanting. It's nothing that could amicably dropped, like an apple core, used up and satisfying but ultimately disposable.

And that's terrifying, threads worry through the few thoughts that haven't burnt up like so much flash paper, but he doesn't care, gives not a single damn. What would be the point? He just had the chance to walk away. Steve was offering it on a silver platter, no mess, no questions asked, and he'd batted it right out of his hands without even glancing to see whether he might need it.

Because he doesn't. Not like he needs this.

Steve's mouth, opening to his, the brush of his tongue, the taste, smell, feel of him flooding until there's nothing but Steve, pressed up tight and close like he's damned if he's going to try and push Danny away even one single inch, and Christ, Christ, he couldn't have wanted to say any of that, to do this, not if he's this desperate to be crushed together, not if there's this panicky edge of absolute certainty in the way his mouth moves and his fingers grip, dragging Danny closer, tighter.

And all Danny has left is a few broken words, mumbled between mouths, fingers curling hard into Steve's hair, flattened tight across his back. Saying don't, and again, don't, because there might be the slightest sliver of a chance that Steve still might, and he can't take those odds.

[thebesteverseen]

It's seamless, almost too seamless. Danny's hand dropping, but not long enough to be missed. Not long enough, because it's already on him again. Already pressing hard into cloth dragging down his chest, like he has to make sure Steve is still under any part of the shirt where his hand lands. Lands, but doesn't stay. Moves. Wrapping around him and synching tight, dragging him nearly half a step closer, when closer seems almost impossible.

Fingers desperate and digging into him, like Steve had tried to say a word even this way, Danny was just going to storm him still. Or meet him, or push, or force everything out. Everything but this feeling swelling through his chest, making it feel like he's taken on water. More water than the ocean and his heads gone fuzzy, water logged with it all. Danny dragging him forcibly, holding him still, confined in his arm, as much as possible.

Kissing him and dropping that word. That word, that should redefine was desperate, pleading, demanding even is. When Steve thought please was bad enough. But these are falling out, shattering, chipping, pleading ice. Dropping on his lips, tossed at his mouth, getting breathed down into his lungs. Tearing apart everything in his chest like spoken words, are letters made of knives, the same pain in his chest as spikes in the clench of his hair.

Making him drag Danny closer, making Steve kiss him even harder, ignore the pounding, throbbing inside his chest. His lungs, his heart. Like somehow he could take at least that back. Anything, everything that could make Danny sound like this. When it's the sound that makes him want to routinely do things like drop kick bombs into Rachel's house, or a law office, and this is his fault. He's the reason Danny sounds like this. Like somehow he doesn't get he's everything.

He is the only reason Steve could step away, step back, stop. Would be for Danny.

[haole_cop]

There just isn't any closer he can get, and he hates it. Being separated by even the few layers of clothing is frustrating as hell, when Steve is shoving into him, claiming his mouth and breath and sanity just like he wasn't trying to hand them all off just a few minutes ago, hand them back, leave Danny alone with them, and, really, what the hell use could he possibly make of any of those? It's not like they were doing him any good before Steve took them over, made breath unnecessary and sanity a faintly remembered smudge of smoke on the wall.

But Steve is definitely trying to prove a point, even if Danny's not a hundred percent clear on what, exactly, that point might be. It might be won't, it might shut up. It might even be goodbye, but he's edging further and further away from that possibility, because he doesn't think even Steve would consider this kind of kiss the one you end on.

Not after Danny said don't. Breathed it into Steve's mouth, dents it with blunt fingers into Steve's back. Don't go. Don't leave. Don't do this. Don't.

And Steve's not. Steve's kissing him like he needs Danny to breathe, like it's just another symptom of gravity at work on their bodies. Steve's got a handy, clumsy with a bottle, at his side, and Danny's got an arm wrapped around him, and they're both holding onto each other like this was some kind of vicious wind threatening to rip them apart, and it's like. It's like survival instinct, and when he has to catch his breath, he still doesn't go anywhere, leans his forehead against Steve's, fingers gripping Steve's shirt, stubbornly holding on.

"Okay," he says, breathing hard, feeling like he sprinted a mile. Taking it like an answer. Like the answer he wants. "Okay, well, good."

Fingers clench and unclench, and fist again, like a cat kneading a blanket, and he's already tipping towards Steve again, as if allowing him to say anything in response would risk a repeat of the same nightmarish scene.

[thebesteverseen]

He can feel it. He's close enough to. Danny's frustration, that feels like it's growing, like the tremor under the land before something happens. Under his hands, against his mouth. Like this isn't enough. Any of it. Even when Danny's hand is all but ground into his back, when he's giving back as much as he's getting at the very least. When he's going to leave imprints all over Steve's skin, and any chance of sanity left.

Crumbling, fading, turning to ash and dust and wind. Turning into fire, and desperate need, and clawing fear.

Climbing up outward, inside his skin, like stinging nettled between each layer of muscle. Snapping out, everywhere violent and sudden and sharp as lightning, causing him to hold on tighter. Almost desperately, which works not at all when it's the second Danny is pulling away. Or well. Maybe not away. Hands still not letting go, not pulling out of Steve's space, from being plastered against Steve, as much as he can while Steve's bending down.

But still away. Still away enough that it's not enough, feeling Danny's breath on his lips, Danny's voice bouncing off his own mouth, sinking into his skin and swimming for his ears through an endless wave on wave of distortion. Of everything so loud, so everywhere. Frantic and frenetic under his skin, in his head, when he's opening his eyes, dazed to watch Danny say that last word.

Like he's not sure. Like he might be talking to himself, and Steve is just trespassing on the need for words here.

Steve may have opened his mouth, thought likely with very little idea at all what he could say now. Which doesn't matter, because by the time he has, Danny's mouth. His mouth that was allowed to pause, breathing hard, chest and shoulders rising and falling. Because Danny's mouth? Goes right back to his. Like somehow, in any universe Steve has a leg to stand on.

Like he could, after kissing Danny. After the way Danny is kissing him, again, shutting him up instead of asking for more words this time. After the way Danny's hands can't let go of him for longer than a second, before they tighten, again. Like it's imprinted into Danny's muscles he can't let go because then Steve would vanish finally. Like he meant to.

When there's nothing left but to submit. But to give the hell up on words, and fight to claim Danny's mouth, god, to deserve any part of this now. Like he never could -- vanish; deserve; speak -- when there's a deep, dark, semi-broken groan being torn out of bottom of his chest. Because there is nothing. Nothing that could pry him away from Danny at this second. Nothing.

[haole_cop]

He really can't believe how much of an idiot Steve can be, that he thought this was a good idea, that he was trying so hard to push it all away and leave Danny in confused pain, a hit and run with a trailer truck and a sudden crushing meeting with gravity and the ground, so Steve doesn't get to talk. Steve said more than enough a few minutes ago, and all Danny wants now is assurance that he's accepted the inevitable and isn't going to mention anymore stupid ideas about leaving, or not doing this.

Because, Christ, he doesn't know how to not do this, if Steve still wants it, if they both do. How did Steve think it was going to work, huh? Being together all day, in the car, in the office, at each others' backs, and then just...going back to the way things were before?

He can't. It's impossible. He knows, now, what it's like, what Steve's like late at night, how he takes up the entire freaking bed with his giant octopus body. He can't un-know it. Can't just delete his memories of Steve's smiles, the fingers tracing down his skin, kisses ranging from soft and tentative to volcanic, and Steve is a moron if he thinks any of that would be possible, if he thinks Danny's willing to step back and lose it. It's not. He's not.

Not willing to hand over any of this. This. This is his. The ripped-out sound that Steve makes, that explodes in a silent dark eruption in Danny's chest, a depth charge hitting bottom. It's his. He gets to hear it, gets to be the one pulling it out of Steve. Gets to coax it into the broken repetition of his name, the way it warms some shattered part of himself, makes it glow, when Steve is barely able to breathe or think or speak at all. Wanting to press up flush against Steve's body, and unable to, because Steve has to bend over and he has to reach up and it's not enough, he wants to blanket Steve with himself and hold him down, keep him from doing anything so stupid as going anywhere at all away from him.

And it's not even a nice kiss. Not soft or sweet or apologetic; it's a fight, teeth grazing Steve's bottom lip, fingers trying to gain some kind of purchase in Steve's too-short hair, feeling like his skin could rip clean off and he could rip straight in two and he wouldn't care. None of it matters, except burning into Steve's idiotic thick skull that this is not going anywhere, Danny isn't going anywhere. He said he wouldn't, and he won't.

The sooner Steve gets the message, the better.

[thebesteverseen]

Somewhere a very, very sad bottle a beer is hitting the ground, maybe splashing people, maybe bouncing or breaking, and he'd care, he'd usually care quite a bit, since he isn't drunk enough not to be aware, but he might as well be. Because he needs his other hand and he's given up. The caring. The pretending he isn't so far past drunk on this, Danny, beyond any control, beyond any clarity.

That he doesn't think there even exists a daylight on the end of the tunnel. That there is another end to it. Or one at all.

That he'll ever walk out of the this feeling, expanding in his chest. Recklessly panicked, unapologetic, and guilty, and angry, and desperately at least half-terrified of standing in that darkness of this feeling with all the closed in walls, again, alone forever, all at once. Of having and then losing all of it. Breaking all of it. That is turning into blunt, hard fingers on Danny's skull. Into a hand flat on his back. Into the click of teeth, and the way Danny nearly bites his lip.

The way he's far past any consideration this isn't even half a punishment he's getting. It's like a god damn, full out attack, for daring. Like Danny's found a new way to channel his rage, every vicious word, and everything else digging those finger into Steve's own skull, into his hair. Like Danny is going to put his own vivid, lasting, unremoveable mark down in with all the scars on Steve's skin he can't talk about and can't for the life of him forget.

And, god help him, he wants all of it.

He wants the bloody clear dangerously over the line warning siren's blaring in the distance because they already stampeded them feeling to this, where the world could start falling apart, people could start screaming, and neither of them might be able to let go. When they might start drawing blood with either this kiss or their fingers, because at least it feels real. So, horribly, terribly, desperately, real. And like the only thing on the planet that matters.

Ripping through him. Through his head, through his chest. Until he seriously might drag Danny off the ground, fingers digging into his skin, moving, harder, faster, everywhere across Danny's back, down and up over his shoulder, his neck. When it's easier okay. He doesn't have to push up. He can push in, push down, demand more, and more. Space. Skin. His mouth. Like he could taste this anger. Drink up the fuel and refusal behind it. Nothing close enough to everything. Every getting sharper, fiercer, harder, more painful.

Until Steve jerks back, hard and sudden, gasping down ice shards and blade spikes, half with a need for air and half with the only strand left of not plowing through Danny in some red-haze of need to prove it has absolutely nothing to with the ludicrous fact this will never leave his skin.

[haole_cop]

The bottle drops, knocks against his ankle and splatters his pant leg with beer, then topples to its side to leak against the sole of his shoe, until he kicks at it and sends it God knows where, somewhere across the yard, where he supposes it'll just lie until this madness is spent and one or the other of them remembers to pick it up.

The way this is going, that might not be until morning, but you never know. The return of sanity might be just around the corner.

It's unlikely, but theoretically possible, right?

Except not. Not when Steve's freed hand is now roaming up his side, his back. Not when Steve is pushing so hard into him that Danny has to take a step back to regain his balance and keep from being toppled over, adjusting to the weight, the pressure. Steve falling on him like a landslide, a pile of bricks, but nothing like the loose relaxation after sex, because this is all attack, reaction, as if the whole weight of everything he'd just tried to do suddenly hit Steve all at once, and Danny's not sure how it's possible that he could matter like that, but it seems to be true. Steve is branding him, fingers bruising-hard against his back and skull, mouth desperate, breath ragged, muscles so hard and tense they're shaking.

Making every warning light in Danny's head blink on all at once, because this isn't okay, it's not good, it's fear and panic and desperation, things he wants to wipe out of Steve's head entirely, erase this sudden need for ownership. Danny's not leaving, Steve doesn't need to picket a line of signs around him.

So when Steve pulls back, breathing rough and painful, Danny's hands go to his jaw, let go of his shirt and hair and cup his face, firm and gentle, blunt fingers working carefully, fitting there so Danny can hold him off, look at him, saying "Hey, hey, hey," all pushed together, heyheyheyhey, as soothing as he can make it.

"Steve." Repeating words, requests, handed from one of them to the other when they're needed, necessary. "Breathe, babe." Thumbs stroking along Steve's jaw, blue eyes steady.

"I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."

[thebesteverseen]

Everything. Everything is crackling ice edges. Too thin. To slick. Fingers slipping when they they try to catch on solid ground. When the thought of his hands at all makes him pull back from touching Danny. Fingers digging into palms, like the choice will keep him from digging his fingers right into Danny, will mean he wasn't just doing it, even though that can't actually be pulled back.

When half of him still doesn't give a damn. Is saying, let it, and he hopes anything he did left a mark, that he does. When it's insane because Danny. Danny is swimming in his vision in front of his eyes. Perfect clear. Too clear. Pristine clarity, through a scope, and a long tunnel, clear. Jittering straight down into his spine and his stomach with a spike of cold that doesn't belong.

That stabs at the roiling heat and sick, slick oily desperation screaming everywhere else.

While Danny's got his hands on Steve's chin. His cheeks. His face. A dizzying sensation of friction so localized now, instead of being everywhere all at once, it's almost deafening. The rest of him feeling like he is wobbling uncertainly like the ground just vanished. Even though he knows he's holding still. He's holding still enough he might be shivering. But he is. He's holding still, as compared to anything else he was doing seconds ago.

Holding still. Feeling the muscles in his throat with insane focus when he swallows. Holding still. And looking at Danny, who is still in his face. Still there. Bright blue eyes. Blue, blue eyes. Telling him to breathe. Making him breathe. Holding him still. While the wind and the waves blew back into existence along with a sickening feeling of frustrated disgust washed straight through with vertigo.

[haole_cop]

Jesus. Steve feels like he's about to shiver himself right into shards, like Danny's going to end up with a handful of Steve-pieces when he finally just breaks apart, and it's wrong, wrong like sickness is wrong, wrong like the internalized struggle of someone trying to deal with pain too great to breathe through.

It hurts, seeing it. Like Steve's not even able to recognize him, and whatever he'd been thinking before this conversation started, sitting here alone on the lawn with a beer that's gurgling out into the grass, it's done a hell of a number on him. Danny can't even be angry anymore, seeing it, the way Steve pulls his hands back, fists them so hard Danny's sure trimmed nails are biting into his own palms.

"Come here," he says, dropping his hands, using one to pull at Steve's shirt, but he's not pulling Steve into him, this time; he's already moving back, taking a step, tugging Steve along without taking no for an answer until he's got him in front of the chair he'd left what feels like a lifetime ago, and pushes on his shoulders. "Sit."

Like he'd tell Grace, if she was sniffly and sad about something that happened at school that she wasn't telling him about, yet. A different tack from getting up in someone's face; directing them to sit down before they fall over, crouching in front of them so he doesn't strain his back. Hands never leaving Steve, aiming to leave them on his thighs if Steve isn't a stubborn dick about it and lets Danny do this for him, because Steve may be a perfect physical specimen, but even Steve shouldn't be standing up right now. It's got nothing to do with brawn or determination, and everything to do with the ability to remove at least one immediate source of stress.

Not putting Steve in a corner. Not coddling him. It's just like any other time Danny's dragged him away from a disintegrating situation, so they can talk, so they can breathe without fear of Steve suddenly going Guantanamo on someone's ass. "Relax."

[thebesteverseen]

Everything is drawing in on waves. When the water hits the shore. When the wind ruffles the plants, trees. When Danny breathes out, looking suddenly tired, and unhappy, hands falling from Steve's face only to start manhandling him by his shirt. Skin so tight and everywhere on his arms, his chest, tense or half-tensed, when his body is already following. Already going.

Even before he's gotten to the the disgruntled look for being moved and told what to do like a dog.

Not that the chair sucks, not that he doesn't feel something like watery relief somewhere in his knees, and the bottom of his spine. But his brow is furrowing, along with the thinned down turn of his lips. When he's grinding out, "I'm fine," in the answer to being pushed about like a child about to fall over. He wasn't anywhere near falling over.

When he does think about smacking Danny's hands off his lap, except that before the impulse can make his arms, hands, shoulders move to do so, there's a stillness stopping him just as hard. Because it is currently the only place Danny is touching. Leaving him lowly snapping those words and frowning a little too diluted to be hard at the hands, before he looks up, without actually saying or doing anything about them.

Just looking at Danny's face. His hair ruffled everywhere now, and mouth pinked up, slightly swollen. Danny, who is looking at him like he might be breakable. Who he's still not wrong about. Even when everything feels like it was picked up, shatter, shaken up, and then set down upside-down, that isn't something that has changed. Even if he leaves it at looking at Danny, thinking relaxing is the very last thing that's about to happen given everything else. That the last thing this was supposed to be about was himself.

[haole_cop]

"Yeah, you look fine, you look like you're about to have a stroke, and I am not hauling your heavy ass inside, so you'll sit and you won't bitch about it."

He looks like he wants to, which is sort of a relief, because it's always a little freaky when Steve shuts down and just lets things happen to him, lets people talk without paying attention to what they're saying, lets himself slide away to the role of distant observer in his own life.

Not today. Not after pulling that crap. Not after taking care of Danny and spending the night on his crappy pull-out, giving him something to hang onto when the world started swaying and spinning, and then deciding to just call it quits.

Steve doesn't quit. He's a SEAL. Danny's pretty sure it goes against every code written in his DNA or on his skin or in his self-defined role of The One Who Takes The Punches. "Do you want to talk to me about it, or are we good?"

They can. As long as Steve doesn't pull any of that shit again, doesn't start it up, with his shouldn'ts and the right thing to do, which might be true, but that doesn't make it any less bullshit, and Danny's sick of the world telling him what he can and can't have, is sick of Steve getting the same fucking message.

But his hands never leave. This crouch is going to play hell with his knee -- he can already feel the ligament creaking in warning -- but he doesn't move, stays where he is, hands on Steve's legs, running up them lightly, like they've done plenty of times before. This time, though, it's not to excite or tease or promise; it's just his palms, his fingers, warm and firm and grounded. Steve might bark, and he might snap, but he hasn't shoved Danny away or off him, and if he needs a reminder Danny's not going anywhere, well, he's damn sure going to get one.

[thebesteverseen]

He doesn't look like he's about to have a stroke. Give Danny an inch and he can drag out any minor winding into something about passing out from cardiac arrest. Which he's not. Passing out. Or having a stroke. Or a heart attack. He's been through so much worse without passing out. Right? So much worse?

When he's got a semi-disgusted, insulted expression sporting itself at Danny's expense for the over exaggeration.

But he's looking at Danny's face still, and everything in his shoulders feels so much heavier, and he feels older than he did five minutes ago. Somehow. When Danny is blustering off along, still not long gone, not driven away, words falling out into questions, while his hands still haven't given up. They are tracing up Steve's thighs. Heavy and insistant and completely different way.

Like the movement is dipping fingers into his abdomen and his back, and tugging gently at all the muscles wound tight as a cement block suddenly. When he wants to tense up even more for it but his muscles are slowly loosening beyond his orders to anything of the contrary. Slowly slipping from his hands to Danny, even though his fingers aren't even touching those muscles.

"I'm not wrong," are still the words that jam themselves out of his teeth. But there's less derision and fanaticism about being right to it this time. Like there are no walls to the words anymore. When both sides look like they're written in a foreign language, and somehow and neither are or aren't right or wrong suddenly. And when he needs to stop looking at Danny's face, and the proof all over it, that discredits every single word that came out of his mouth.

But he can't. He really can't convince himself to look away. It's hard enough not giving in to reaching out and touching him.

[haole_cop]

"Yeah, maybe not."

Back to being steady, but his voice lacks the measured, tamped-down quality of earlier, because Steve isn't pushing him away anymore, isn't looking at him like he's standing twenty miles away. It's not an agreement, but it is acknowledgement, and he can't help feeling that's the best way to go about this, because a conversation might be rough, but it solves more than either yelling or kissing. "But that doesn't make you right, either."

It's not that simple. It's not that Steve can give him up for the good of the case, or even for Five-0, whether it's for him or for Steve or for Grace or Chin or Kono. This would still be there, even if Danny weren't in Steve's bed every other night, even if they didn't wind up here more often than they don't. It's not like calling it something different will change a damn thing about how Danny feels, like saying they're not involved will make it true.

He licks his lips, hands nearly at Steve's hips before he slides them back down. "Do you want me to go?"

Honestly, these are the parts he always hated most. The talks that could end so badly, the conversations that could spin wildly out of control and smack him in the face with loss. He hates them. Avoids them whenever possible, choosing to confront everything else that might possibly be going wrong, that he might have either enough control to fix or none whatsoever, because either option is better than feeling like he might crack this like an egg if it isn't handled correctly.

But it needs to happen. If Steve thought it once, he might think it again, and Danny just wants to know, okay, wants to understand, so he can make Steve understand that it's not an option, anymore, that there's no way in hell he's going to back down and let the shitstorm that blew into their lives wreck this, too.

So he asks, and ignores the clutch in his chest that says Steve might say yes. It's a risk he's going to have to take.

[thebesteverseen]

He hates this feeling. This desperate tension somewhere in his center that he has to choose right or left, up or down, yes or no, right or wrong. Like everything that matters at all is hanging on it. Even after Danny already said that he was right. Even after Danny followed it up with saying he was wrong. In this quiet, not defeated, but maybe deflated, sort of fashion.

When Danny's hands are still moving, and the only thought in his head, while those hand are moving, is the most defeated one of all. When has it ever mattered if he didn't want someone to go? What did that have to do with making the right decision in this?

It didn't matter with his mother, when she died, and he had no idea how to even quantify whether anything, or what, matter now that she was alive, but even the two days she was here were full of pits and unanswered case questions. It didn't matter with his father, when he was young enough it changed everything, being shut out, being shipped away, and hardly ever spoken to again. Made him who he was, before he even learned why it happened, or that his father had been a silent spectator to his life at times.

It didn't matter with his sister, who was shipped off away from him, and who he, in turn, shipped off away from himself. Who he never heard from enough, nor remember to reach out to enough, himself, who still didn't know about Doris, and that tangled up everything even more. It hadn't mattered with Bullfrog, or Jameson, or Jenna, or Lori. Why would it play any part, have any point, here?

Things that all happend because they had to. Dominoes in a line. Easier as a case. Harder as a house. Too, too many thoughts, when he's staring at Danny's face, trying to picture any world, any world, ever, that didn't include someone putting a gun to one of their heads, when he actually wanted Danny to leave. He didn't even want Danny to leave when every second living together was torture and sleep deprivation.

How even if he said yes, pushed him away, finally, in the way he has no idea how to do at the this second watching that dark, worried, something that looks like an attempt to be brave in front of gun, they'd still have work. Still have the camaro and cases. He'd still be there. He'd still be incapable of not asking, wanting, every detail. Of holding back if Danny were danger, if Grace or Rachel or anything that hurt him, pissed him off.

Do you want me to go? Whispering in the silence as Steve stared at the only man he seriously trusted.

To have his back. To pull him back from going berserk. To do his job, if he couldn't be there to do it. To always choose the right, best, good thing in ninety percent of his choices. To be the only person who's gotten so far in, rubbing his edges, yelling at him until he's more himself than a SEAL. Like it's all straight down another gun barrel. Maybe even worse for the silence.

Worse because maybe he doesn't see anyway where he'll ever recover from this no matter how it ends. Or when.

When there are so many chances it could be about this, or about the case. But it would leave him blank and barren. When all he can do in the end is reaching up and rub at his own neck, and shake his head, his vision, shifting to he doesn't know, Danny's cheek or shoulder, or anything else, when he says, "No," so quietly it might get lost in the wind even in this little space between them.

Because it shouldn't matter, might not in the longer run, but it was true.

[haole_cop]

"Good. That's good."

He lets out a breath, lifts one hand just to run a palm over his mouth, eyes squinting up at Steve even though Steve's not looking at him directly. He scrubs at stubble a second before that hand goes back to Steve's leg. Warm, firm muscle under cotton; close enough to smell the remainders of sun on his skin, the warmth radiating off him. He's got no idea why sun-soaked Steve would smell any different from Steve the rest of the time, but even in the purple dusk, he can catch a little of it. Smelling like vacation. Like warmth and comfort and a cool drink on a hot day. Like the weekend.

He wants to bury his face in the crook of Steve's neck and just breathe him in, remind himself that he still has this, that Steve wants him here, but he holds off, for now, like he holds off the majority of the relief trying to stop up every logical thought, telling him they're good, he can stop now.

He can't. He has to make sure it won't happen again, has to shore up against it, cut it out and let it bleed dry somewhere it won't pop up again. "Then I'm gonna do everything I can to stay. If people want to bitch about the rules, or Rachel somehow finds out, it doesn't change a damn thing. No one can say it's screwed with our jobs."

Except that once, even though no one caught them, and he sometimes wonders if it was a hallucination brought on by stress and a concussion. It wasn't. He knows that. Steve really did shove him into a wall at a crime scene and kiss him until Danny's disorientation had nothing whatever to do with being hit in the head.

But it doesn't matter. He's not leaving. He doesn't leave. Didn't leave Rachel, won't leave now. Is fighting to even stay on this island, for Grace, for Five-0. And they've been fine. It hasn't affected the job. They've been good; even Chin and Kono don't know, and if they can hide it from Chin and Kono, then no one's figuring it out.

Nice as it would be to not have to hide. It's not like he doesn't want anyone to know -- though he's really not sure he's up to the teasing he'd have to endure from Kono. He's never been the guy to trumpet his relationship to the world, but...can this even be called that? If Steve is so derisive at the idea of him being a boyfriend, if that word rings panicked alarm bells in Danny's head?

It doesn't matter. He doesn't give a shit what they call it, as long as Steve's not shoving him away. "I said I want to be with you and I meant it. You think I didn't already know about the rest of that crap? Forget about it." Heavy Jersey accent, more mobster than cop, but he doesn't give a shit about that, either. "I'm not giving up the one good thing I've got."

That's not the job, or Grace. Even when Steve thinks it's threatening the job, or Grace. He won't let it.

[thebesteverseen]

God.




He does not know what to do with this man.




This man. Danny Williams. Rambling off words that make Steve's chest ache in a vice, even when that touching is still unwinding him like a top. These words that keep rolling out of his mouth and landing like daggers slitting between Steve's throat and his chest. A line going straight down cutting him open. When it feels like saying one of these words himself would tear that forming slit wide open.

That he'd be scattered to the corners of the world, the wind, from all coherent solidness, and Danny just keeps going. Rubbing at his face. Rubbing at Steve's legs. Catching his eye, until Steve just can't look away. Just can't even determine whether this is a bravery he somehow has failed matching or an aggrandizement beyond anything Danny or he could ever meet, fill out, last through, for. But he can't, still. He can't look away.

Like every word, betraying and refusing the world for him, for this, is tucking tiny hooks into his eyes, into his chest where this infinitesimally small bubble is forming. Slow, tiny, warm. So fragile he wants to pretend he can't even feel it taking shape. Like the breath of a thought toward recognition or acknowledgement could shatter it, would shatter it, is asking the world to just do it, unrecognizably and unrecoverably. Here. Now. Today.

His throat doesn't even want to work when he swallows, because Danny is done. Danny is done with those words about how he's the best thing he's got. Steve. Steve. Not Grace, or Five-0. And it hangs there in the air, like a language he should understand and an idea that makes absolutely no sense. The one good thing, making Steve remember calling this the only good thing since he came home.

Making him try again. Making him shove out a breathe feels like it weighs tons, and caves his chest just to get out. When he does the thing that seems about as hard, but doesn't have words yet. Reaching out and placing his hand over Danny's. Palm resting over the back of his hands. Too large, too long fingers spanning across his and a good part of his forearm. Forcing himself to swallow and say, "Okay."

[haole_cop]

"Okay," Danny repeats, "okay, well, good. Glad we're on the same page."

He can glance at it, now. Allow himself, that, once Steve's hand covers his and he takes a deep breath to steady himself, before letting himself look at the sheer mindless relief welling up like blood from a pinprick.

Not that he can stop, once he's started. Cracking that door gives an inch that's rapidly eaten away and kicked into a fullblown flood, rushing through his veins and chasing away the cool calm that he'd forced himself into after the yelling wore itself out, after Steve tried to burn straight through him with a kiss. But here it is, erasing it all, making his hands firm on Steve's legs so they don't shake with it, making him want to duck his head to press his forehead against the back of Steve's hand, breathe in the scent of cotton and skin and sun, with the air starting to cool against his back and the last glimmers of sunset now nothing but a faint memory. The sky is perfect clear teal, fading darker, and Steve's features are a little harder to see.

He's got no idea if Steve meant to stay out here, if he still does, but Danny's knee is starting to complain, and when he pushes up, it gives a bad-tempered crack that makes him grimace.

He doesn't straighten far, though, just far enough to lift the hand not covered by Steve's, curl it at the base of Steve's skull, and lean in to find his mouth, again, eyes sliding shut, kiss firm and gentle and more longing than he'd meant it to be, because it was supposed to be brief, like punctuation, so this conversation could be over, but instead it lingers. He lingers. Breathing in against Steve's cheek, focused on a kiss that's nothing like the one that almost took him apart just a few minutes ago, that's just this, something to get lost in, something to remind Steve, in case the words didn't stick.

That he's the one Danny wants. That it's enough, in the face of a world continually trying to beat them down, push them around, crush them, kill them.

That Steve matters. That nothing could change that.

[thebesteverseen]

It's insane. Is really what it is. Danny had a hundred words back about forty seconds before all Steve could squeeze out was one, like it was suffocating him for that, and from there, Danny's words seem to fail. Danny, who slips into repeating himself, not that it's new. But repeating something small, seeming almost winded by it. By words it seems like he said only a short time, ago, but Steve isn't placing anything but this second.

This one here where suddenly Danny's shouldesr seem to give like dam bursting suddenly, slumping part of his spine and maybe his will. And Steve knows in some distant part of himself he may never really deserve whatever the hell, however the hell Danny manages to shoulder enough whatever he calls it, they call it, anyone does, to smack him back down when he gets angry, when he gets out of control, when he ---

Suddenly forgets everything in his head, when Danny's knees give a ominous snap that doesn't stop his concerned remembrance, that Danny shouldn't even be stuck in this position so long, from being just as shut up as his head, when Danny's got his fingers on his neck and his mouth back on Steve. When the struggle to remember, and the want to get him going a little haywire on the slow, firm way he's being kissed.

Like a reminder. Like the pin in a point. Like...like Danny can't stop after a second. Even once this moment is continuing to inflate the space in Steve's chest too far. When Steve's fingers tighten across Danny's, and all he can do is give over to this one. Not stampede it, not take over, not force it any deeper, or harder, or more intense. Not even to do more than put a breath out through his nose, that might related to snort only by coming from a breath of air.

There's no fire, no point, when Steve pulls back barely. Only from Danny's mouth. Not from his face, not from that hand cupping his neck and not away from Danny. Just enough to have his mouth back. Enough to be able to open his eyes and see Danny's face. This washed out something, exhaustion and relief so bright it's almost blinding. To reach up his free hand for Danny's shirt without an aim.

"We get should get you up," It's quiet. Maybe as much a comment about some point, as it is distraction, as it is just common sense. Maybe it's the closest he come to saying he's sorry for this, any of this that is smashed across Danny features and his eyes and that kiss, like it's fragile and for a moment it was breakable and, even worse, gone. As close as he can come without taking it back. Ever being able to.

Fingers catching up from there to Danny's shoulder, even without pushing him. Solid, there. Just like he's re-equating himself with Danny being solid. Real. Like he could push it and make him move, but he doesn't. Doesn't push him, doesn't move him, doesn't look away, or pull away any more than that quarter of an inch, half an inch between their mouths. Letting his voice roll out too rusty to be sharp enough for the mocking he may be trying for yet. "You'll be bitching all night if you stay like this."

But, at least. At least he's giving that Danny's going nowhere? That's. Something, right? That he's a damn idiot sometimes, but that he does understand Danny isn't going anywhere, is putting it out there, that he does, that Danny doesn't have to go anywhere, if he isn't.

[haole_cop]

"Yeah, well, you and your lawn chairs, they're not exactly bad-knee friendly."

Not when he's crouched in front of them, anyway, and even with all the tricks he knows -- put his weight on the other leg and let that one bend more than the right, keep shifting it around -- it's really not a good idea for him to even do this sort of half bent over sort of deal. Not like there's any danger of wrecking his knee just by crouching down on it, not if he hasn't had to have surgery thanks to the shit they pull every week, but it's not exactly comfortable, either.

Except Steve's not pushing him back with anything other than words, and even those are low, quiet, anything but confrontational. Almost an apology, lacking any seriously sharp edge or arrogance, and that sucks, too, that Steve's unable to even mock him the way he always does. To call Danny a wilting flower or rusty Tin Man, like a bad knee is some kind of personal failure on his part instead of something he can't do shit about, something he should just go ahead and change, already, what is he, lazy? But Steve doesn't. Is just looking at him, with this something written across his face in broad strokes Danny can't translate. Fingers warm on Danny's shoulder, more like he's steadying himself than Danny, like all the light's gone out and he needs to navigate by touch.

Which is fine, but in Danny's experience, navigating with touch is a whole lot more enjoyable if they're both on the same piece of furniture.

"Okay, fine." Most of his weight right now is on Steve's thigh, anyway, the hand there balancing him, and he presses down again as he leans forward, erases the half-inch of space for a kiss that's almost as casual as the ones he presses to Steve's damp salty post-swim pre-coffee mouth in the mornings, before he has to go. Easy. Like any other touch. Like he can, just because he wants to. Like he owns Steve's mouth and kisses and it's a totally normal thing to do, which it seems to have become, over the last month, and that's strange enough. "Come on."

Pulling back, fingers sliding off Steve's skin, out from under his hand, stretching his back as he straightens, shifting his weight to his left leg by conditioned response. "You wanna watch a game, or something, or stay out here?"

[thebesteverseen]

Danny kisses him. Again. A third time. It's crazy that he can count them tonight. It'd be impossible most other days, to try to figure out how soon after waking that line had already been cross, or after arriving here, or tugging wach other somewhere, anywhere, safe and theirs. When all the angry voices and willingness to snap Steve knows is really only a breath and a wall away.

Which isn't quite as close as Danny is now. When he's agreeing, but he still has to kiss Steve again. Casual and light, and like it's a last check on whether it's still there. His mouth. Or maybe Steve. Or maybe the fact he's allowed to be kissing Steve, without it being angry or overwrought. Or, god, fuck, if Steve actually knows. It's a press and slide of skin, soft and smooth, easy and fast before he's standing.

Done before Steve can swallow or take a breath or hold on or pull him closer. Making his chest ache, making him want to grab Danny and pull him in. He doesn't even know if it would be to kiss him. Just to be sure Danny is there. Even when Danny isn't looking anywhere else, doing anything else. Is still focused on him. But is standing up, is pulling away, is further away than a foot and half. Still looking at him. Talking sense. Like Steve cares about that.

Except he does. He just said. Needs to remember. But he just. Feels like a mountain caved in over his head, and there's just this mess everywhere around him suddenly. When he doesn't want to be that far from Danny, much at all. Maybe for a while. Which has him pushing back up from the chair, without thinking about it. Just agreeing. "Yeah, sure. A game, or movie, sounds good."

There's the roll of a shrug that comes along with that. Because he could get behind the couch. He could get behind noise filling up the too quiet, and somewhere Danny can sit without being in pain. Somewhere he can sit and turn off his head, for something that doesn't require much focus. Somewhere he can pretend he isn't spending half of glancing at Danny, wondering what the hell, and how, or why. Like those words aren't all caught on the hooks in him still.

It doesn't change a thing.

I said I want to be with you and I meant it.

I'm not giving up the one good thing I've got.

He may not get why or how, or have any idea what. Not in comparison to like the entire section of his plans where this was all about Grace. But he can. Stand. Reach up and rub at his jaw, let his hand smooth to his neck and the back of his own close clipped hair. When he can step through jostle Danny shoulder and his side, like he's not thinking about Danny's knee or his colossal fail of the last however long that was,

Just jostle him and turn toward that house, that isn't any friendlier at this second than the beach and say, "Inside."

[haole_cop]

"Yeah, works for me. I need something to clear away Grace's latest G-rated favorites, anyway."

Bluffing, because there's something he loves about what used to be family movie night and what is now just him and Grace's movie night, heavily featuring Disney characters and the newest tween heartthrobs, none of whom he ever recognizes. He loves settling her in a nest of blankets and pillows on the couch, balancing a bowl of popcorn between them, making Grace laugh when he tries to determine the usually vague and inconsistent motivations of the various characters.

It's worth it all to see the smile on her face, feel the way she tucks into him when she gets sleepy.

So he's okay with the whole idea of relaxing on the couch for a while, letting some stupid movie or game wash over him. If they're lucky, something like a James Bond marathon will be on, and he won't even have to get worked up about terrible calls by refs who must be blind or brain-damaged, can just sit there and finish his beer and let the exhaustion stealing over him fade itself out.

Because it's tiring. The panic and the fear and the anger. He doesn't feed on it, the way Steve seems to think he does; not when it's like this, not when it means something. When it hasn't even been a fight, but he still feels like he'd been tossed into a cage match and had to grapple with a monster three times his size. It's just draining, okay? And right now, he doesn't want to relive it, think it over, second-guess himself or Steve. He wants Steve next to him, or draped over him, and he wants a beer, and he wants a mindless action film with an eyebrow-raising premise and unlikely, tacked on love interest, and that'll do him just fine for a Sunday night.

So when Steve nudges him, he goes, bending to grab his beer, the other hand fitting against the small of Steve's back like it was never going to be anywhere else, even as he's nodding to the abandoned bottle of earlier.

"You gonna pick that up, or am I gonna have to issue a citation for littering?"

[thebesteverseen]

Steve has to look back, even though he knows what it is before his gaze even gets there. The bottle he dropped when he was kissing Danny. When the only thing left in existence, not even on the planet because the planet was gone, in all of thought and touch, was kissing Danny. Which makes his stomach clench in a vague sour fashion, when he's looking back.

Half distracted by the hand pressing a palm and fingers into the small of his back over his shoulder, while he says, a little more mocking than blank, "Private property. I could have given my permission."

It's a load of trash, because Steve would never. Not for any place on the island, and certainly not for his home, but it is something to throw out to Danny. That could be true, if it were anyone else, in some ways. People did choose to permit dumping in the oddest places. Something to leave him with when Steve it stepping away from that hand, and leaning down, with a swipe of a land toward the ground to pick up the bottle.

Wet down the side, with grass and dirt clinging to the half beaded, half spilled, with tenacious fragility. He absently goes about wiping it off with his hand, wiping his hands off on his pants. He's held worse, had worse on him. He could give up the grate of reminders to minutes ago. At least for a second. Stepping back around the chairs and nodding, gesturing his head toward the house and the direction he's headed with faster, focused strides, for Danny to keep up already.

[haole_cop]

That deserves exactly the kind of snort Danny gives it. "Yeah, maybe."

Because Steve's regimental neatness would allow it. Like one dropped bottle wouldn't probably drive him crazy, just like an unmade bed or hair that's gotten too long. But that's all Steve says, and it's still better than the pulled-tooth no or okay of earlier, the low blank erasure of Steve that left Danny talking to a statue that sort of looked like his partner.

Anything's better than that.

The quick steps towards the house are a good sign, too; the faster they're inside, the sooner he can park his ass on the couch and not move for the next few hours, just keep Steve nearby and let some stupid movie or show drain over him, finish his beer and ignore the way his nerves keep jumping, twitchy and uncertain that this is the last of it, that Steve won't choose to be stupid again.

Hopefully not. He'd really rather just spend the night without having to point out the fact that he has no plans to fold under pressure and let threats push him away, and it's another little triumph when they get inside and no other sinkholes have opened up under his feet.

That leaves just making his way through the dining room and kitchen, headed for the spot on the couch that somehow became his normal one, after two years and change, without bothering to wait and see if Steve's getting a new bottle, in favor of grabbing the remote and flipping the TV on as he sits with a sigh. The idea of even going through DVDs seems pretty pointless, so he just flips through channels, waiting for something to catch his eye.