(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]

"Fine. Reservoir Dogs." He waves his free hand, which knocks against Steve's knee as it makes a circuit. "I'll give you Reservoir Dogs. I had no idea you were such an aficionado, Roger Ebert. Are you going to tell me how Inglorious Basterds is a seminal film, now?"

Talking works, except he's not really sure of anything he's saying even as it drops out of his mouth, because Steve is looking at him, and not just looking. Watching. Studying. Like he's waiting to see if something else is going on behind Danny's bluster; gesturing at the TV, but not looking over at it.

And, actually, neither of them are, because whatever is going on onscreen is nowhere near as attention-grabbing as this thing crossing Steve's face, forehead crinkling in a way that shouldn't make Danny want to run a finger along those lines, erase them with the pad of his thumb. Watching him like he's waiting to see what Danny will do next, like he thinks the next thing out of his mouth might actually mean something other than that Danny can find something to bitch about in pretty much any situation.

Like maybe part of him still thinks Danny's going to make a break for it, even after everything he said, everything he argued against. It draws a mirroring frown between his one eyebrows, beer bottle balancing against his leg.

"What?"

[thebesteverseen]

Danny's hands start moving, in the air. Which somehow ticks some of the muscles in Steve's back to relax. Somehow. The free hand that actually bounces against Steve's own leg, smacking it for the note of a point, and the one with Danny's beer, that he shifts but doesn't go throwing about as cavalierly. And it's easy to toss a blase, disinterested comment out to the last one.

Which might be good because anything past that point is Danny looking at him suddenly very closely. Not spacially. He doesn't get any closer. But the world Danny is focusing on seems to winnow down suddenly to Steve's face. When he doesn't even look back to the movie and Danny's face is shifting. When he's getting that intent look he does when he thinks he knows what's going on. Or that something is.

And really nothing is. Nothing at all. Letting Steve face scrunch up in faintly suspicious, entirely dismissive question of what's what? that did not not need any words to be said. Especially, when he's still asking the question Danny tossed out at him before. Not that it was a question. It was just another volley at his taste. "The ending to Basterds ruins everything that was good about it."

What. He's got a beef with movies that are all real, all hands on, and then drop kick themselves off a cliff historically. Sue him. He doesn't give a damn. Some good scenes, not a movie he'd really watch except maybe when he can't sleep or swim or run at two or three in the morning. Better than nothing, but not in the running for much else.

[haole_cop]

The look Danny turns on him is nearly pained. "It's fiction, Steve. Fiction. Besides, it's not like all his movies don't take place in some bizarre alternate universe, anyway. I saw that somewhere, once. I mean, you think this is in any way a realistic portrayal of the break-up of a group of assassins and the subsequent personal vendetta?"

Does that shit ever really happen outside the movies? He's seen both, sure, but not together.

And, really, who the hell uses a katana?

Steve seems to be finally starting to relax, slightly, and that's enough to make a few of the knots clumping up his vertebrae start to loosen, which is nice, because leaning against Steve is actually pretty comfy, when he lets himself get used to the idea. The further they drift from the conversation outside, the better; the last thing he wants to consider is whether or not he's going to have to keep an eye out for a resurgence in the future.

Nope. Better to gesture towards the screen, even if his eyes only glance off it before looking back at Steve, who might not be nearly as interesting to watch but is definitely higher on the list than scenes of unimaginable violence.

Besides, Danny still hasn't quite figured out what that look was, before. The one Steve wiped off without even a second's hesitation, replaced with derision and a scornful frown, complaining about a movie Danny's not even sure he fully remembers. Nazis? Right? And someone killed Hitler?

That's the gist, isn't it?

It doesn't matter. None of it does, except that Steve is talking about something other than shouldn't or going back down that rabbit hole.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve probably shouldn't get off on Danny twisting to look at him like he's lost his mind. Like the words coming out Steve's mouth and going into Danny's ears are being banged in there with bricks. Making him look horrified and a little pained, but mostly like he wants to grab Steve's shoulders and set him straight. Which his mouth opens and starts doing already, because that's Danny.

And. Yeah. Maybe he shouldn't get off on it. But it's normal and it's flawless, and Steve is stupid for it.

The kind of stupid that makes him tense his mouth and shake his head, eyes getting brighter, and rail, right off and back as soon as Danny's mouth has managed to even close long enough for a breath. Shoving in words, like Danny might not even slow down or stop. And he really might not. That was Danny. But Steve didn't mind ramroding right over it if he started back in two seconds from now either.

"Alternate universe that just happened to have our history up until like the last ten minutes?"

He wasn't actually sure on the time frame, or even much in the way of being sure the rest of that was entirely true but it came out fast and direct anyway. Confident and sharper, like it's laughable Danny thinks he has any leg to stand on with the comparisons to the others.

"Even if it was," Steve added in, bringing his hand in a vague wave toward Danny. "The tacked on ending was just crap. Like it'd been shoved in and sewn on from somewhere else." It'd been an excuse for a gun mowing down. That was mostly what he remembered. Over the top even for what he considered plausibly real for anyone to buy.

Before adding anyone who'd been in circumstances like those circumstances.

[haole_cop]

"That's what alternate universe means, numbskull."

He eyes Steve, weighing the option of reaching up to smack him in the head versus staying where he is, where it's comfortable and getting more so by the minute. "Killing Hitler, that creates it, and all the others come after that one. Do you need a diagram?"

He hopes not, because that's literally the only piece of trivia he's got on Tarantino movies, and he's pretty sure that if Steve tried, he wouldn't even be able to hold this one up for long. A brief mention in some article online doesn't exactly make him an expert, and he barely remembers any other details, so he hopes Steve doesn't push it. "Anyway, the point being, it's not like you can take these as fact, okay, I'm pretty sure there aren't people out there levitating or standing on swords or whatever. If there are, then we have seen a shocking lack of ninjas in high-profile cases."

Probably just as well, though he's got the sneaking suspicion Kono could probably take on a bunch of shadowy wall-climbing assassins without even breaking a sweat.

His hand just waves irately at the television, tone grumpy and put-upon. "Will you shut up and watch the movie? Christ, you gotta nit-pick every little thing?"

Willfully ignoring the fact that he's probably said twice or three times as much as Steve, letting his head rest it's full weight, finally, on the arm and shoulder behind him, like Steve's just a big pillow, body-warm and breathing and arranging itself to fit around him, which isn't so bad, come to think of it.

[thebesteverseen]

Out come the nicknames and insults, that badgered tone, that shouldn't be making Steve smile. But it's totally happening, outside of his control. At least one edge of his mouth is definitely crooked up, the muscle all tense and lifted, while he's watching Danny like there is nothing on his tv that could ever be as compelling as him going off on the most trivial, unimportant, they'll forget it in twenty minutes, if even that, detail.

He, almost says yes, to the diagram. If only because it means Danny won't shut the hell up. He'll just keep going. Him, and his waving hands, and his hair that keeps flopping this way and that when he jerks his head to say something. Gone from the perfectly formed smoothed back. But he doesn't need to, because Danny just keeps on going. Spurred to a roll, meaning Steve really doesn't even need to put in his yes to keep it going.

Sometimes he does, and sometimes Danny can just get on to a tangent and go like a dog with a bone for a good five or ten minutes, with nothing more than a few sounds that imitate Steve having any reaction Danny thinks belongs to the complaining. None of which probably give away this reaction any more than this time seems to be, when Danny settles in a shoving huff. Back against the couch, and his arm, and him.

Steve doesn't have any idea how it does it, but seriously the whole thing, snaps something in his chest. Gone all messy and warm, slapping waves up everywhere inside his chest, and making it not seem like he needs to stop himself. He drags Danny closer than the part of his arm and his shoulder Danny is currently sort of starting to lay out ownership signs on.

But closer. Close enough he's sort of dwarfing part of Danny's shoulder, to lean over and say, almost close enough to be touching the side of his head, almost close enough Danny's heads would barely need a shift to turn and end up in the crook of his shoulder and neck, but not, and not whispering at all, but still quiet. A current of dark amusement touching all the corners of his voice, "Pretty sure I haven't said anything in at least a minute or two."

[haole_cop]

There. Finally. Cracking a smile, that crooked one that pulls across Steve's face like it's being tugged by a train engine across warped tracks. Loosening up past 'stiff as a board' and shifting like a quiet earthquake, pulling Danny further into his personal gravity well, long arm snaking further around Danny's shoulders, and it's more than a little like the way he manhandles Danny into a comfortable spot in bed, like Danny's just a larger version of the stuffed animals even Steve must have had, once upon a time.

Tucking his head close, close enough Danny can feel the warm puff of his breath, close enough that it would take hardly anything, barely a lean forward or anything other than just turning his head a little more, to capture that crooked curve and smooth it into a kiss, and he thinks about it. Eyes dropping to catch on Steve's mouth, that low tone teasing and coaxing at the hairs on the back of his neck.

Mocking. Amused. Leaps and bounds from the walled off silence he'd first walked into, the bucket of ice water Steve kept tipping over his head outside. Letting him fit himself into Steve's side, free hand dropping to rest on Steve's leg, instead of an armrest, fingers casually curving over Steve's knee.

"What did I just say?"

Arguing against Steve being so stupid as to talk now, whether he was before or not, when Danny knows that the things that come out of Steve's mouth aren't anywhere near the reason he's currently focused on it -- still is, even when his eyes lift. it's the arrogant smirks, the subtle tugs, the frowns and full brilliance of his smiles. It starts rolling around in his chest, warm and wistful, a fragile thing like blown glass that could crack at any time, under the slightest pressure, and it still keeps managing to survive being drop-kicked off cliffs and hitting bottom at terminal velocity.

[thebesteverseen]

It's easy, almost too easy to drag Danny's attention from the movie. It's not like he's engrossed in it, or even sounded earlier like he cared about it. But even so, the whole maybe ten second between huffing down and Steve words, before Danny's head shifts a little in relation to his. To his vision trying to find Steve closer, before it does. Find him, leave the tv.

End up focused on his mouth in a way that suddenly makes Steve's lungs expand with a flush of a different kind of warmth. Surprising and a little unsure, but along with a more common wash of reactions. Even if they were just kissing outside. For whatever those count. Both of them. The one standing up, and the small lingering ones from Danny while he was sitting. This is different. Again. Entirely, completely, wholly, familiarly different from those.

When Danny's breath seems to flee him and his eyes don't raised until after the words have already fallen out of his mouth. Like they completely forgot to have any grace, any shame, and Steve needs neither. God. He doesn't even know how he deserves that still. How this is still here. In Danny. Written on his face. Even when Danny's eyes flick back up, finally, like he's innocent, like Steve didn't clock every second of that inability to look away from his mouth.

"How should I know?" Steve asked, letting his voice go slow and low, unflinchingly meeting Danny's eyes.

Dark blue, but something amused sparking there, because he knows this. He knows how to do these things at least. To lean in another half inch saying, "I said you were talking--" Let his free hand lift and find the other side of Danny's face, tilting his head more this way. Until Steve's nose brushes Danny's, the skin under his cheek beneath his eye. "--I never said I was listening."

The smirk, forming like a flick of light, warm and slow across his mouth, smugly at his own words. But only for the breath of a second, only long enough to let them register, the first reaction in his eyes or shift of movement, before Steve slides his fingers further back along Danny's jaw and pulls him into a kiss.

[haole_cop]

"You think I ever think you listen?"

He just can't stop himself, has to keep it up, even when his stomach is squirming and Steve is dipping his head closer, that half-hook of a smile spreading, turning knowing and sly, and it doesn't matter. Whether Steve listens or not. Danny can't think of a single less important question, when it's clear that Steve's listening to something else, the thing he hasn't been saying out loud but which has been thrumming in his blood and head and ears for the last few minutes.

Electricity leaping at the brushing of a nosetip, the puff of breath, long fingers sliding along his jaw like they own it, and that smirk. That mocking, arrogant, slow and warm as honey half-smile, cocky and fully self-aware in a way that's nothing like the uncertainty of earlier, the way Steve had drawn in on himself, disappeared behind a haze of smoke and barbed wire.

This is better. Nothing like outside, either; no desperation and no violence. It's not a reminder, or proof, hard evidence they can point to and say this isn't gone yet; it's not a fight to keep the right to stay here. To be this person. The one Steve looks at like that, like there are no movies and no worries and no responsibilities, no bad guys or disappointing parents or evil lawyers. Like there is absolutely nothing else he needs in the world.

Making Danny's fingers tighten on Steve's leg, before he has to move them, run them along Steve's jaw and throat and sink them into Steve's hair, retracing paths that almost disappeared on him, that haven't been detailed in days too long. Paths he'd been burning down before, that he wants to just re-find now, wander over, a million times more addictive and intriguing than whatever the hell's going on onscreen.

[thebesteverseen]

He doesn't actually listen to Danny's words. This time.

The rest is a bold, smoking a lie. Of course. That he doesn't listen. That he doesn't have to, especially as partners. As his boss. As his friend. As whatever else he's become, that Danny just refused with violent volatility for him to not be. That he wants to half the time. That he misses the fuss when the house is empty and silent.

That even when he's distracted, entirely, somehow he stil manages to remember whatever it was Danny was ranting about at a given time, and the most ludicrous, crazy, five-year-old reasoning that falls out of his mouth sometime. That he frequently doesn't give it or Danny the time of day, in knowing he's listening, yeah, that happens. A lot, even, maybe.

But right now, Steve's definitely not listening to the question that gets smothered on his lips, when the thin skin under Danny's jaw has the tapping rhythm of his pulse shotgunning a little faster against Steve's fingers. The way Danny's fingers dig into his thigh. Not for balance or to hold him still this time. Before that hand is moving. Chasing over his skin, smooth and quick, getting everywhere on his skin. He's listening to those things.

To the way Danny seems to give up shifting, with conscious thought about position and sort of melts into him at the same time as meeting him. When Steve is chasing off the impulse for a shiver from the fingers in his hair and kissing Danny. Not furious, not blank and expected. Finding the flavor of his tongue, and the tang of the beer, and that something that is only Danny. That he thinks he'd miss if kissed anyone else at any point soon.

There's no rush. Not even with the screaming in the background. He can just kiss Danny. Because he still can.

[haole_cop]

It's maybe a little odd to be doing this with the background noise they've got, but the room is pretty dim and the movie isn't on too loud, and, really, as far as distractions go, Steve is just honestly stellar. Even when he's not demanding all of Danny's focus, he gets it anyway, because there is so much to take in: the stubble scraping rough against Danny's fingers, that still can't hide the softness of skin underneath, the warmth that goes chasing through veins and floods close to the surface to follow the path Danny's fingers trace. The tiny hitch, not of breath but of everything, the slightest of pauses when Danny curves his fingers into Steve's hair.

Making the world focus down to just this. Breath, and the brush of tongue and lips, and sinking into it, twisting slightly for a better angle. He'll have a hell of a crick in his neck, but he doesn't yet, and it's worth it, to be back here, to have Steve leaning into him and around him, back in his space like he doesn't think Danny should get to have it all to himself.

And it feels like kind of a turning point, something Steve isn't going to argue or weaponize, something he's not going to lock away as a potential landmine. The kind of normal kiss that Danny's starting to get used to again, just because Steve is there and he'd rather be tasting him, following the branching pulse point s across Steve's body with his mouth and fingers, would rather listen to the way his breathing starts and stops and holds, nowhere near the ragged disastrous edge but just this side of not quite normal, either.

Not that this is the best position, exactly. He can't really get hands on Steve the way he wants, like this, but there's something to be said for these small touches, when only their sides are touching and their hands are at the other's jaw, cheek, the nape of their neck. Intimate in a way that's nothing really like the times they're pressed flush to each other, like they're each trying to go straight through the other one. This is quieter. Calmer. Almost sweet, if that was a word Danny felt like might ever be used for Steve.

So he takes his time. Enjoys it. Forgets all about the movie in the background, the beer sweating lightly against his slacks. Everything there is except Steve and the slow warm press of his mouth.

[thebesteverseen]

His fingers have to end up in Danny's hair. There isn't any other way. Sliding back easy, through it, against the curve of his head. When this time it's not about holding him still, or keeping him there. About holding on, or holding him from getting away. When for a moment all of the tiniest things making this up are precious and perfect and so fragile, the way a vase or a glass is right before it smashes into the floor.

Right when you can remember everything it was, before it was broken apart, changed forever, irreparable.

The soft warm way Danny's lips part. The way Danny never, actually, kisses with just his mouth. It's a full contact sport, even smooth and small and simple like this. The heavy, but unweighted drag of Danny's fingers dragging against the sharp rise of stubble, the skin under it and along it. The way he turns, the way he leans in, taking as much as he's giving. Forgetting the world and all his words at once.

Like nothing in the movie, or in anything he was saying, the bluster and the bitching, was as important as thing. As Steve kissing him, as kissing Steve back. The way it makes Steve feel the stirring impulse lacing out already. The want to pull him even closer. Under or over, and just. Just closer. Like he could feel cracks he'd pressed into the glass just minutes ago, begging for it to break, trying to pulls it apart at every weak seam, and where it should have broken, and where it didn't, and how he still had this. How Danny was....Danny.

The only person to stand up to him and scream at him, get in his way, shout him down, fight him down no matter that he couldn't match him, or didn't look like he should be able to. Who he listened to for something beside rank and responsibility. The only person who could get him to come down. From destroy anything, even himself. Even....them? This? Is it a them. He laughed at the earlier term. He was pissed at the idea he could offer Danny nothing. But Danny is still here.

Danny is here and saying he'll do whatever it takes to keep this. Even if it gets out.

And Steve can almost look at that clearly. Through a haze of tension and uncertainty about the whole concept.

Maybe not the concept itself. Maybe not all of Five-0 and the Governor and Rachel and everyone knowing. Maybe at least the part where Danny, the middle grade of five feet and never anything less but attacking the world and holding out tenaciously against the world taking his things from him, might have decided Steve was one of those things. Even more. And that Steve didn't get a vote in it either. Somehow.

For some reason that was too complicated to consider while Danny was kissing him. While his lips were smooth and slightly wet, while the world existing melted. Until he had to take a breath and could open his eyes, stare a little windedly and little dazzed at the man in his arms, like he wasn't just holding on because it was the only thing he could do. The only one that made any sense, or felt right at the very bottom of whatever else be Actually Right.

[haole_cop]

Steve is an idiot.

This only solidifies the opinion, that Steve is an idiot, because only an idiot would consider giving this up, on the off chance that other people might figure it out before it inevitably runs itself off a cliff anyway. Only an idiot would think that sounds like a good idea, would think that's sensible, reasonable. Only an idiot would even try.

Or a self-sacrificial dimwit who doesn't think he deserves to have anything good in his life, and, fine. Danny can admit that he may well not be all that great an addition, okay, he's certainly not vain enough to think he's that good of a thing, would be skeptical and wary if Steve said so. He brings baggage and worry with him, a truckload of problems that Steve seriously does not need to be dealing with, these days, and there's not a whole hell of a lot he can do to help Steve with anything going in his head, either.

But Steve wants him here. Steve hasn't shoved him out the door. Steve kissed him that first day, instead of telling him they couldn't, for all the reasons he just listed out on the beach, all the ones that march through Danny's head every now and again, goose-stepping and trailing along a dark twisted cloud of dire consequences.

Steve wants him. Said so. And words might mean shit, but Steve acts like it, too. Runs his fingers up into Danny's hair to curl his hand around Danny's skull, pull him closer, tugs a tiny sound from Danny's chest to break on Steve's lips. And Danny finds it inexpressibly frustrating that Steve doesn't think he should get what he wants.

Because it's more than that. Not just something he thinks. It's not an active thought process. It just is. Something he'll give up, because he should. Because it's the right thing to do. Because under all that crazy and all those years of violence, Steve is the guy who'll do anything to find someone, to fix a broken family, to save the day. He doesn't think about himself. Nobody thinks about Steve, puts him first, or in the picture at all.

So Danny will. And he might not be able to explain Steve wanting him, or Steve wanting this, but since Steve does, that's good enough for him.

Looking back at Steve's slightly dazed expression, feeling a little like his own head has started melting right off his shoulders. Tip of his tongue darting, tasting Steve on his lip. "That your new argument strategy?"

If so, he has to admit it's effective.

[thebesteverseen]

There would be no way to replace this. It's the thought that settles both light as a feather and heavier than a dozen human lives on his chest. This way that Danny's face is flushed, warm, and he's already smiling, in the barest second since that noise escaped him to lodge itself like a living, thrumming, beating thing inside Steve's chest. The ways Danny' tongue tips out rubbing against his bottom lip, before he's already got words to throw.

Because Danny always has words to throw. They're about as important as they aren't. Compared to this.

It would be like every time he looked at the Chesapeake Bay, and always knew. Knew, deep in his gut, in his mind, in his soul, his mana, whatever people wanted to call it, that put their lives, their histories, their atoms together. That it might have been a vast body of water, it might sooth the gaping maw in him for hours at a time, but it was not the ocean.

It was not Hawaii. It was not home. It never would be. But home was not an option; nor was an the end to that ache.

It's the strangest series of so quick thoughts, even when Steve mouth is curved beyond his control. Too pleased, like Danny's words are so much less slander and more like a standing ovation. When he lifts his eyebrows with a smoked through kind of flash brilliant menace, and shifts his hands, like he's making a point, but it never really comes out of Danny's hair, fingers maybe even brushing into a slightly more friction against Danny's scalp.

"It did get you shut up, didn't it?" Steve latched on to that smile and the few seconds that were spinning out between watching Danny smile and lick at his lip and the already bubbling faint urge to kiss him again. Kiss him until he couldn't remember anything. The taste of his beer. The things Steve said. The fact he meant them. Until the idea in Steve's head might melt away from being as clear as it was, clouding and crowding up the back of his head.

It would probably be like that. The Bay. Maybe it's been like that for a year already. They way nothing ever fit right.

The way nothing in him holds away, waiting still, and nothing else comes close to comparing to this smile on Danny's lips.

[haole_cop]

Better. The way Steve's smiling, the way he's joking, voice low and a little rough now, like he's got a lungful of smoke, teasing without taking his eyes off Danny's face or his fingers from Danny's hair. Even when they move, it's to push further, firmer, and his eyes have that sleepy half-lidded look that smolders like a smoking campfire, looking innocuous and hiding the flash of brilliant arrogance lurking just below the surface.

He might look like a slow-talking, harmless surfer boy, but it's all an act; Danny can feel the coiled energy, the way he tenses and relaxes at each brush of Danny's fingers over his skin.

It's kind of heady, really. Addicting. Impossible, except implicitly not; possible enough to be dangerous, possible enough Steve felt like he had to shut it down.

At least he's not saying anything so idiotic right now.

"It's a temporary fix," Danny informs him, unfazed by Steve's smug certainty. And it never actually quiets him for long; it's just that the things coming out of his mouth afterwards tend towards the desperate and the indecipherable. Someone screams onscreen, someone else unsheathes a sword in a wet whisper of metal, but he doesn't care, has no idea what's happening. None of it matters even a little, none of it means anything at all or is worth even the tiniest inch of his attention.

Not when Steve is looking at him like this. Like there's nothing else in the room, or on the island, or in the world. Eyes hooked on the tiny flicker of Danny's tongue against his lips, or on some detail only Steve can find in his face, the skin of his throat, the open collar of his shirt. "Don't get used to it."

Which makes him lean up, tug Steve down. Again. Already. Because, fuck it. They're on the couch and Steve is an idiot, and Danny may have made his point, but he can make it again, keep making it, until Steve stops thinking of it as an option, until he's sure Steve will lose that wary, blank look that precedes self-destruction. This isn't a bullet Steve can take; it's not a grenade he can throw himself on. It's just him, and he might not be any prize, but he's sure as hell not going to let himself get pushed out the door while Steve still wants him.

[thebesteverseen]

He's barely agreeing. Barely signing the check on Steve being right. On the fact he did shut up, except for that noise drug out of his chest and offered up from his lips, without even stopping kissing Steve. But it doesn't matter, because of the way Danny's looking at him. The tension at the edges of his eyes and the wariness inside them draining out, slowly. Letting the skin crinkle and betray Danny's lightening mood.

But those last words stick a little. Don't get used to it. That's the problem, isn't? Part of the problem wrapped up in everything from earlier, too. He's not. He's not used to it. He's still pretty sure if he accidentally smacked his head into something hard enough he'd wake up and none of this would have happened at all. Because maybe he passed out during a case somehow, doing on of any of the ten thousand things Danny screams at him not to do in pursuit of a suspect.

Because not even that changes it.

The way he wakes up, half expecting someone to be on the other side of his bed. Even when it's empty. The way one of his pillows has taken on the smell of Danny's shampoo, and gel, and him, just his skin. This combination that Steve buries his face in and considers not getting up to swim, on the few mornings we he can find himself managing to keep his head above the jangling fresh anger and confusion at everything else.

The way he is sort getting use to it. Even if it won't last, can't last. Even the way Danny will smile at him and then look right back down at the work on his desk, like he can't stare at Steve too long or someone else will notice. The way he's gotten to claiming Steve's space even more, when Steve can't even tell if Danny's doing it on purpose or not. His back, his arm, his shoulder. For noticeably longer presses of his fingers even during the day.

But he doesn't have long to think about that, to even realize the reaction to it has completely over-mapped any impulse or recognition for a need to respond. Because Danny's fingers on his jaw are dragging him back down, and the last really cognitive thought, is about how he's not sure he could ever not be used to Danny's mouth. Soft, and dry. The way he's pulled back in, and Danny opens up. As much taking as inviting as demanding, and it's such an easier language. Easier responses.

Fingertips tensing against Danny's scalp and tipping his head back, kissing him, demanding, shouldering into his space instead of just merrily being lead. Maybe a little more pointedly. Heatedly. Maybe because there is a point. But maybe because it isn't that he shouldn't get used to Danny silent. Maybe because he's already used to this. This thing where Danny pulls him in, and his lips open. When the world Steve has been trained to be hyper aware of at all seconds shorts out in static, for kissing Danny back. For stamping everything he has on those lips, on that mouth that he spends his whole day listening to.

Because nothing, nothing out there, could replace this. Because even if it had worked he'd still have woken up tomorrow morning and been confused in those first few seconds why Danny wasn't in his bed, deep heavy breaths of sleep alive in the room, and even when he realized it, maybe even because he realized it, why, why he wasn't. He would have drug that other pillow over his head and searched for any last trace of him that was still Steve's. Still there. Still in his arms.

Like this. When Steve is maybe not touching enough of him. When he can't kiss him long enough.

When the thought of letting go might be tantamount to treason now. Because he tried, and he doesn't have to now.

[haole_cop]

There's some turning point, right, there has to be. There always is, where things go from good but just good to necessary, when he stops being able to think on his own or breathe without this. He doesn't have any idea where that point is, where it tips, stops being just a kiss, just because, like saying 'hi' or adding punctuation to a sentence, and starts enveloping the whole world in a brilliant fog.

Maybe it's when Steve's fingers tighten against his head, thread further into his hair. It might be when Steve's weight shifts, and the space between them suddenly shrinks, when Steve is suddenly everywhere, like humidity or light or the scent of the sea. Being pushed back, towards the couch back and Steve's arm, still there like a warm bar, holding him in place, except Danny doesn't want to be here anymore. He wants to loop arm arm around Steve's neck and drag him down, turn this into a contest of strength and wrestle him closer, but he's got the wrong arm curved against Steve's chest, forcing him to face forward, and he's still got the beer in the other hand, ignored, sitting against his leg and spreading and damp patch into his slacks.

It's not good enough. Not when Steve is giving in, gave in, let Danny convince him, because he must not have wanted to be convinced, had wanted to just put down that gate and push Danny out the door. Saying things that are going to echo in his head, now, until they come true, the shouldn'ts and can'ts.

As there's a way this could be wrong.

He knows it must be. Knows Steve is right, that it would ruin his chances in court and probably get both of them fired, but knowing it and feeling this, this perfection, that tug and drag like gravity, are two different things, don't even exist in the same hemisphere. Because this, this is nothing but right, and it needs more, better, than this contorted angle, when Steve is pushing closer, pressing in. He has to lean, pull them both off the couch back so he can find the floor with the bottle, and then shift, bodily, completely, slide the arm that had been at Steve's chest down and around, hand slipping from Steve's jaw over his throat and shirt, to push between Steve and the couch. Replace it with the hand that had been holding his beer, warm skin instead of cool damp glass.

Better. What this deserves, what Steve deserves: his full attention. The movie is a movie; they can always watch another movie. Nothing happening onscreen or in the room has anything on Steve's kiss, his own opening, lips and tongue and gentle clash of mouths. Not trying to push his way under Steve's skin, but making a stand, making a point, branding a reminder, while his head starts trying to spin and breath starts forgetting that it needs to be even and deep enough to a point in order to keep everything together.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve can ignore or overlook or override, or, no, maybe it was ignore the first few seconds of Danny's irritable shifting. Of the hand at his skin. Danny's arm trying, impossibly, to shift through the solid mass of his chest, without being physically removed from being attached. The way it shifts his shoulders. But, really, it's not a lapse. He vaguely is aware of them.

He'd be more aware if Danny wasn't trying to turn the air in his lungs into steam more pressingly during it.

Which sets a ramping thrum in his blood, overrunning anything else. Anything but to take, but to pull for more, to put aside anything and everything that isn't this. This feeling of Danny pressed against his side, his skin, his mouth. The way the inside of his mouth is wet and warm, and how it's insane, it's been weeks since it started, and barely days since they last, but it still sets everything in him to smoldering. Begging to catch flame. Begging to burn down everything else.

Until Danny moves, and moves enough to be dragging him somewhere, that isn't closer. In fact it's forward from the back and not in a forward toward Danny way. Shifting his weight, dragging him, enough to make Steve open his eyes, enough to snort. Because Danny's trying to get to the table or the floor to get rid of his beer and he isn't even letting go for that much. Like he has some desperate need of both of his hands, like Danny could do anything without both of his hands, and he can't even let go of Steve to get to both of his hands.

There are words, burnt to all hell, smoking ruin, crowding up Steve's throat, about to tease him for it, when he shudders suddenly. Cool, cold, wet fingers against his jaw, when Danny's free hand is suddenly on his skin. Causing the muscles in his shoulders, stomach and thighs to tense up fast and hard in surprise. Staggering a ripped up sort of gasp from his lungs and Danny's lips, when it's making everything else standout.

Danny, and Danny's hands. Both of them now. The other one getting free with running down his skin, until it has to be on fabric, making Steve nearly hate the clothing itself because it's not as close. Muffled sensation, cloth, wrinkles, dragging hand, pushing in between him and couch, pulling him closer, as Danny's giving up any pretense there was a movie, that the tv is still on. Is dragging Steve, who could care less about it, with him.

Skin prickled and razor edged, everything heightened briefly knife-sharp and glaringly aware, even more sensitive, reactive for the shock.

[haole_cop]

He grins against that gasp, the short rasp of surprise that Steve gives against his mouth, like Danny gut-punched him instead of shifted to better fit, to lean towards Steve in a mirror image of the way Steve's leaning toward him.

Not that it's much better like this: knees are whacking together, legs pressing into each other, and they're both sort of contorted into a knot tying itself around each other, but that's fine for now, is livable. It's definitely not uncomfortable enough to move back to where he was, head tipping back and arm reaching awkwardly, beer keeping his other hand occupied. It's a beneficial exchange, the beer bottle for the side of Steve's neck, particularly when Danny can feel the slight rise of goosebumps reacting to the cold, and there's a thrill of tension all down Steve's long lean frame.

You know, fine. If they're going to make out on the couch during a movie, then they may as well do it right. It doesn't have to go anywhere, could stay just like this, exploring mouths, claiming lips with soft or harder kisses, fingers seeking their way across Steve's side and over the thin skin of his neck. He'd be fine with that, with just this, because it's hard to picture anything better than this, right now, when all of Steve's focus is on him, and it's like everything that happened or was said outside is just forgotten. Evaporated. Blown away like it never was, motes of dust in a strong breeze.

So the beer can live on the floor, whatever. He can get it again in a minute, or when he feels like it, and Steve can keep kissing him or Steve can sling a arm across his shoulders and drag him in to watch the damn movie or Steve can lie on him instead of the couch; Danny doesn't give a damn which way it goes, as long as he can kiss Steve for just a few more minutes. Minutes that slow to hours, and speed to nanoseconds, all on the tiny motions of Steve's mouth, the ricochet of the pulse Danny can feel hammering under the pad of his thumb, resting in the vulnerable groove of Steve's throat.

It's fascinating. The parts of Steve he can touch. The ones that he knows would be most protected in a fight, fragile, one-hit spots. Throat. The small of his back. The underside of his knee. The sensitive skin along the groin. The nape of his neck. Place he puts his hands without thinking or hesitation. Like he might own them, somehow. Like Steve would or could allow that.

But he does. Allows touching. And Danny keeps moving his thumb, because he might enjoy shoving past Steve's walls, but he can move on, too, doesn't need to linger there, unless it's to feel that same pulse jump against the flat of his tongue.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny wastes no time, in having his hands back. Not that Steve ever doubted he would. Not even when he was slamming through heat and cold at the same seconds, prickling skin and redoubled sensation, want, a flared slam of need that almost defied being able to name the reasons when it ramrodded through. Leaving him catching his next breath right off Danny's lips. That stupid, smug sort of smile Danny's mouth is curving in under his.

When Steve's amazed it isn't a accusative or victorious laugh rumbling through his chest. The kind that Steve only marginally ever admits he wants to feel. Against his fingers, against his own chest, when his arms are wrapped around Danny before they fall into oblivion or whenever he crawls back into bed, half soaked. The way that sound vibrates through him, feeling like it washes over and through him, even when it doesn't sound like anything other than an indignant or denying scoff.

Or when it's low, gravely in his ear, and Danny is actually happy. Or when it's perfectly real, and Steve can't breathe.

When Danny's eyes and his mouth are all crinkled up, and his eyes are bluer than seem possible, when everything is light and hilarious and Steve wants, with some insane abandon, for a way for his hands to sink deeper than Danny's skin. Into his chest. Into wherever that is. That he could shove his hands, his whole self into that so rare, entirely golden sort of laughter and enjoyment that Danny saves for the oddest, rarest, counted moments, and for every single second Grace is near him.

But none of that stays. It dashes in and out on the inhale of a breath, while Danny's fingers, cool and smooth and wet, still, tracing over his skin, are moving. Down his jaw, across his throat. Causing the center of his stomach to stay tight, even as everything else just feels like it throbs everywhere through him, following the soft bite of the chill. Shrinks down to Danny's fingers against the skin under his jaw, this skin over his jugular, the skin over his artery.

Causing his heart to beat harder and harder under that touch. Like it was trying to reach out to Danny, too.
Moments like this, it's the opposite. Like Danny's fingers can't even push deep enough into him.

Hard enough. Far enough. Even when he's tilting his head and pushing into Danny's touch before he's even realizing it's happening. He's doing it. Pushing up. Wanting more. God, wanting anything and everything Danny will give him, he can take from him. To have it shoved through and over everything else clogging up every other inch under his skin, in his head. Everywhere beyond the taste of Danny, the feel of it on his tongue, on his skin.

Dissolving the world, and pushing into Danny more. Pushing him toward the couch, toward his other arm. Beginning to seriously reconsider this whole sitting thing, and the way everyone's knees seem just as much in the way as Danny's drink was. Not that Steve is going to fight against that as long as Danny flailed against his chest. Seconds. Seconds are too many. God. He just wants his hands everywhere. And wants Danny's hands everywhere.

Wants to know, solidly, Danny is there, pressed against him, all of him. He didn't just do what he meant to do, and it worked, and then he lost whatever last, long tried strand of his sanity was left with it. He just wants to. Pulls his fingers back from Danny's scalp, fisting all that hair as he does dragging Danny with him, the opposite direction of his last push. Not toward the back of the couch. Partially twisting, muscles already tightening through his coe, when he's really not going to ask about shoving Danny toward's the seated cushions or across the couch.

He already said the only words that mattered, that were the hardest he's had to say so far. He's done with words.

[haole_cop]

It doesn't actually start that slow. Nothing with Steve ever does, and this is no exception: the push back towards the couch, fingers fisting hard in his hair, dragging and pulling and shoving in equal measures. Steve's weight being used like Danny's seen him use it a million times in a fight; as loose ballast, bringing them both down in a way that feels irrevocable, unstoppable, barely controlled. He gets the warning of Steve's muscles tightening along his side, coiling in his core, and then there's a shift, and he's going down, legs getting in the way and his back complaining at being poorly aligned, because apparently Steve's had enough of the movie, and it pushes out a sound that's half a gusting laugh and half aggravated grumble.

"What is this move, McGarrett? You know, it's a little disturbing, knowing the likely amount of times you've pulled this before."

The movie, the couch. The arm around the shoulders. Even if Danny had leaned into him first, even if this was never electrified with the heady, dizzy uncertainty of teenaged hookups. There are no butterflies in his stomach; he'd squash them out ruthlessly should some attempt to appear.

Sudden squirming nerves aren't the same thing.

The words come out mashed against Steve's mouth, anyway, because as much as he'd roll his eyes at the absurdity of it all, he can't seem to get enough of Steve under his hands, is already looping an arm hard around his neck and flattening a hand in the middle of his back, curved along the semi-circle of ribs. He's letting himself be pushed back, and he's dragging Steve along with him, twisting and impatient, exasperation radiating like heat off a lit stove. Still feeling the echo of Steve's pulse against the pads of his fingers, the way Steve tipped his head, arched into that touch, wanted it, moving in a way that made Danny's mouth dry and apparently snapped something in that crazy head of his.

Because here he is. And here's the couch. And there's the movie neither of them gives a shit about, because Danny can't get enough of that mouth, its molasses-slow smiles and the lost crooked quirks that wander across it when Steve thinks no one's looking.

Danny looks. He always does.

[thebesteverseen]

There's something like a laugh, that rolls into one of those sounds of Danny's that shouldn't make him beam but it does. Explodes in Steve's chest like sunlight when he breaks the water from far depth in the morning. That sound, aggravated and so put upon, like a warning of the hell to come. Which only takes seconds, really, before Danny is shoving words into Steve's mouth instead of his tongue.

Breaking them on his lips, but shoving forward still. Catching Steve around the neck and dragging them down, while Steve is pulling his own legs up, shifting his balance, awkwardly to his knees, and getting a hand on Danny's closest leg, and tugging him by his pants, and the solid muscle under them, to be pulled under, between Steve's legs, even while Steve himself is laughing. This tawny, sort of bright, half-winded sound at the slander heaping on his lips or his head. Whichever.

"Just adding your name to the pile," Steve ducked his head, even ungainly edged toward unbalanced and let his mouth graze Danny's the edge of Danny's jaw. Lips catching on the faintest cut of stubble, and aimed for the soft skin under it. "Unless you plan on putting up some kind of fight soon?"

It's probably wrong how much those words both sound like a arrogant crow for winning already, with outdated childhood tactics he had not even thought of until Danny's pointing it out, and the heady, thick tone alluding temptation that even if Danny puts up a fight, he'll love that, too. He'd be there, be up for it, in less than a second. Even if the arm that wouldn't have to go far to make itself into a head lock, fingers heavy against his throat in a way that could go lethal in seconds, if they were anyone's but Danny's.

That hand in the middle of his back. None of them are signs of Danny fighting back. If anything it's every single receptive sign, going off like green lights down a straight boulevard for him. The whole thing is insane. Which is, maybe, why he nips the soft skin at the juncture to Danny's neck. Just enough. Even when he's shaking his head into Danny's skin. Because it is inexplicably insane. He shouldn't even being feeling like this. Right now.

Not after earlier. Not after ten, or fifteen minutes ago . But he is. And it's as true as everything else. Which is all Danny.

[haole_cop]

He loves that. This. The way Steve grins against his lips, presses a smug curve of a smile into Danny's own skin, and then traces it along his jawline, making Danny tip his head back, into the cushions he's just hit. They're a mess, a tangle of arms and legs, Steve dragging him up further onto the couch and bracketing either side of his thighs with knees, until Danny manages to loose the leg closest to the TV and slide it free, only to frame the side of Steve's leg with it. "You want a fight, we're not staying on the couch."

A real knockdown trial of strength between the two of them would probably wreck a whole lot more of this living room than Danny particularly wants to have to pay for; at the very least, the coffee table would die, maybe the desk, too. A lamp, or three. A barroom brawl that would probably end in grievous bodily injury, and possible property damage. "And we just got back in from outside. Nope, vetoed."

Especially considering the way his voice is starting to stretch thin and crackle at the edges, like a piece of gum pulled slowly apart. Nerves are skittering into life, stumbling over themselves as Steve's warm breath gusts over them, drawing up goosebumps and slamming his heart rate into a higher gear, pulses starting to turn over themselves, the beginnings of overlap. And there's so much space between them, but he's sure that if he were to stick a hand in the empty air between his stomach and Steve's, it would burst into flame and crumble away to ash, instantly.

The whole room is starting to feel that way, actually. A long, slow burn, ticking gradually up the thermometer, giving another click every time Steve's mouth moves against his skin, and a muffled noise contracts itself in Danny's throat, quiet on a breath he lets out hard through his nose.

Eyes slitting, and his brain must be misfiring, because Steve nips at his skin and it feels like squinting at sunlight, that same sensation of too much, almost sore in how bright it is, too brilliant to take in.

[thebesteverseen]

It's probably good Danny knocks off the option, because Steve can't help thinking he already missed his chance. Danny. He had the chance twenty or thirty minutes back. He wanted to and Steve would have let him. He would have stood there and taken getting clocked by Danny, deservedly hard and vicious, without fighting back. After taking everything from Danny, to make sure he never took anything that really mattered.

That's part of it, too, isn't it? When Danny shudders just enough under him, rolling his head into the cushions and pillows, neither of which have been moved by anyone to help anything, and that sound drags up his throat, wanting and dark. It has to be. Part of it. Part of the whole never telling anyone ever thing. The part where what the hell would he even say. Because he knows this. Knows tracing his lips down.

But how could he ever explain. They should be fighting. Danny should have left in a hand waving huff, after hitting him with that right hook even Steve never saw coming from Danny the first time. How would he every explain that this is happening. Not as a distraction, or an amusement, or something to bide the time before sleep, and goodbye's and work, but, simply, because it is.

Danny is. Here. Under him. Still in his house. Making shallow soft noises Steve wants to fill the room with. Wants to make overshadow the dialogue of the movie he's not even paying attention. Tracing down his neck, doing the same, every half inch or so, before his collar. Not hard enough to break skin, not hard to bruise, but not exactly like he's paying attention to it either. If there was a razor edge, they already passed that at least twenty minutes ago, too.

Because he doesn't want to lose the arm curled, dangerously around his neck, or the flutter of a pulse he can't help dragging into his mouth. Pulling at with his lips, his tongue. When it feels like that pulse is thundering in his own head. Down his veins, and there's something completely reckless and hapless about it. He wouldn't know what to say. Even if there was someone, anyone he wanted to say it to.

He doesn't know how it happened the first time -- oh, he has the words, and he could diagram what, but not now how -- not then, and not thirty minutes ago, and not now, when Danny is talking into the side of his face and his hair, as he works down. Not when there's too much space left still and too little world even left anywhere. There's just this. And it happens. And it keeps happening.

And he's not even brave enough to let the thought stop more than glancing that he's glad he lost.

That he's glad he didn't lose this. Not quite yet. Not this set of of minutes. Not this day. Not Danny, not quite yet.

[haole_cop]

Steve has a Thing. A Thing, for Danny's neck.

He'd sort of suspected it before, but he's pretty damn sure it's true, now, as Steve tracks his way down, lips brushing stubble and catching every now and again to give a soft squeeze of teeth. A Thing. Steve has one. For Danny's neck.

Danny's.

This still doesn't seem like it's gotten the kind of attention he feels is due such a bizarre turn of circumstances. He can, sort of, wrap his head around the general idea that Steve wants him, that Steve likes him, likes him in a way that's got nothing to do with their friendship or partnership and everything to do with wanting to get him naked. It throws him every now and again, but it's doable, acceptable.

It's when he breaks it down to Things like Steve's Thing for his neck that it all starts falling apart at the seams, because it's just so crazy, Steve. Focused on the thin skin, the cord of muscle, the pulse point. Mouth following some set, wandering path Danny can't map. Pushing Danny's head back into the leather, eyes squeezing shut as his arm loosens from around Steve's neck, so fingers can snake up into Steve's hair, tensing, curving against his skull, blunt fingernails running across his scalp.

Chasing moans that have already nearly started, sifting like low-lying clouds in Danny's ribcage, pushing against each other and lifting a little closer to escape every time Steve's mouth closes over his skin. Back arching restlessly when that mouth sucks at his artery, pulling skin into wet warmth and the teasing sweep of tongue.

And it's a tiny thing to focus on, to lose himself over, because it's been weeks, and Steve's done this plenty of times before, but it's like taking a step to the side and seeing the world from a whole new angle, right before tripping on a rock he hadn't noticed earlier. His neck. It's the same as it always was. Nothing special. He can't explain it, can't reason it out, and he knows that it's probably no different than his Thing for Steve's neck, but that's -- he needs to be able to taste the sunlight and shadow on it, see if it's different when Steve's clean from the shower, missing the tang of salt from sweat or sea. Needs to find the precise location that makes Steve groan when it's sucked and gasp when it's bitten. Has to count the beats of his pulse against the flat of Danny's tongue.

Everything else is too big, it's like being on a rope bridge freshly cut and tumbling into a yawning valley, but this, this is like stepping on a rake and getting smacked in the face when he least expects it, shoving an ache and pressure in his chest, making him want to wrap himself completely around Steve. Tie him up with limbs, pin him down with as much force necessary to make sure he never tries anything so stupid again.