(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

[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.

[thebesteverseen]

He loves this. How could he not. This was something no half-baked, shamed-driven, fantasy could have even been. The restless push of Danny's chest, mindless tenses and twitches, that Steve wants to smother himself over, and would if it weren't for the arm of the chair already pressed against his shoes, faintly annoying him. But it is that. Faint.

Faint, when Danny's digging his head into the cushions, opening his neck wider under Steve's mouth, arching his chest under one of Steve's hands that he doesn't remember when it got there. But he's licking the tang of sweat off Danny's skin, maybe dragging the salt out from inside of it, and his fingers are heavy against Danny's shirt, curled over his side, so his thumb is dragging heavy over ribs.

Loving every single shudder and shove of Danny's body, and the way his mouth just suddenly turns off for a few seconds, caught in the undertow of his body. He can at least lower on to his knees, settle with his weight on his calves, closer. Wanting closer, to be against him, to feel everything, to blot out the exist of the world and the sun and all the things they can't outrun no matter who wins or loses.

But he can at least get closer, he can, continue a plot into madness, as thoughts become thin spread against the fire. Letting him pull a little harder and a little harder on Danny's skin. On his vein. And the blood rising there. On the way his chest rises, and his breaths keep catching. Wanting more. Wanting more of everything. Not caring in the slightest if it's tipped straight over the edge now.

Pulling harder, and running the edges of his teeth far too close, each short half-second he almost lets go of the skin. When maybe he doesn't actually care if this spot is going to end up mottled. Making it look like, somewhere low inside his collar, like he's been marked. Or branded. Or signed. If he didn't want that, he could have gone. Steve gave him the door. He never asked for those words.

The ones bubbling up inside his blood. About fighting for this. For him. For them. Danny could end up wearing them, that way they set fires running through his head. Through his ability to think, focus. Thundering against the racehorse in his chest, when he stretches into the fingers in his hair, but in no way against from Danny's skin. From following it down to the shadow of the corner his shoulder bone Steve can just bare get to with pushing back Danny's loose collar.

Yeah. That might just happened. A ribbon words in color, like the key to language no one else knows. Especially not him. Like the only reminder Steve will understand, that those words, they were really said, here to him at all, that this is his, that somehow Danny chose him in a balance that he'd been entirely positive about.

[haole_cop]

Steve pulls, sudden and hard, against his skin, and it's like yanking on the strings of a puppet: all his muscles tense at once, and his fingers dig hard into Steve's side in surprise, while his hand, that traitor, all but pulls Steve's head closer. As if there's any danger of him getting up, as if he's not doing that thing again, the thing he did before, marking up Danny's skin in a way that Kono will absolutely see, she's like a freaking savant when it comes to spotting hickeys.

Maybe not quite the same. There's no fury behind it this time, no calculation; just Steve, holding him down, sucking up hard and lingering, tracking a pathway down his neck that has Danny making a noise that he tries to convince himself is a growl of displeasure, but which breaks in his throat on its way out, stumbles into something lower, needier.

And it's not fair, okay, that Steve is doing this, and he's not flush against Danny, doesn't have his full weight, long body over him, is sitting back on his haunches, weight on Danny's thigh but not spread like a blanket over his chest. Except Steve's hand is there, running over fabric, making him push as a casual palm slides over a nipple, and Danny's hand tracks down from Steve's side, to his hip, curves over the back pocket that's strained tight against the curve of his ass.

"Hey, watch it," he says, in a raw voice, and his fingers fist in Steve's hair, but he can't pull, can't drag him away, wants him, maddeningly, even closer. Needs that weight, the fullness of him, sinking them both into leather cushions, making the couch creak. "What is this, the best two out of three?"

The second time he'll come into work with a mark on his neck, because there's no way that's not sticking, not with the kind of dedication Steve is paying to it, not with the faint sting Danny can feel, that washes away in a flood of simmering pleasure. Fine. Okay? Fine. Steve wants there to be a bruise, Danny's okay with it. At least it'll be like a tag stuck right on his skin, spelling out not going anywhere in a language Steve seems to understand.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny reacts like a live wire. Tensing and nearly grafting to him, pulling him down more, jerking his precarious choice of balance, and he's going to hate the couch sooner or later. But later is good right? Later, when the thought of it isn't be eradicated in the sudden tensing of his the muscles through his side, on fingers indenting themselves like solid rods, while his head is being jerked closer, making his head smack into Danny's jaw slightly, and making him ghost a laugh, right there in Danny's skin.

Warm and smug, mostly caught between the gentle shaking of his chest, and the gusting half breath on Danny's skin. Before he's proudly mumbling, all of dissembling toward any innocence lost in the half-choked, bottom-black amusement. "You wish." Leaning right back into what he was doing, before there's even a second to answer.

Even as the muscles along the base of his head and traveling down his neck all tense under fisting fingers. Tightening up through his jaw and down into his back. But not slowing him down any more than someone punching him in a fight does ever, really. If anything it rides the need to arch toward Danny, shuddering through him, kicking his hips twice erratically and tightening the muscles down his thighs.He rolls with it, still. Pulling it all in.

That sharp sting of pulled hair, when Danny proves yet, again, there really is somehow enough for him to go about pulling on it, even if it is nothing like his own. When Steve gets out his mocking words, managing only to pull in a slightly breathe, before returning to Danny's skin. Even as Danny is still pushing into his hands, and Danny's hands are. Well, the other one, even when it never seems possible he only has the two. Because they end up everywhere. No one has hands hands like this. No one except Danny.

Who's got a hand shoving him forward, and fisting his hair, and the other one. It's sliding down his side, and across his pants, causing muscles to clench even when he's fine with all of it. God. Isn't he though. He wants Danny's hands everywhere. He wants everything. He needs far less clothing, which mean his palm smoothes back over Danny's chest and starts pulling faster and specific at buttons. Sometimes he really doesn't give a damn, but doing this often, it does get back into being something he can do.

Push pull, small buttons, tiny holes. He's done so much more blindfolded in his life. While things were exploded.

Which he's doing, without having to lift his mouth from Danny's skin, until he's gotten at least one or two of them, and can shove at the shirt so he can move onto the rise of his collar bone, lips curving around it like a small frame of one small part, before dropping toward the flat plane of his chest, right next to his breast bone. Still with the edge of determined sharpness, even when his lips and the tip of his nose and the flat of cheeks are brushing into sworls of hair.

[haole_cop]

Christ. That laugh could be the end of him. He's pretty sure it's got a hefty chance of being the last thing he ever hears, between Steve's love of tossing himself headfirst into trouble and the way his heart falls all over itself in a frantic attempt to match the pace Steve's setting. It can't be good for him.

None of this can be. Wasn't that Steve's point? The one he so completely refuted, refused to listen to or understand or allow any hold on his decision? That Steve is a bomb waiting to go off, and take Danny with it, and, you know, that might be true, but right now that just feels like the kind of bomb he's been carrying for the last few weeks; the one that starts ticking down its clock at the first second of seeing Steve, and explodes, taking out the floor, ceiling, walls, only to reform again in seconds.

The one Steve's working at putting on the fritz, crossing wires into sparks as he slips buttons free from their holes, fingers moving quick and efficient over Danny's thundering heart. It's pounding in his chest like it's trying to bust straight through, like something out of Alien, into Steve's hand. Galloping straight into madness, light-headedness, ticking seconds faster than should be possible, because this timer's gone crazy, too, circuits frying and signals shorting out.

The whole countdown leaps ahead another minute when Steve's mouth brackets his collarbone, and he can't stop his hands from skating everywhere, trying to be all over Steve at once, too much area to cover, not enough palm or fingers. Letting go of his hair to run down over neck and shoulder, lifting to hip, fingers tugging at a beltloop before letting go and dragging over his back. The other hand pushing into a back pocket, lifting out, passing over hip and thigh to the spot where Steve's weight presses into his calves. Counting down seconds that can't be trusted to stay a full second's length, until this hits the point of no return.

[thebesteverseen]

He wants to almost turn his head and lay his cheek against Danny's chest.

Against the ragged, rushing shudder of movement that is his heart beat. The one Steve can feel with his lips and his nose and parts of his cheeks when he touches Danny's skin. Almost like he could bow his head against that noise, preso his forehead, press in against the thing keep Danny alive, somehow keeping him here. Like pushing against it would make any of this make more sense. That rushing, pounding movement, that shoves a fire into Steve's skin and an ache, like everything's been scooped out, into his own chest.

He doesn't. Doesn't even pause. Doesn't even consider. Definitely doesn't lay his head against Danny's chest. His shirt pressed hair on his skin, beginning to sheen slowly. Does not, would not, give in to anything as sensitive as all that. Because it is so easy. To just let it and out, like the rush of anything truly disastrous he contemplates to doing to a case, to a building, a person. As fast as the most violent, visceral urges, this feeling like getting slammed in the chest with an ice pick, waltzes in and out.

Being over run, by ironically and hilariously, Danny. Danny, and Danny's hands. The one slipping from his hair, down his neck, and across his shoulder. Demanding his attention as the zip of his muscles tightening and loosening, shoving a stretching of themselves into those moving fingers, the cup of his palm, pushing him upward into that that touch as much as possible. And the other one, that he lost. Briefly.

Shoving him into the surprise grunt, caught in the back of his throat and closed mouth, when his pants are tugged up, by a belt loop, tightening the cloth on his legs, across his lap, digging into his stomach, all with a shower of sparks behind his eyes. That near obliterates everything for at least half a second. Maybe a second. No, more. When there's a second sound dragging up his throat that tries to sound winded and put upon for being manhandled, that might not have worked so well when everything is throbbing for the seconds after.

When the last thing he wants is for Danny's hand to stop anything. Especually if he's lifting his head to find Danny's face and his mouth, again. Needs to kiss him, the same way magnets have to meet, can old hold so far apart.

[haole_cop]

There's a second where Steve almost pauses. Not an actual hesitation, but a continuation of motion that's suddenly so focused and determined that Danny can't not notice the fact that it actually seems tough for Steve to be doing it, for a second. Tracing his mouth across skin warm and just beginning to moisten with sweat, despite cool air striking against it directly, the thin barrier of shirt pushed aside. Like it's an effort. Just for a second.

Which is strange, but then Steve shifts smoothly past it, mouth steady, tongue darting in slow streaks of lightning, until Danny tugs on his beltloop, and his whole body clutches, the way tugging a fraying string makes fabric pucker. Tugging a grin across Danny's lips at the same time, meandering and caught a little flat-footed, eyes heavy-lidded and twinkling.

He does that. He does. Only him. That's what Steve said. And Steve doesn't say those things, never says what he can't do, doesn't mean. He meant it. No matter what bricks were built up around him over the weekend, that Danny's been pulling from the mortar one by one until this happened and they all tumbled into this heap around them that Steve is now blithely setting on fire.

At least Steve seems pretty decisive, now. At least he's not arguing, seems to have decided that if Danny didn't leave fifteen minutes ago, it means he belongs to Steve, now, because the way he's laying into Danny's skin, there are going to be marks that last for days. None of which can be blamed on the kidnappers, or Kono, or anyone but his fictional girlfriend who Kono is so dying to meet.

Except now Steve is pushing back up, a wave running over hard-packed sand, hand flat and weight hard on Danny's chest, pushing out a puff of breath right before the rest of it gets snatched right out of his chest, left hollow and aching, hands climbing up Steve's back, trying to drag him down, fingers scaling the ladder of his spine, palms pressed hard against the curving back of ribs. Lips opening, body shifting, trying to find room on this godforsaken couch where there isn't any; Steve just doesn't fit on this thing, octopus arms and legs folding in awkwardly, trying to compact a body that's not meant to be anything but stretched out and expansive.

But he doesn't care. He wants it all; wants Steve's weight and body heat and the awkwardness of making out on the couch fully clothed while Uma Thurman skids through a vendetta of epic proportions. He wants Steve's fingers in his hair and wants to drag another groan out of Steve's mouth, chase it with more and more until all Steve's words are broken into shards and there's nothing to hear but the sound of his breath and the restless, tiny noises at the back of his throat. Wants the sprawled limbs and huge hands, the annoyance of having to shift to try to fit them both on a couch that can barely fit one.

He just wants it all. And he can have it. Right? That's what Steve's saying, now that he's not telling Danny to leave.

[thebesteverseen]

It's like a landslide but from under him. His mind is already trying to boil between his ears, when Danny is already hungrily kissing him back. Like there isn't anything else in existence anymore. Not the movie. Not the world outside the window. Drowning through a new round of screams. Pouring lava into Steve's mouth, down his throat, making him greedy, stealing the air from him, leaning in, driving his head more into the cushion, making Steve start to shift only to get slammed.

With hands coming up his sides and his back, pulling and pushing him down like those hands have got bricks weighted in them. Like something that just had it's bond loosed. Snapped. Suddenly. Hands digging into the muscles over his ribs, forcing him down, until his chest is against Danny's, and he's trying to get a hand somewhere, on the cushion next to Danny's head for some leverage that isn't just toppling face forward. Even if it seems to be the one message Danny's hands are sure of.

Steve couldn't care less about the rest, even the shrieking muscles, but there isn't room like this to fall, and falling on Danny's face, full impact? Is probably the least helpful thing that could come out of this exact moment. Even when the desperation and sureness in those fingers, is searing in against the skin, under such a thin layer of fabric, where they are. The want that just screams out from it, too. Which just fills up Steve's chest, like too much water and too much sunlight.

Like alcohol which a match being waved right above it. Shoving at it. Dragging it down and in and more. More, now.

Making him nearly laugh, and ask, arrogantly accusing, against Danny's lips, like Danny is the one being a distracting -- "Problem?"

Pulling back enough, straining against hands on his back, even when it's easy to leave his stomach pressed into Danny's, to barely rock his hips when he lifting to ask it. Looking not even the smallest bit concerned or remorseful about the words about to fall out of Danny's mouth. Not at all like he wants to fix Danny's problems. Blue eyes gone wide and darker, licking at his bottom lip before furrowing his teeth across it quick.

[haole_cop]

Steve goes down like someone smacked him in the head with a rock, collapsing all at once, and Danny lets out another oof of breath as his weight lands all across him, making him suddenly aware of just how solid and inflexible his ribcage really is. The hand that lands on the cushion by Danny's head seems to help only to send Danny's head lolling towards the sudden dip in the surface.

It keeps Steve from faceplanting, at least, and that's good, and Steve's now slayed out across him, and that's better, infinitely better, because now every inch possible is in contact, with Steve's stupid long legs taking up approximately three hundred percent of the available couch surface area, forcing Danny's leg off the cushions, foot landing flat on the floor, bent at the knee, but that's okay, too.

It's all okay, since Steve can only lift an inch or so away, and his stomach and chest are still flat on Danny's when he does, blanketing him completely, thrumming with warmth and the low hum of a laugh that doesn't quite make it past the hollow of his chest, and Danny is just flattened, suddenly. Metaphorically speaking. Like instead of Steve lying on top of him, he's been smacked in the chest by a Mack truck blaring a warning horn that gave him no time to jump out of the way.

It's that stupid glint in Steve's eyes, the way one side of his mouth tugs higher than the other, like his lips just haven't convinced themselves that even the satisfaction of arrogance is enough motivation to showcase his delight. And he looks delighted. Bizarrely affectionate, like a German Shepherd that's convinced itself it's a lap dog. Toying with his bottom lip in a way he has to know makes something catch painfully on a hook in Danny's throat, which is so aggravating, because it chokes the words trying to push past and prove he's fine, he's fine, this isn't slicing him wide open and laying him out, isn't pouring warm honey and wine into his empty chest cavity, isn't hazing out the world and making things like the probability of volcanic eruption seems like piddly, insignificant details.

"Problem?" He realizes as he's doing it that he's wetting his own lip, in a mirror image of Steve, unconsciously. "Are you kidding? I've had the same problem for years. The difference is I have a whole new set of ways for it to be problematic, you maniac."

Like this is Steve's fault. Like he didn't drag Steve down here on top of him, greedy for contact and the solid perfect reality of him.

[thebesteverseen]

This doesn't honestly work as well with Danny as it does with someone small and lithe and limber. The couch. Danny is short, but even for that, the man takes up space and he is solid. A solidness that Steve's entire body is picking up when being drug down is wearing away into touching Danny on nearly every possible spot he can in this position. Drug down like he'd violated some air space rule Danny hadn't announced about distance until he'd broken it.

When Danny lets out a sound like Steve collapsed on him like a pile of bricks, moving his leg away even more, and Steve is far too aware how much he doesn't at any space anyway, but he really doesn't fit with someone else closer to his size. And maybe he'd make the note of it next, a comment, joke something, if it weren't for the fact Danny's hands haven't moved into the sightest. There are still finger tips in the ladder of his ribs on the back, while Danny heart is beating hard against his own chest, and Danny is staring at his mouth.

Licking his lips in way that copies Steve's last second, but that watching Danny makes all the water and air in his throat evaporate. Toward the consideration of kissing him already. Just stopping this tirade and having his mouth back on Danny's. The taste of him, when the beer is almost gone, the way it's a fight and defeat that somehow isn't either. And it's everything they both want. When Danny's have to struggle at the effort of lifting from looking at his mouth, his face, to find his eyes while throwing words at Steve's head.

Words he starts shoving back, like it's easy, like they aren't boulders beng shoves out between sandpaper cliffs.

"Yeah? And what's that?" Steve asked, like he wasn't rolling in it all, like he wasn't asking if the sun was setting and the waves were rolling out, like Danny had ever had a more pressing thing to do with each day of his last few years than try to melt Steve's brain out his ears for daring to me a little more cavalier than the next man. Whom Danny happened to be.

So. Yeah. He's asking. Smile gone nowhere but brighter.

Begging Danny to tell him one more time what his biggest problem was.

To let it slip just how fast he can kiss the whole damn thing straight off Danny's mouth and from his thoughts.

[haole_cop]

You.

Always. It's always Steve. Which is starting to bleed into meaning something he's not sure he's totally comfortable with, because he knows it hasn't always been Steve, not like this. Steve's been a problem ever since Danny caught him breaking into an active HPD crime scene, but he hasn't been this problem since then, right, hasn't been the thing sinking blades up under Danny's skin, sliding them soft into his gut before twisting hard and making him want to collapse under it. He hasn't always been the problem of Danny not being able to breathe, or of Danny not being able to think.

He hasn't. Can't have been. Danny would have noticed.

The thing is, he's just not sure at what point between Steve pulling a gun on him and Steve kissing him into the couch, wall, desk, mattress it shifted.

But it did, because this, this, is a problem. Steve's smile is a problem. Steve's eyes, ocean-blue now and sparkling, full of mirth that's pushed out all the stern bullheadedness of earlier, like water pushing oil out of a glass as it pours in. It's a problem in a way that's got nothing to do with anything Steve was saying before; this problem is intensely personal, is focused on slowly eating Danny from the inside, leaving this aching hollow behind that Steve then fills with bizarre transient seconds. Smiles and touches, the way the corners of his eyes turn soft and droopy in the mornings when he's barely awake. The possessive weight of his arms and legs when they're thrown across Danny in the calm certainty that no one's getting out from under them, no matter how they struggle.

Leaving him with a confused empty space crammed full of unrelated moments, all fluttering together like confused winged insects searching for a porchlight; all converging every now and again in a swift spiral that knocks him flat when Steve grins and it flips a fucking lightswitch in his chest and illuminates the whole bewildered mess with the confident rays of the sun.

It's a problem. Steve is a problem, and the fact that Danny's hands are tracking back up to try and find purchase in his hair to pull him back down for a kiss is a problem, too, but he's too busy fitting swears into the rapidly vanishing space between their lips to care.

"What do you think, you think I stress myself out, maybe for fun? I swear to God, Steven --"

But that's as far as he gets, Steve's name breathed against Steve's lips, before he has to give it up altogether for the far greater option of just shutting up entirely.

[thebesteverseen]

He knows the answer. Of course, he knows it. He always does. Danny does not complain about anything as much as he complains about Steve. How he drives, how he does his job, how his face looks or the clothes he wears. Danny can hardly open his mouth without critique something about Steve as though Steve were a backwards, handicapped, four-year-old whom someone accidentally dropped into a uniform and gave full immunity to gum on.

But all that fire and frustration, all those complaints never stop it. The way Danny never leaves.

Only leaves him waiting, cheshire smile and the growing ache for egging his partner, his...Danny on to bitch, bitch and bitch some more about whatever will fall out his mouth. He could even tell Steve he was extensively retarded for the scene outside and he'd take it right now. Smile, snort, kiss it off him when he was done, or interrupt him through it.

Just wants him to start. The way you're counting the rungs up a roller coaster before the sudden free fall.



Except he doesn't. And the half-seconds begin to tick by.


One too long. Two too long. Long enough Steve is holding, watching Danny.


Watching Danny not throw it exactly right back, as fast as he can. Never looking away. Watching the way Danny's eyes dart. To his own eyes. To his mouth. Around his face. While Danny's face is taking on this nebulous thing Steve still can't figure out. Doesn't know what he's thinking. Why.

Is just about to open his mouth and say whatever the hell he can find in there, because he can't think of what could be wrong with his words, except that maybe they are too true. Maybe he shouldn't be playing with being Danny's worst trouble. Maybe not after what just happened. But then, Danny suddenly is throw out words. Flippant and short and spiky and Steve feels like his heart stopped working twice in the space of so few seconds there.

Making the world sharp, painful, and delirious. Even through the spike of adrenaline and relief.

Because whatever it was, Danny is right back to throwing words at his head and digging his fingers in his hair.

Because no one calls him Steven like that. His family uses it, used it more aptly where it comes to at least half of them. Did. It's like he has to remind himself the other two are alive. His mother, who shouldn't be. And his sister, who is ghost. Neither of whom are here, neither of whom say his name like this. Like it's fire slamming down at his veins on the wheels of mac truck.

Cracking the air before he's being kissed instead of insulted, when Steve doesn't even hesitate, doesn't even want to know what the rest of the words are yet, not when Danny's breathing the end of his name into his mouth, on to his tongue, and Steve's only reaction is to kiss him into the couch. Kiss Danny, sliding his hand his balance, fingers on the side of his head and the cushion, through the hard ache confusion in the center of his chest and the endless gratitude that these hands, his mouth, those words -- Danny is still here.

[haole_cop]

He doesn't really get it, that look that Steve's getting, crawling between his eyebrows and camping there in a short, deep line. It makes him look like he's about to object to something, like an unruly jury member whose forgotten he's supposed to just observe.

But, really, what's he expecting? No matter where they are or what's happening around them, the list of "things that piss Danny off" is always, always topped by Steve. Always. Sometimes facetiously, sometimes in deadly seriousness, but Steve never ranks less than first, except for a few seconds now and again when Raceh's lawyers or the scumbag of the day beats him out .

Still, Steve always rises back to the top, out of sheer volume of annoyance, and because he's always around, unlike lawyers and skeezeball criminals, so there's no reason for him to look like he's worried he's getting kicked off the Dean's List, and it makes Danny grin, huffing a laugh that sounds more affectionate than exasperated, despite his best intentions, because Steve's eyebrows were starting to push together in that bullheaded way he's got, and Danny can't help it, he finds it kind of endearing, which is, he's aware, sick and wrong.

"Don't worry," he says, when he can, but the words still smudge against Steve's mouth, still get breathed with Steve's breath, lands on Steve's lips like he's the one who said them, "you're still the number one pain in my ass."

Except it comes out low and warm and pressed into Steve's mouth, while he's trying to curl up and Steve's trying to push him down. He wants to wrap all the way around him, flip them over and blanket Steve like Steve's blanketing him, pin him down and make him see...

Something. Whatever this is, this thing Steve's questioning and Danny wants to make sure is unquestionable. He's an idiot, he knows he's an idiot, he knows this is wrong and he knows they should stop and he knows, to his core, that wriggling uncomfortable confused part of himself, that he's not going to do any such thing. There's no stopping now, not until it's over, not until they've slammed into fifth gear and gone shooting off the cliffside.

But laughing at Steve -- even yelling at Steve -- isn't as good as kissing Steve, dragging him down and trying to push up at the same time, fighting to own this kiss like he fights to own everything Steve shoves at or away from him, because Steve needs someone who'll push him back instead of letting him shove right through, and, God help him, Danny appears to intend being that person.

At least for now. As long as he can.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve can'r help it. The soft groan that nearly drags out of his chest like it's being drug with forceps and a jet engine, hands and thoughts unable to do anything to stop it. When Danny is laughing into his face, into this kiss. Taking that sounds and throwing it everywhere in his chest, like a hard wind off the sea, like waves crashing against a hull, up and over deck, spattering solid and sharp across everything.

Drowning out all the thoughts he had a second ago. Until the heavy racing, pounding, in his chest can't even be his heart. It's just this wild thing chanting Danny's name over and over again, like it's trying to escape his ribcage. Trying to bang through muscles and bone like it's tissue and twine. When that sound, that groan, is getting tangled in that space, on Danny's words.

Relief twisting up with something viciously possessive. Doesn't want to share. Doesn't want to give up even this angry, annoyed focus of Danny on him to anyone or anything else. Doesn't want to see it, himself, replaced. Wants to taste the marrow of that focus, fixation, antagonization, which shoves words into Steve mouth that twist and contort in every way they shouldn't. Give him ideas about marking, claiming, that leave the small bruises in the dust.

Which isn't helped by Danny suddenly laying into him, fighting for control. Dragging him down. Fingers in his hair, on his skin. Pushing up into his body. Like there's any space. But somehow Danny finds it. Solid and warm against him, fitting himself in like a key. Until Steve has to react, tightening his knees and thighs against Danny's legs, hands traveling. One loose and heavy against the side of his head, and the other back toward the buttons he'd left.

The shirt in his way. The way everything is throbbing in his head, his skin, against the onslaught of Danny. Against giving at least as much as he gives, if not a hundred percent more. Shoving out even a scream follow by smarting dialogue, because he's gruffly saying, "I'll give you a pain in your ass," before he's tugging Danny's bottom lip into his mouth with teeth, sucking on it, like it's necessary for staying alive. Or maybe for leaving it at that.

A ground out sound, followed by threat or an accusation. Because he doesn't mean it. Except that he does.

And fuck it all if he hasn't said anything like that in weeks. It's at least as true, as everything he can't take back now.
That he wants Danny, in every single goddamn way possible and not possible, as much as he knows he shouldn't, too.

[haole_cop]

It's a wild thought, that he loves this.

Flashing through his head like a shoal of silver fish, darting away in startled fear at even the idea, but it's true. The sound Steve makes, dark and needy and exasperated all at once, the way he pushes down, hard, like he's jealous, could possibly be jealous, of anything else that might manage to piss Danny off as much as Steve manages on a minute to minute basis. Hand dragging hard over Danny's chest, to find buttons and tug at them, sulky and rapid, proving a point, fingers snaking through his hair, and those words, dropping like raw eggs and splatting gunshot patterns all over the inside of Danny's chest.

And the way Danny can't quite seem to catch his breath, because he's still laughing.

Mostly silent, now. A shake of his chest against Steve's palm, unruly smile grinning against Steve's mouth, those words sizzling straight through his cerebral cortex, into the instinctive core of his brain, burning out any filters that may once have existed along the way. "I don't think that's the normal goal, is it?"

Falling out of his mouth, into Steve's, amused and a little challenging and a little questioning at the same time, because it's a joke, and it's not a joke, and it's been a month now, and Steve's clearly done all this before but Danny's still got basically no clue how it works beyond what they already do. Which doesn't mean he's not willing to learn, which doesn't mean he doesn't want to, and doesn't mean he doesn't feel a little thrill of uncomfortable fear beating blunt wings in the pit of his stomach, too.

Not that he expects Steve to put it on the table right now. Not that he has any idea what he's talking about, aside from a vague notion.

But under those fluttering leaden wings, the sick crawly feeling in his gut, there's something else. Heat. Want. He wants Steve, in every way possible, said so the first day, and he meant it, even though he froze up in the kitchen, didn't know what to do with the information shoved so unceremoniously into his hands. Wants, God. So much. To wake up tomorrow morning and not have to go to work. To wipe that uncertain look right off Steve's face.

And, yeah. When they end up in bed, he wants to fuck Steve. He's aware of wanting Steve to fuck him, even if he's not totally clear on how the mechanics work.

Does it matter? He figured it out once. He can do it again. And this time, he has the benefit of not being a clueless teenager. It's not like the basic premise is all that different, right?

[thebesteverseen]

If anything the fact that Danny throws anything back immediately after that first tiny pause is surprising enough. That it's about this -- the way Steve cannot extricate the memory of Danny floored toward terrified even weeks later -- and he still keeps rolling. Half a laugh, a joke and just that faintest edge of something that says he really isn't certain whether he's right or wrong. That's almost more than Steve really knows what to do with for a second in there.

Beading a line faintly into his shoulders even when he can feel Danny's chest shivering under his, ribs caught in the solid shake of the laughter that is more caught inside the barrel of his chest than inside Steve mouth at all. The way every single sign says something other than the face defining itself, clearer and clearer, in his head. And he has never once forgotten what that looked like. The way Danny looked ready to bolt and run screaming finally. Even for a second.

So, maybe his hand does pause, in undoing the last button. Just enough that it's noticeable.

In a way that he'd never pause for gunfire, or even large explosions, happening outside his location in a warzone.

Before he has it back, before he's tugging a shirt side oneway to get his hand on the rest of Danny's skin. The soft firmness of his stomach. The solid rise of his hip bone and his ribs. The coarse delicate hair over it all. The way he can't pretend it's not Danny's skin and Danny's saying anything that have both left him a little breathless, a little driven in the kiss that followed them.

When the complex combination of too many words, too many responses, too many uncertainties has him give a shrug, breaking through the line of his shoulders, for a tone of voice more flippant than how deadly, pin-drop, serious, ice one step from cracking, everything feels in his chest suddenly. "That really depends on what you're looking for." Which might be more honest than needs putting out there, too.

Especially not light on Danny's lips, before he's on to looking down at his hand on Danny's side, thumb stroking Danny's skin, caught in the faintest space between their bodies, tightening the ache in his own body, before he's looking at Danny's face. Because it's about as true as anything, too. There were people who went look for that, too. Rough, fast, hard as possible. He's been one of them before, in certain circumstances, and even that sits like heavy weight trapping his tongue.

Not that he has any delusions that Danny might be looking for that. Or anything. Maybe even ever.

[haole_cop]

He's really not used to Steve taking a second to stop and think, so this hesitation, tiny as it is, is unnerving.

Steve doesn't hesitate. Steve doesn't pause. Steve rolls over all barriers and obstacles like a tank, barely acknowledging them at all. Steve burns out the floor with words that hit Danny's stomach like acid. Steve grabs them both and shoves them off a safe bridge into a churning mass of rocks and river.

Danny's not used to the idea that Steve might ever not be absolutely, one hundred percent sure, and his eyes are open when Steve offers light words that ring dense as lead. They're still open when Steve works that final button free, and there's a frown beginning a slow pull between them when Steve avoids looking at his face for a second, watches his thumb smoothing carefully over Danny's skin, instead.

Making Danny not sure which is more concerning: the fact that Steve isn't looking at him right away, or the thumb that's the only part of Steve's hand moving across his skin, like Steve thinks he might bolt, or like Steve thinks he needs soothing. Or, maybe, that Steve needs to be soothed, dropping terrible attempts at casual against Danny's mouth and then turning away for a second that stretches too long, tugs Danny's brow into a deeper line by the time Steve looks back up again.

It shouldn't be a forbidden topic. Right? Especially now, after what he just said outside, after what Steve agreed to. After what Cath assumed, even if it was more a joke than an actual label. These nebulous fantasies and guilty, fevered imaginings aren't going to cut it forever, and he just wants to know, okay, there's no harm in knowing, and that little flutter of trepidation can just swan right off out the door, thanks. "Yeah, I think it's fair to say I couldn't even begin to make an educated guess about that. I'm pretty new to this whole thing."

How can he know what he wants when he really has no idea what's even on the table, what it's like, how freaky it might feel or how natural it might surprise him as being? He doesn't know. It's re-learning the wheel, and that takes a certain degree of, what. Experimentation, right?

He's already established he trusts Steve with his life. Is any of this really harder than that?

His hands slide from Steve's hair to his shoulders, one traveling up and down his bicep. Slow down. Breathe. Relax. "But you're not."

It's not a question, because it's obvious. Even though they haven't talked about it, and he hasn't asked. It's private, right up until it starts being something that can help or hurt them, and Danny's pretty sure it just reached that point, out of nowhere, with the sounds of the movie playing unheard and ignored in the background.

[thebesteverseen]

All of the sudden things slow. Not stop. Not freeze. But Danny's grip loosens on his hair, fingers, hands sliding down his neck. Across his shoulder and his upper arm, pressure whispering through the cloth of his shirt, smoothing over muscles before they even have the chance to tense. The chance to anything but listen to that touch.

The way he can't not hear the words that get said. Seeing it has a dividing line and one he already tried to hit with a wrecking ball. That he lets get the best of his mind now and then, in situations where he can't help it, but only that. Not the better of Danny.

Who is staring up at him, quiet and slanting more toward serious than his face has been in a little while. Admitting to both of those things. Asking Steve to.

"No-" he says, feeling the ease dripping slowly out across himself, like drops of water falling off his skin once he emerges from the water nearly every morning. Something he's so used to, he could recognize it in his sleep as much as he could sleep through it on his feet, at attention. Not nervous or ashamed, but maybe a little warily unprepared for it being this second.

For it being said so easily, when it hasn't really been poked at or talked about in weeks.

It's more middle of the road, acknowledging, but almost only that. "-I'm not."

When he has no idea where Danny might take that or want it to go.



Or what he might want to know, and how much there is in those places Steve isn't even sure whether he'd want Danny to know.

[haole_cop]

He's suddenly intensely aware of all the ways they're pressing against each other, now. Steve's weight blankets him, long legs bracketing the one Danny's still got on the couch, hips pressing bones into the top of his thighs. Stomach, softer than the rest of him, but still firm with heavy muscle. Pillowed warm and complete.

Warring ribcages, that really shouldn't fit, because Danny's have a sharp rise and fall to his stomach, and Steve's not exactly small-boned; he's big and rangy with a large frame that might not be as square as Danny's but is definitely no less solid. There's nothing about any of it that should feel comforting, except maybe that thumb, smoothing back and forth over Danny's stomach, making him aware of his skin as a part of himself, as him, rather than this coating that sometimes burns in the sun and is starting to treacherously wrinkle at the corners of his eyes and mouth. Like maybe somehow that careful thumb is stroking something more than just sensitive skin, is traveling right along nerves sparking and impatient with worry, is slowing thoughts too rapid with uncertainty.

But it is. Comforting. Like Steve's pinning him to Earth, like Steve's weight on top of him is enough to keep anxiety at bay, because he can't fly off the handle when he's sinking into the couch cushions, Steve a warm iron weight anchoring him there.

"Well, I don't know about you, but that sounds like a plus, to me."

He's careful to keep it light, even if this is turning suddenly serious, because he needs Steve to stay right where he is, so that Danny can continue to think about this without tripping into the pit of panic he'd kept stumbling into earlier, tarry fingers wrapping around his ankles, dragging him down. But Steve is looking shifty, at best, and that's got to stop, right now. Is it awkward? Of course it is. But Steve can probably feel his heart beating, can feel the lack of space now available between their hips, can see the way Danny's face is flushed and his hair is in disarray. And it's not like Danny's ever let embarrassment stop him before. "As much as it horrifies me to put any part of my personal comfort in your hands, at least one of us knows what we're doing."

Well. For the physical part, at least. He's really not sure that would apply to any of the rest of it at all.

[thebesteverseen]

It's not awkward. Awkward is a strange room where buildings you've never been in hold receptionists who wait while you stand an attention for two minutes before asking you to sit the next ten minutes. This, this is like going to find the bathroom and ending up in a closet on the wrong side of the wrong floor, and not even quite remember the steps for how you got here to begin with.

When you can't stop your muscles from being still and stretched and tight without ever quite tensing, or the reflex of cataloging to much of what is happening right in front of your face. The change rate of breathing, the stacco of heartbeat, the pupillary response. Like each is its own sign, and it's own defense to hide behind when he's staring at Danny. The curve of his mouth that is doggedly hanging on, even as it becomes less pronounce slowly.

When the safe thing to do is to roll his eyes at the insult throw in there, and give Danny a withering look. "Your personal comfort hasn't suffered on the job." Is exasperated, and maybe because he knows just how much Danny doesn't agree. But then Danny came in laced up like green, boot licking, granny in Steve's opinion. Even with that surprise sucker punch.

Steve sees no fault in taking a lot of claim toward Danny being a little more whatever it takes to get the job done, even within his own rules, and a little more loose in the collar, even if those slacks can stay right where they are at this point. Or well. They could move, right now. Like away, to the floor, over the back of the couch. But he isn't looking to see them transitioned out of Danny's wardrobe next.

"But yes, you," Is pointed, like it's an exhausting task, against the thick set of eyebrows and eyes drk with something like malicious teasing. And maybe, maybe just a little too much stillness. Still. "-could have picked far worse where it came to that."

Even if the whole thought, thinking it, is like fingers made of ice have suddenly, without warning, dug into the skin at the base of his neck everywhere. Someone else. Here. Not Gabby, or Rachel. Another guy. Someone else Danny chose. To do whatever with. With his hands heavy and everywhere on Danny's skin, or his mouth catching the sounds teased out of Danny's chest and his throat. Looking at his face, this face.

This careful, uncertain, still trying to keep it light face, that breaks at the edges of his mouth and his eyes, because he can't lie for shit when it matters. That goes along with the fingers that don't ever stay perfectly still. That twitch with something Steve might always call nerves. Because they don't flatten and still with it, it's like they keep making sure Steve is right there, on top of him, pressed in, able to press into his skin, to keep him there, like some balloon that might float away else-wise.

[haole_cop]

Picked. He could have picked far worse than Steve.

Like he up and decided, recently, that he wanted to try sex with a guy, and coming clean to Steve in a rockslide of ineloquent feelings was somehow a secondary action. Like there was a decision made, first, and he'd considered his options, and picked Steve.



Picked. Steve.

The whole concept makes his thought processes come to an abrupt, bewildered halt, because, Christ, he really couldn't be more wrong if he suggested this was all Rachel's idea. What was it he'd said before? Maybe I never stood a chance. Saying he'd picked Steve is like saying he'd picked the bus that hit him, picked the bullet that brought him down. There's no picking going on here, no choice, no chance. Or, well. There's a choice. There's trying to be here, with Steve, and there's climbing the walls, miserable and furious with the world.

"Then you should stop looking at me like I said I'd like to try a hand at being a trapeze artist instead of a cop. What, you think maybe somehow in all this --"

He lifts one hand off Steve's shoulder and shirt to wave it in a general sort of loop, indicating this, them, the couch, the desk they almost broke, the conversation outside that still makes Danny wonder if he should have just tried punching Steve in the face again. "-- it would maybe just never occur to me that it might be nice to do more than blow you?"

Blunted words, brash with his own bemusement at the very thought that Steve might consider there to have been some sort of picking and choosing. As if falling for him wasn't like falling down a well. He's not on the market, wasn't out shopping, didn't decide to just try Steve on for size and see how he liked the feel of a body heavier than his, flat where he'd been used to curves, hard and hot where he'd been used to soft and yielding.

That's not what this is. If it were, he could have walked away. If it were, he never would have risked his partnership, his friendship, and his job all in one fell swoop by pinning his sights on Steve.

It's not like that. Couldn't be. He's tumbled down at the bottom of that well, now, and someone's pulled the ladder straight back out again.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve tries not to smile, but he knows he's probably failing it. Doesn't give a damn really.

He can feel the muscles at the edge of his mouth twinging the way they always do whenever anything even slightly irreverent comes out of Danny's pressed, pink, slightly swollen mouth. Anything that might be construed as lewd, or involve swearing. God. He should not find it hot and fucking endearing all at once, like a gout of flames from nowhere.

Maybe it's easier than hedging the bet on the one shard of chill that sits somewhere at the heart of the rest of wanting to groan, making him press his lips together look too pleased, maybe even a little stunned and left-footed, when it feels like not his throat, but his entire chest goes dry for second. At even the concept. That somewhere in here Danny has been thinking about it, envisioning it. Them. Fucking.

But the want that floods him -- the want to peel back the skin on Danny's head, and pry every word from his lips, of what he's thought of, what he wants, what makes his blood boil and his fingers shake, drives the most desperate longing into those blue eyes, who, where, what, anything he wants, everything -- is almost as staggering as hearing Danny's words the second before it strikes.

When maybe it's easier than what crawls up his throat. The words about to roll off his tongue like a smug banner following that arrogantly victorious smirk, that barely looks insulted or castigated for the point. That aren't the single word, settled like an ice cube in the far back of his throat, hanging by a noose down his throat, so that it can't swing there, roughly battering the side side of his heart and kicking the top of his stomach with too much honesty. That part of him that wants to just say 'Maybe.'

But never wants to either. Because it would be too much. Too small. Too true. Too real.

"You've done more than that." None of it is exactly marginal, but then, Steve's not really counting.

Steve's still trying to wrap his head around mornings, and burying his head into empty pillows when someone isn't there, and it has nothing to do with sex already, and when forcing this is not something he's ever really given a thought to. A frustrated want, yes. Once or twice. But he's had worse, and this. All of this, is more than he was ever supposed to have already. Is so much, sometimes he can't sleep for the exhausted fear it will all be a dream when his eyes open.

"Besides, I thought you just spent your last eternity of million years yelling at me about the fact I wasn't allowed to think anything about any of this anymore, because I was unequipped for that?" It's poppish and it's not exactly a sidestep. He knows it'll be right back there in a second, but only half an hour, if even that, Danny was yelling at him about not being allowed to think for them anymore, too.

It's ironic if nothing else. It's something to focus on that isn't the way his heart is pounding and his hand has stopped rubbing and is gently gripping into Danny's side and the way his mind is slipping in a direction he's done his damnedest to keep it from slipping toward with Danny here. And Danny wants him to. To go there. To think about it. With him. With him here. Pressed closed, messed up, and already flush with want.

[haole_cop]

It's better when Steve's mouth starts tucking into that arrogant smile, like he can see straight into Danny's head and translate every confused thought into a compliment towards himself. Like he knows what Danny's been thinking, wanting.

Making Danny's hand find Steve's body again, aware that the temperature of the air has changed. No longer fraught and electric with tension, now warming slowly, back towards the slow boil of earlier, which means Danny's fingers slide down Steve's shoulder to his side, track five familiar paths to his hip, where they toy with the hem of his shirt, brush carelessly against warm bare skin underneath it. As Danny's unable to keep from making a face, because it's the only thing keeping him from grinning, hard and sudden and a little shaky. "So don't think too hard."

Always a dangerous thing to tell Steve, suggest to Steve. Steve's not really one for thinking to begin with, not much for analytics and digging out background and finely honing an approach mirroring it. Steve's the guy with the grenades, the flashbangs, the guns the size of his torso. He's probably not someone Danny should hand the reins to and say just go.

But he is. Saying it.

And while he's saying it, he's leaning up, to brush his mouth across the thin skin of Steve's neck, lips parting just barely, tip of his tongue sneaking out to taste salt and skin and Hawaiian warmth. Something almost close to familiar, because he's had his mouth all over Steve's body, tasted his skin clean and sweat-slicked and tired after a long day and covered in tiny crystals of salt. He's done that.

He wouldn't call it more. Knows that what they've done so far isn't anything like what he's thinking about now, like what Steve is thinking about now.

That he does, actually, want Steve to think about. Yeah. He wants that image burned into Steve's brain. Wants to watch it sit there and sink in like fangs, unshakeable in the middle of a workday. Wants it to be teasing, constantly, gnawing at him. Wants to see it flash in his eyes, and know it's unstoppable.

He wants it on Steve's mind. The way it's been on his.

[thebesteverseen]

It's like trying to hold the walls and floor together when a building starts shaking so hard you can watch the screws beginning to come loose, the cracks beginning to get serious. Danny's words followed spot on by the fingers that are brushing his skin, like it's an accident, that could never be an accident. Not when his hand skated there. Not when it was toying with his shirt.

Not when Danny's mouth is suddenly on his neck, and his fingers have somehow found Danny's hair. When he can't tell if he's leaning into Danny's mouth or pushing Danny's head up into his neck. While his heart richoet's like he's been shot. And god he might as well have been. Because fuck. Just fuck. Fucking hell. He can't even. The world goes fuzzy white at the edges of the stain.

Of the fire licking at his skin, and the way his finger are buried as desperate into Danny's hair and the muscles of his side as the sudden series of shaky, barely controlled, thrusts against Danny's still almost fully clothed body is. Because it's not like he needs help. Dammit. He doesn't, okay. He doesn't need any help with that. This. Wanting Danny. Wanting everything of Danny that he could possibly track across his head. Has mapped every inch of that skin with his mouth, with his hands, with his body.

Has watched him in the ocean, with shorts clinging, and in the shower with absolutely nothing, but water sliding down his dark gold skin, sleeping in his bed in the too early dark before he vanishes to ocean. Has thought, treacherous, traitorous thoughts about other hard rung activities to do before dawn, to chase the demons out of his head without leaving Danny behind.

Has though about every possibility for a smooth easier introduction to it than he ever managed, dropping a fucking bomb in Danny's last time. Which is what he did. Shoved a fucking bomb in his hands, and watched him turn white as a ghost, with terror and the realization of how many lines he'd crossed. The way he can't do that. He can't see that any. Can't force that, handle that, make that happen, would do or not do anything to avoid seeing that again.

Which is all splinting on a flare of white, and two completely different washes of want and desperation colliding like flint and steel giving way to even bigger explosion under his skin. When he's shivering with the amount of control it takes to hold back, eyes closing almost completely, barely getting out, "That didn't work so well last time."

Because it's not that he doesn't want Danny. God. Fuck. He wants everything. He's always wanted everything. With every part of himself, no matter what he couldn't have. He still does. But he's doesn't have to listen, doesn't have to have, couldn't doesn't want to make. Even when the temperature raising in his head, the shadow possibilities are each creeping closer, catching on everything spawning even, whispering in Danny's voice now, in his fingers tips, on his tongue.

When has he every been able to actually deny Danny? Not before he left. Especially not since he got back. Not tonight.