(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]

The hand on his back should not actually surprise him in the slightest, but somehow it does. The shove followed by the fist of his pants, doesn't, even when that ends up both sending him forward and half keeping him from doing it is even more amusing in some ways. If amusing is even the word to use. When they're getting back away from the lights he's left on again toward dark hallways, and nearly there.

When Danny's fingers on him, manhandling him, like he always does. Like Steve isn't taller, larger, heavier, better trained. Like he's baiting exactly what happens. The stumble across the last few steps. The way Steve's hand catches on Danny's forearm and uses his own shoved momentum to drag Danny toward him, throwing his own strength into the already useful movement and pulling Danny directly into running into him. His chest.

Tangling his the fingers of his free hand into Danny's hair and dipping his head in to find Danny's mouth. Even when he hasn't given up steps. Walking and jogging backwards, except that by that second, the thought is a little, okay, a lot, in flames on Danny lips. On the taste of his tongue, And the wall is just there. And it's too easy to use it. Too hard not to push Danny into it, push himself back into Danny. Prove that one of them is better built for this game.

To kiss Danny, and let his other hand get to Danny's hip, fingers, knuckles, smacking the wall, but not caring. Not giving a damn about anything else in the world, especially not his fingers or the wall, or even the other twenty feet, through the door and to the be, when he's kissing Danny's lips and letting his fingers dig in against Danny's muscles. Running his hand back between Danny's back and the wall, getting the his palm flat into the small of Danny's back.

Kissing his head back against the wall, without cease, at the same time as he's pulling Danny closer by his stomach and his hips, flush tight against him. Like nothing is close enough, nothing will be, even getting this close, having an idea turning the liquid in his veins from blood to lighter fluid waiting for a spark, is too long for this second.

[haole_cop]

In retrospect, he probably should have expected that.

Right? They barely made it up off the couch; he should absolutely not have thought for even one second that it would be a matter of some simplicity getting upstairs, but he did, because he must have forgotten that he's dealing with Steve "No Time Like The Present" McGarrett, here, and Steve does not believe in delays.

Steve believes in momentum and the force of forward motion; he's like a tornado ripping through Danny's world, upending everything he has and knows and thought he wanted, tossing them all into a place Danny had never considered or imagined before. Where all he wants is Steve, and it goes so far beyond just falling into bed: where he wants to wake up with Steve and bitch about coffee with Steve and remind Steve that regular humans sleep in on weekends, instead of go for ten mile swims. He wants to let Grace come play in the cove here, hang out and watch one of Steve's eight thousand channels, because Grace loves Steve and Steve loves Grace and that makes all this both far simpler and so much more complicated than it should be.

That's what he means, when he says he wants Steve in every possible way: not just wants, like this, blood rushing and pulse pounding and the strong possibility of poor decisions being made, but wants, like wanting to be able to sleep and wanting an easy day at work and wanting to get the bad guy early enough in the game that no one has to die.

Which is complicated as hell, but Steve simplifies it, now, by pulling Danny up a few more stairs and then apparently deciding that this is good enough for now, because his mouth is on Danny's and his hand is in Danny's hair, the other one kneading muscles tensing along Danny's back as he tries to keep his balance. His fingers grip the waistband of Steve's pants, yank him closer by instinct, even while he's protesting in noises that get muffled against Steve's lips, disappear on Steve's tongue, and, fuck, Steve is burning him down, right here, on the stairs.

Shoving his heart into overdrive. Cramming a buzzing beehive into his chest, right after shaking it, setting an angry hum starting in his head, in his lungs and ears.

Making him gasp out "Too far?" in the half-second he can get a breath, before Steve's mouth is there again, melting his brain straight out his ears, sharp angles of shoulderblades working against the hand Danny runs up to find them, palm hard and flat against skin that's damp and so flushed it looks like Steve just came in from a sauna.

[thebesteverseen]

There are hands on his pants, jerking him forward, closer, closer, never close enough, even when he's blanketing Danny hard into, against a wall, and he's taking stumbling steps he can't see, doesn't give a damn about so long as his boots don't come down hard on Danny's socked feet accidentally. Because nothing matters but the way Danny growling and grumbling at his lips like he's going to push away.

Like Steve is an idiot. Like he can't think. Can't wait. Can't make any sense of anything. Except he can. Because that sound vibrates against his lips, gets lost in his throat, but the only thing Danny does is kiss him back and drag him in. Fighting back. Pulling him down. Demanding they lose even more space. Mouth and fingers doing the exact opposite of pushing him away. There's not even a second's worth of a fight to it. Even when he's shoving words in Steve's teeth, shoving them into his head, and his blood stream.

Making him remember language even exists. Even when there's a laugh shaking his chest, between Danny's chest and his hands up on Steve's shoulder, something like fire-bitten helium bubbling inside his chest, swapping itself with his air, when he's saying, "Never," and, pausing only long enough to sound deliberately, smugly, so damn self-amused and sure, before, "Always," because they'll get there, because it's still working right now, his plan, and because it'll never not to be true.

Even if Danny'd left, that thing, those words, would haunt him and they'd never not be true.

Five feet would be too far away from Danny. The distance between every single set of chairs. The space of breath.

Before Steve pulls himself back. A purposeful step, matching the winded shit eating grin, while he's dragging Danny bodily forward with him, past stairs and feet in the hallways, headed backwards for the door to his bedroom. "Come 'on already. What is it with you and the walls of my house?"

Aside from the fact he looks so damn good against them, and feels even better crowded up against them, still fighting back, and how Steve's mind is glad to come up with at least a half dozen, maybe a dozen more ways, he'd looks amazing plastered against one. The way Steve skin feels like it's never not on fire anymore, finger running against the raise of blood and the sheen of sweat, against every single brush of Danny against him, the high pitched ringing in his head as they get closer and closer.

[haole_cop]

"What is it with me and your walls?"

He's breathing hard when Steve pulls away, after blanketing across him, shoving him into the wall like he wants to hang Danny there on a hook, in a frame. It's probably a good thing Steve's got his fingers curled into Danny's pants, because he stumbles a little, trips on the last stair, and it would really be an ignominious way to go, falling down Steve's stairs and breaking his neck, half-dressed and desperate to get Steve's body up against his again. "Either they have some incredibly strong magnetic force, or someone keeps shoving me into them, huh, what do you think, Steven?"

Biting out Steve's full name in a pissy complaint, like Steve just dropped grape juice all over a white sofa, or filled the cab of the Camaro with smoke.

But they've made it. Mostly. They're on the landing, without anyone losing balance or the rest of their clothes, and Danny's got his hands on Steve's pants, tugging at the material as they stumble towards the bedroom, half wondering how it is that a month in they're still doing this, still unable to keep their hands off each other once they've started, still feels like tossing himself into a bonfire every time Steve touches him, kisses him, and half thinking about the fact that Steve still has his boots on, the moron, how the hell is Danny supposed to get him naked when he's still wearing hiking boots?

The door is here, somewhere; he misjudges a step and knocks a shoulder against the wall and the jamb with a hiss of annoyed pain, before one hand gives up on Steve's pants and reaches for Steve's hair, drags him back down, to find that mouth, slippery now and slightly swollen from pressure, lips that keep smiling and turning Danny's stomach, chest, innards upside down, before stirring them into useless, gooey warmth.

It can't possibly be a good way to feel around Steve McGarrett. At the very least, it's not exactly topping the list of 'things that will aid self-preservation,' but Danny's basically given up on that, at this point.

[thebesteverseen]

Blah, blah, blah, blah. That is what the rise of Steve's eyebrows are probably saying about Danny and his five million words and complaints falling out, not far from his chest and his mouth, and the way he's still following, even almost falling, but not falling. Except that it's not, too. It's not because there's something disastrously pleased in the hook of his mouth on Danny's shrill use of his full name.

Because Danny looks like sun. When he breaks the surface at dawn, even getting drug further into the shadows, into the dark places of his house, his room. And he wants to kiss this smile until those words dissolve. Until they fracture and shatter, until they're half formed and desperate, until those fingers on his skin are digging in, desperately laying nail bites and fingerprints on him, not like he's a hand hold, but like Steve's the last anchor actually securing Danny to the entire planet.

The answer is already making it up his throat, flash bright and dark as sin, only to get thwarted by Danny suddenly smacking his shoulder and that changing entirely what he's about to say. But then so does Danny. Danny who does not slow down for even the consideration of his shoulder, who's grabbing on to what he can fo Steve's hair and dragging him back in, back down. No words. Just that hiss and then Danny demanding a kiss now.

Fingers sliding in sweat, and digging into the muscles in Danny's shoulders, arm circling him and pulling him close, through a short, but unexpected moan. When he never has time to question how even long enough, before Danny is every single thing in the space of his chest, shoving his heart into his ears, his wrists and pounding pulse points, but everywhere but his chest suddenly. When nothing feels close enough, and everything is so sharp, so hot.

Kissing Danny back like the walls could fall off the whole house and he'd never noticed. Never. Not once. Not compared to this, to Danny. Who tears apart his want to focus on anything. Even Danny. Until he's biting at the bottom of Danny's lip, sucking for air off his mouth, hands sliding down his bac and pushing at Danny's pants and his boxers.

Fingers sliding halfway past both, dragging the loose, hanging fabric with them. "These are done now."

And if he's backing Danny up against his bed at the same time, that's right where he wants it, and him, to be, too.

[haole_cop]

"You're done now, you lunatic."

Muttered petulantly, faintly annoyed at Steve for pulling back, even as Danny's legs hit the mattress and the bedframe, for losing Steve's hot slick mouth and that perfect sound, dragged out and reluctant and never previously scripted, never faked, scratching phosphorus into flaring, brilliant life in the cage of Danny's ribs and lungs and faulty, irresponsible heart.

This stupid thing that hears Steve's voice, in the darkened, intimate shadows of the bedroom, and goes flopping heavily sideways, making the kind of flutter Danny's doctor would probably be extremely concerned by, that must be some kind of hypertension, right, possibly pre-cardiac issues that are undoubtedly signs of worse things to come, because they can't all be Steve-related, though. Under further consideration, Danny is almost completely sure Steve will probably be to blame for any heart attacks he has, that aren't entirely Grace-related.

But not now. Now, it's just making a painful, knifing, sideways beat that makes him catch his breath like he's been stabbed, and it's not such a completely different feeling, really; his breath leaves his lungs in a vacuum and it makes everything spin in an unsettling kind of way, while his hands leave Steve's hair and skin and help shove at his own pants, boxers, needing to sit back on the mattress to get them all the way off, along with the socks.

At least sitting means he's at a decent level to work at Steve's pants, too, leaning in to trace the flat skin under Steve's belly-button with his mouth, shaking his head as he works at thick khaki fabric. "Christ, you're bossy. Ordering me around, get upstairs, these are done, shut up, already, and get rid of these, huh, your clodhoppers are in the way."

Words painting right into Steve's skin, the sharp, disappearing line of muscle angling in from his hip, that gets a nip of teeth and then laved with the flat of his tongue, shoving Steve's pants down over the curve of his ass, and letting his hands find that rounded muscle, under palms, under proprietary fingertips, before he's tugging at fabric again.

"Off, off."

[thebesteverseen]

Not even close. Steve is nowhere near done. If anything he's right at the beginning of something he couldn't even let himself believe was going to happen to even have a beginning, or an ending for that matter. It was something outside the box, and his head, and his world. Like it ever snowing on his house. Like making heads of tails of Doris and Wo Fat. When Danny is muttering, sitting and yanking at his pants, and Steve is trying to find a steadying supply of air again.

Especially once Danny is naked and on the edge of his bed and -- trying to breaking down the walls of anything that looks like control with his tongue. When Danny's mouth is suddenly tracing across the bottom of his stomach, right above his boxers. Annoyedly throwing fire and ash at his skin, trying to singe Steve's control right through him. Mouth on his skin, word on his skin. So sudden and so scalding he can't even remember.

How his hand got tangled in Danny's hair, how Danny got his hands past his pants, how the center of his body jerked hard, repetitively, into Danny's mouth, his face, his hands, even when Steve's stomach caved at the same time as his other hand was gripping tight on Danny's shoulder when Danny's teeth dug into his muscle, dragging out a sound too high and needy, while his torso almost tried to curve around Danny's upperbody.

When everything is threatening, wanting, burning through the edges of the space he needs. Only to snap. Hard.
"Danny." Is shoving out this mouth. Hard, harder than he means, desperate to keep his own feet. With reason tonight.

When he's pushing Danny's shoulder back and pulling his head back by a fist of hair. With as much strength as is necessary to shove a foot, or more's, space between them. Because. No. No, he's not going to give in, or fall over. He wants his head. He doesn't care how much he wants Danny's mouth, hot and wet and full of madness, a few inches lower, his fingers to hold on harder, his tongue. Steve wants the ability to think, right now, even more.

As maddeningly insane as that is, as fast it's evaporating, making his grip on it colder, clearer, more necessary.

He lets his hands get free of Danny's hair and his skin, dragging up a leg and catching the toe of his boot on the sideboard of the bed, right between Danny's legs, trying to find space left anywhere in his chest for the air coming in and out hard, to find a perch. Breathing into his own fingers yanking at the knots in his laces, while he's half bent over, his pants sagging toward his knees and his boxers in the crease of hips. Tossing his shoe not far to the side before he's dragging up the other one.

[haole_cop]

God. That's perfect. The way Steve's whole body clutches in on itself, the way he shakes, sudden and hard, and his fingers fist in Danny's hair with enough force to ache. Making that sound. The one Danny wants to record, dig into plastic and play on a turntable, keep on repeat during the nights he isn't here, can't draw it out for himself. Thin and reedy, wasted, already, even though Danny's mouth is still on muscle and only beginning to drift lower, even though his hands aren't doing anything but squeezing firmly, moving up and down across skin and muscle, tugging at pants that are just in the way, should have been lost forever ago, what was he thinking?

And he's only getting started, when there's a violent, disruptive pull, simultaneous, away from Danny's mouth and tugging Danny's head back, which rumbles a warning sound from Danny's chest. "Hey," he complains. "I was busy!"

Except Steve's already in motion, bending down to work swiftly at bootlaces that should, seriously, can't he just cut them? It's not like he doesn't have a knife on him somewhere, right, pocket or butterfly or a goddamn bowie knife, for all Danny knows.

All he's saying is, for once, it could be put to good use.

But Steve's shoved him away and is taking care of the laces himself, and Danny can't really go to help out without whacking heads, and that's really not a great idea, less than two weeks out of a concussion that had him blanking out and nauseous at the slightest movements for days afterward, so he pushes back, instead, hands that are desperate to get back on Steve's skin in Steve's hair pressing down on regimentally neat blankets and sheets instead. Hearing the short, sharp echo of his name, Danny, said hard and choked, chasing goosebumps down his spine.

The blanket's cool under his skin, and there's so much space, it's heady and strange being able to breathe again, to stretch out, to climb back on the bed, waiting, and realize, Christ, are they really doing this? Time is stretching now, as Steve works at those laces and Danny makes room for him, and he can't tell if his pulse is racing from nerves or trepidation or excitement or good old fashioned lust, or if it's fear starting to kick its way back through the door.

Either way, Steve need to -- "Hurry up, I can't believe you wear boots inside anyway, you are such an unbelievable hassle."

[thebesteverseen]

At least the boots go. A second thud following the first. Forgotten about as quickly as they can be.

The same as the only reason he'd need to put them on this evening. He doesn't want to think about that again now.

Focused on the movement of letting himself reach up from over his feet toward his own hips, grabbing and shoving boxer fabric, all in once bunch within his fingers. Catch what he can of his pants, at one knee and half-way down a calf on the other side. Pulling his feet out and the cloth up, bunched in a hand and thrown half haphazardly toward the closet door. He'll get to it later, or if he's lucky, in the morning. While it's still dark and Danny's sleeping.

"Seriously? I'm the hassle?" Steve gave him a look he felt could permeate even the oily oblivion of pitch darkness. Which this wasn't. It wasn't dark enough you couldn't see. It wasn't dark enough he could make out the line of Danny's body. The steady taper of his thighs and the wall, the expanse of his chest, his wide, steady set of his shoulders, the way his eyes reflected just enough even in the shadow.

"You-" And for a second Steve can't even make that word thick enough, deep enough. Can't touch, make words attach to it when he's clambering on to his bed. Chasing the shadow of Danny, like is any world, any place he wouldn't follow Danny, wouldn't be bound and shackled and have to go. When right this second it has nothing to do with being bound and shackled and having. Its about wanting.

Wanting so badly it feels like every inch of his skin is against him. Is a knife slamming into the door he's holding back with ever thought, his whole weight, right behind the only tattered pieces cool and patience? he has left. Shaking his head, when he's got his weight on his knees and he's not at all aimed for Danny's side, or any higher up on the bed. Settles between Danny's calves and is already leaning down. Fingers catching under Danny's knee and pulling it up.

Burying the words in brushing his mouth against the inside of Danny's leg right above his knee. "-are going to drive me insane."

[haole_cop]

"Can't."

He'd be ashamed of how winded it comes out, if he could feel anything other than the scattered, sprinting, collapsing rush of his heart, or the way everything in his body contracts at Steve's touch, at the brush of lips and sharp scrape of stubble along the sensitive skin just inside his knee. "That would assume you are not already insane, and we both know that's not true, you are certifiable, you should come with a mandatory wanring to keep at least fifty feet away at all times."

God, it's such a lie. He can't even make it sound like anything but a lie, because his hand is already seeking out Steve's hair, trying to reach down to him, but Steve's too far away without Danny sitting up further than he is, balanced here on one elbow and wondering how the hell he's supposed to breathe when his chest keeps locking up like this.

Or when Steve is sounding like that. Predatory. Low and growled. Eyes so hot on Danny that he thinks they're going to leave marks just like Steve's mouth did, skin prickling at the puff of breath against his skin.

Not even Steve usually pays attention to that spot. A little further up his thigh, maybe, but not the inside of his knee, stupid joints that keep betraying him, threatening surgery and longer recuperation if he screws with them again. Not a part of himself he thinks anyone would find particularly attractive, kissable, needed, but there Steve is, with that tone, that look, pouring boiling molasses in a slow insanity down into Danny's chest, tightening the muscles there, in his core, as he stays where he is, fighting the urge to reach down and just grab, drag him up here, tongue darting to touch his lower lip.

"What, exactly, is it that I'm doing to make you crazy, huh? Crazier, I might add."

[thebesteverseen]

Everything. Everything that Danny is. Everything that Danny does. The way he smiles, and laughs. The way the air in his tone sounds like he's fighting for it suddenly. Like the night and the room and the bed and Steve just caught up with him, again, or finally. The tremble under his skin. The way Steve can differentiate the faintest pulls of his muscles.

The faintest tension that is surprise. The small jolt of tightening and releasing, that almost looks, feels, like a rock toward him, that the rest of Danny's body isn't following through on yet. When Danny is throwing out words like they're on high heat summer sale now. Almost hoarse insults, goading Steve's head, while he lets very little less than a grin against Danny's leg pass, as he keeps going.

Pushing Danny's leg a little more away, from himself, from the way Danny had been laying, half-sitting, lounging, whatever. Whatever it was he was shifting, even though his mouth doesn't leave Danny's skin. Let's his mouth skate, glid, rubbing his lips and his cheeks against Danny's skin, with a rough chuckle an inch or two up his thigh, breathing words into Danny's skin, and trying not breath in his skin just as much.

"You're not doing so well at that yourself." His other hand is landing on Danny's other thigh smoothing down the broad fim muscle toward his knee. "Unless you're admitting I've knocked out your ability to tell distance. Because this-" Steve punctuated that smugly with sucking a spot half way up Danny's thigh, light but lightening fast, against his teeth. Running his tongue over it, sweat and the spike of salt as his hand, before he finished. "-is nowhere near fifty feet."

Which Danny would never get, because Steve was done honestly with clothes, and lights, and even one foot of space.

[haole_cop]

Steve's definitely done something to his ability to determine all kinds of things: personal risk, his own previously certain preferences. They've all gotten shaken around in a box marked "REASSESSMENT," along with his ability to breathe, to speak, to do anything other than keep falling into this heat-driven tornado.

They just can't stop. It's insane. They're both hurtling towards forty, if they manage to live that long; they aren't teenagers, aren't drunk and confused college students. They should be able to touch each other without spontaneously combusting, should be able to have discussions about what they should or shouldn't do, have or haven't done, without dialogue giving way to the need to have Steve's mouth against his, breathe his breath, suddenly terrified it might be the last time, that it might sudden't vanish, sand sinking under his feet like he's trapped in a tipped hourglass.

Steve is seriously detrimental to his ability to think, focus, or exist, in every possible way. For example, there is absolutely, one hundred percent, no reason for him to be so intent on Steve's lips against his skin, on the warmth running like water under his voice, that he can tell Steve's smiling. But he can. And it hits him like a jolt from a defibrillator, because Steve is smiling at him. Because of him.

Steve is running his mouth along the ticklish, sensitive skin of Danny's inner thigh, and gently shifting Danny's leg, and he's smiling, teasing, light-hearted. Shining up so dark and bright at the same time Danny's not sure whether it's moonlight hitting the blanket, or just Steve, reflecting back into the night, who is so much of everything that his smile can stop people dead, that crowds part for him, that Danny has, at times, held entire conversations with nothing more than Steve's raised or lowered eyebrows.

How does he do it? How can he not see it? Doesn't he have any idea, any idea at all, what people would give to be Danny right now? To have all that laser focus directed on them, until any lump of coal could be cut into a diamond. He's already starting to over heat, a dull flush climbing up his chest, pressure beginning to build.

"Then I guess you're not the only one going crazy."

[thebesteverseen]

The silence could easily be interpreted as nothing. Like the sound was swallowed by the night. But it wasn't. All of it is trapped under Steve's skin. Between his ears and his thoughts. Between his mouthand Danny's skin. Cataloging every syllable, and even the aching, breathing silence before those words, as it scores through his with the visceral, possessive, triumph. And the smallest quiet ripple of relief.

Tucking itself all like a tick buried in his flesh, between his bare shoulder-blades. One that can't be burned out.

Like the whisper of a stinging thought about how easy it should be to slip his shoulder under Danny knee and drag him foreward, flush against him, in a completely different way. A way that makes his heart stutter and stumble, in fits, like it's got faulty wiring, and can't decide whether to flood both chambers or forget how to work. Steaming the air, and driving him further up.

Nose nuzzling against the crease where Danny's thigh meets his hip. Where he could be kind, he could give Danny a moment's air, but why would he ever do that. What uses is there in breathing, when Steve can get Danny's hands off him, mouth off him, and the words he says just dig into his stomach and his chest with lacing tips, shooting the madness from the air even. It's almost fair, to Steve's estimation that he doesn't. Pause. Give Danny any warning.

That there is nothing but a simple, rough, Good in his head, even when he's saying "You haven't seen anything yet."

Tossing it like a threat, a grenade, menacing and full-meaning, half lost on the rise of Danny's hip, before Steve turns his face and lets his cheek and mouth ghost a passing breath across Danny's lower stomach, before he's running both along the side of Danny's cock. His other hand catching Danny's opposite hip to hold him incase. Because Steve is aching to show him what crazy actually is. Looks like. Feels like. Snaps like. Shatters like.

What it can do. How much power even the idea of it has over every square inch of Steve's sanity when Danny touches him.

[haole_cop]

"Oh, no?"

It's probably true, but it's a difficult concept to wrap his head around, not knowing the level of crazy of which Steve is capable. You see a guy toss a suspect into a shark cage, hang another one off a roof, you kind of assume you've gotten right up there, right?

Not that it's an assumption he's made about Steve in a very long time. Not that he doesn't know, explicitly, that there are Steve's done, or thought about doing, that make the shark cage, the roof, the blowjob on the picnic table outside seem like child's play, like innocent misunderstandings, easily explainable, fully understandable. And he knows Steve's even been holding back, right, it's been a while since he did anything really insane to threaten anybody's physical well-being except his own.

(Every now and again Danny still wakes up in a cold sweat, imagining the pop-pop-pop of gunfire and a Kevlar vest that doesn't work.)

But if Steve can't stop being crazy, Danny can't stop pushing him, either. "So far I see a lot of talk and not a lot of action."

It's dangerous ground. He knows it. He knows it like he knows stepping onto black ice is either going to send him flat on his ass or underwater, hearing it crack and creak threateningly underfoot. Steve's mouth and cheek brush against him, and his hips jump, knock against the hands holding them down, and, Christ, this is already insane, Steve's lit a fire under his skin, shoved burning coals one by one into his stomach, and his thoughts are already starting to fracture into a high-pitched whine of want, sheer desire, mouth dry and the muscles in his throat working helplessly.

And he knows better. He truly does. He warns everyone they come into contact with not to challenge Steve, not to give him an in or an opening, because Steve never stops competing, never stops trying to win, to be the best, to shove everyone else off the path and trample whoever's left, still a terrible quarterback, the one who makes the run instead of the pass. So he knows better, and here he is, anyway, egging him on, taunting, pushing for it.

But, hell. If Steve's going to break him apart, it's going to be because Danny was asking for it.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve's face probably can't be seen in the dark. But there's something like a disbelief, that mingled with some kind of fucked affection, flooding him with the smack of challenge. The utter unruly nature of Danny's Jersey Boy mouth, and the fact he's held back every second, almost, since Danny chose to say anything back. Held back when, if it were anyone else, Steve would have already burned bruises into their hips and taken them for everything.

When the burn of that sizzles under his skin like he's touching a cast iron pan left on high. Because capability when never be the problem. Steve doesn't have any question of whether he could. That has never be in the equation. He's beyond capable. He knows what he's capable of, what he could do. Turn Danny's world on a dime, possibly painfully with only a few seconds of movement. When it might be worth it. God. Fuck. In his head it almost is. Small collateral.

Even when his eyebrows are raised at Danny and his fingers tighten on Danny's hips, jerking Danny's whole body closer to him win a response that is far more than words. Words, words, words. Danny's cloud of defense and brash, ballsy bravery. The weapon left to his name. And Steve's just going to cut through them without a single one of him own. With the hands jerking Danny to him, only to have move hard, and fast inwards.

Wrapping around around the base, catching fingers in curls with almost not thought to them. None at all, because he's flattening his tongue against the bottom of his mouth, forcing his saliva to the front of his mouth, and taking Danny in. Down. Without any lead up, without any consideration or concern or slowness. Shoving full-tilt for the skin at Danny's stomach, his groin, all around the base. Forget air. He doesn't need it. Nose brushing in curls, only for the brush of less than half a second before, he's doing it again. And again.

Because pain isn't part of this. Yet? He doesn't even. Can't finished that. Because there are sharp, hot burning pokers slicing into him. It isn't about pain now. It isn't about riding roughshod, and tossing Danny over the edge of his bed, or his couch, making him eat every single word that's left to cover him that his clothes are gone. But he doesn't want to hurt Danny. God. He never wants to hurt Danny. Never wants to be one of those people.

Even, taking him deep and fast, there's some part of Steve that hopes Danny feels as dumb-foundedly punched in the face as he does. It's not like that. Because if just the possibility of more didn't kill him, and leave him strung out, or the plan burning his fingers tips from his hands, making him want to move them again already, Danny's mouth certainly might.

[haole_cop]

He'd curse, if he could.

As it is, the best he manages is a kind of ground out ffffffffffffuh sound, feeling like a piece of paper in a hole puncher, as the night obliterates into sudden heat, suction, friction, wet slick Jesus fucking Christ, Steve is going to kill him.

He is. Might. Could. Will, almost definitely. Danny's not built to take that kind of shock. His heart skyrockets into flight, but at least it's still working, even if it's pounding in fits, tripping all over itself, catapulted directly into his throat while the rest of his innards melt into an unrecognizable puddle of liquid metal. Christ. He can taste silver in his mouth. Can't get breath. His head feels like the gong rung mid-fight, just before the boxers decide to take it outside the ring.

Steve's mouth is insanity, deep, deeper, swallowing Danny whole, it feels like, surrounding him completely, nudging him up against his soft palate, and, Christ, fuck, it feels so good it's draining the room away like someone pulled the plug, and Danny only notices he's pressed back into the bed when the pillow tries to fall over onto his face. He bats it aside, other hand gripping the blanket in a white-knuckled fist that he's trying to keep away from Steve's hair, because the last thing Steve needs is for him to shove, or pull, or push. Even though those thoughts keep playing. Even though they're bringing that pool in his stomach to a rapid boil.

Steve never does anything halfway. He doesn't give a shit if Danny wants to appreciate the faint layering of light on his shoulders, how it picks out particular strands in his hair, and this, this is why you don't issue challenges to Steve, because he never just accepts them, he hurdles them and goes headfirst straight into no I'm doing this instead.

When this is currently drawing a series of low, restless moans from Danny's throat, pushing his head back while he tries for air, eyes pressed shut, body shaking like he's been doused in ice water. After the teasing on the couch, hands shifting and fingers searching and his own uncertainty, it's a black and white absolution, stars bursting into fervid, violent life in the space left empty and aching in his chest.

If Steve's trying to make a point, it's working. Whatever it might be.

[thebesteverseen]

God. It's glorious. The way Danny jerks, and shakes, as much attacking the bed under him as Steve's mouth in his first reaction. When words are literally melting on Danny's tongue. When Steve can make out the first syllable that then falls apart, inconsequential before fisting the blanket and fighting with his pillow. Before letting out these needy, low, wanting, shoved over and through sounds that slam into Steve's ear. Triumphant and burning.

It's harder than he thought, when the night is sharpening down to Danny, not to shove forward. Just push, drag. Milk Danny for the movement he's not giving. For the way he's holding on to the bed and not to Steve. No fingers in his hair or digging into this shoulders as all the closest things Danny can get his hands on. Not thrusting, not desperate, not wrecked and falling apart. Not yet.

When it would be so easy to push this. The dark, low sounds coming out of Danny's mouth and the way his body is shaking already are telling him that. He could push, drag, pull him the whole way like this. It might not even take that long, really. He could keep going, shove him over, make him come. Low and wanting, uncertain of what to call what he wants even. Blow him until those words dissolve even further, into bitten, broken, desperate groans he can't control.

But that isn't Steve wants it. Even when it's there, in his head, under his hands, in his mouth. Even when it's one of his favorite things. Top of the new charts. Not his favorite, but close. Close enough he'd nowhere near tired of it. And he does need it. Has a use for it. But this isn't the point. When Steve can. Use it. Can steady his mouth in a slow downward drop and lift this time, while sliding his free hand from Danny's hip. Down inside his thigh.

Stroking his thumb across the same place where Danny's thighs meets his body, while raising his mouth to the top of him. Tracing with his tongue around the small bumps of his head, while he changes where his hand is entirely. Fingers spreading out under an ass cheek, while his thumb pad made soft, but firm circles and lines across Danny's skin. All of it laid out so close, nothing in his way. Stroking thin, delicate skin, feeling the tingle in his fingers like he was touching straight electric current with each touch.

The rise of muscle, the fall between them, the knot of a circle that he pressed just enough more around the edges. Before he pulling up, popping his mouth off with a purposefully wet, solid sound to it. Smugly, pointed words caking up the darkness. "Were you saying something?"

[haole_cop]

Steve will always be physically incapable of keeping back that smugness, won't he. The tone of his voice points it out, easily recognizable from every other time he's done something crazy and succeeded, once again, because as much as the world seems to hate Steve's happiness, entropy and sheer blind luck must have made him their god.

He shouldn't be able to get away with even a quarter of the shit he pulls, and yet here he is, day after day, jumping off buildings like some kind of reversed Superman, chasing down crooks, tackling them into the sides of houses or trucks.

And now this. Where, admittedly, he might have some leverage, because Danny doesn't have the first idea what to do, no matter how Steve had rapidly laid out the possibility of keeping it as close as what he's used to as possible, because there is nothing. There's nothing about this that is anything like what Danny's used to, and it's not even a question of what goes where or who fucks who. It's about the fact that Steve could flatten him, without effort. It's about how a wrestling match between the two of them really is a goddamn wrestling match, and Steve would probably win but by God Danny's not going down without a fight, and he knows a few nasty moves from his days growing up in and around Newark and a few ill-advised trips to Canton, or Atlantic City.

Rachel, Gabby, they're both tiny. Slim. They felt slight and breakable in his hands, gusting breathless laughter into his ear, and any bites were barely enough to redden his skin. Steve's solid. Steve's heavy. And Steve is fucked up in the head in a way that makes both Rachel and Gabby look like the one sober adult at a Florida bar during spring break. Steve bites like he means it, sucks marks into Danny's skin, makes it physical, makes it a fight, makes it a sport.

And then he'll go and do something so goddamned sweet, like pressing a kiss to Danny's hip, or pushing their foreheads together, and it kicks out the rest of Danny's supports, topples him headlong into a soupy messy maelstrom of something too precious to look at head on, to breathe on, to touch without it shattering everywhere.

Not that Steve is being sweet. Steve's being a jackass, and he knows he's being a jackass, but it's not like Danny can't keep up with him there, at least, even if his heart is beating a sickening salsa in his temples at the brush of a fingertip, there, already feeling secret, already feeling like Steve's reaching right inside of him.

"I was saying," he says, gulping against a dry throat, searching for snappy, sarcastic, bravado. "You seem like you're getting distracted."

[thebesteverseen]

He's as surprised as he isn't surprised, or just as pleased as he is pleasedly exasperated.

By Danny's mouth, when his fingers can feel the faintest tremble or the push of Danny's body against them, one hand still wrapped tight and the other trailing lighter, but firm, specific fingers. When Danny's voice was lost to himself seconds ago. When he didn't have enough air to breath, to swear, to anything more but try to climb through his backwards, heels digging in along fingers fisting his blanket to white knuckles the darkness hides from his eyes.

And still. This. Snappy. Sassy. Smarting. Backtalk. That makes Steve want to smack him and best him and go back to blowing him and kiss him hard and laugh, until the bed shakes, or at least until it's shaking his chest against Danny knee he's leaning against, and fuck him, until the entire damn world has been tilted sideways and nothing will ever be the same again in Danny's head. It should be annoying.

It pours down his back like hot water after a too long day, champagne bubbles taking up residence in his bloodstream.

"Yeah, that sounds about right." Rolls off his tongue sharp and irreverent, laden with a tractor of smacking sarcasm and the strong arm of authoritative heavy correction, when Steve is suddenly pushing himself up and over Danny's leg, stretching across his bed and away from Danny, but without actually leaving where his knees are.

Dragging open a bed table drawer and rifling in it as he's saying, still razor sharp and unholy bright in the dark room, night, against Danny's slander. The words that roll off the most loved, coveted, arrogantly thick. "Because I was the one of us gagging a few seconds ago." When his mouth was full, but Danny's was the one entirely blown beyond his control to even make his first word form.

Fingers catching without too much problem on the small bottle in question.

Especially given that he didn't abide much mess in most of this house, much less his space, which this room was at least as much as outside, and more than the un-chagned, un-aging larger sections of this house. Fast enough he's got his fingers closed around it and he's shoving the drawer back closer, before half-snapping, half sagging back toward where his balance is still settled.

[haole_cop]

Steve doesn't actually get distracted, ever. He is occasionally derailed when one of them says or does something he doesn't expect, but it never deters him from the mission du jour. His laser focus doesn't allow for things like distraction, or split-attention. When Steve's attention splits, people die.

So Danny doesn't actually mean distracted, because he's not sure Steve is physically capable of allowing distraction to exist, not just throwing up the mental blinders that must have been handed out with the uniform and the ability to switch off any degree of empathy or feeling when he graduated from Annapolis. Which is handy, when they're chasing down hardened criminals who have a tendency to go after innocent civilians and wreak broad swathes of public damage, but maybe less attractive in bed.

Not that Danny doesn't appreciate the attention. He does. But there are times when a guy could use a little distraction, maybe, when the normal back and forth banter they toss at each other all day -- in the office, on the job, in the car, on the couch -- is enough of a life raft to keep him afloat in a sudden tossing sea.

Okay. He wants this. He asked for it. He pushed and prodded Steve about it, and he's not going to freak out now and freeze up -- he's not -- but that doesn't mean he doesn't kind of want to sidle up to it, a little, take away from the capitalized letters his head keeps trying to type it out in by making it not the only thing going on. So it helps, when Steve teases, when Steve's mouth handily shuts down any attempt or ability to speak, because when Steve gets halfway up, reaches for the bedside table drawer, and rummages inside, there's really no going back.

Frankly, he's a little ashamed of the way his breath catches, knots deep in his lungs, unwilling to play nice. He's not a fan of how he can feel tension lacing up his back, down his legs, of the pit that's just opened up in his stomach. It's just sex. It's different sex, sure, but it's just sex, it's just Steve, and he knows Steve, trusts Steve, has spent the better part of two years cataloguing everything about Steve, in order to complain more efficiently and also, fine, because while it's good to know as much as you can about your partner, that doesn't generally extend to how they take their coffee, what their favorite food is, how they spend a free five, ten, or thirty minutes.

But he knows it all, anyway.

"There was no gagging," he says, because he knows he's supposed to, and he's grateful to Steve for giving him the distraction Steve would never take for himself. "Those were sounds of deep appreciation, my friend, but they were not gags."

[thebesteverseen]

You'd have to be blind and deaf and something -- senseless? -- to miss it. The way Danny suddenly loses almost all of his elasticity. It's as drastic and obvious as someone snapping on a light in this room would be. Shifting the mattress right around him with his start. Body tightening up like the wind up clock just hit twelve. Everything pulling inward in a solid movement and stabbing something in Steve's chest, even when Danny is making himself keep up the conversation.

Which loses all its insult, too. He's corrected, but it's an effort. It's an effort Steve can actually hear. In Danny's voice. In the way he shapes the letters, the way the air comes out like somewhere Danny's in there using his back and shoulders, in a way that would ruin his knees, to shove it and the sounds along with it, out of his throat. Aiming for something like holding on. When he isn't holding on. Still isn't actually touching Steve

Whose entire first reaction, while getting his feet back under himself, is to smooth a large hand down Danny's too tight thigh muscles. That is the body having the response to close up and pull in, that his entire body is in the way of Danny's legs listening to. The bottle dropped for the second somewhere between his own legs, so that he can have his hands. To run one loose and heavy down Danny's thigh, while the other returns to the place it left.

A cuff of fingers, dragging up slow, when he leaned back down, laying his mouth against the rise of Danny's hipbone, for words that had nothing to do with Danny's either. "I've got you."

[haole_cop]

Like anything ever slips past Steve. Steve will bring up conversations held weeks before, after apparently locking them away in some ridiculously over-protected safe somewhere behind the barbed wire and landmines in his head, long after Danny's forgotten about them. He'll wait for the exact right moment, then pull out a direct quote that yanks the rug right out from under Danny's feet, leaves him gaping and bewildered while Steve turns back to whatever he was previously doing with an expression soaked with righteous smugness.

So it comes as no surprise that Steve's keyed to the slightest motions of Danny's body, that he's noticed the tension seeping in and taking up residence, turning the balmy night air into cement dust that weighs heavier and heavier with each breath, while dizziness threatens and Danny's all too aware of the solidity of the bed underneath them.

Of the solidity of Steve's hand. The one stroking down his thigh, making that muscle clutch harder against it, and, no, it's good, but it's not what he wants, this careful preparation, Steve distracting him with mouth and hands and the tight perfect circle of his fingers. It's too much focus, too much space up here, cool air against his skin instead of Steve, thin blankets under his fingers instead of Steve, while Steve is breathing those words against his hip instead of against his mouth, making his stomach tighten like he's waiting for a punch.

Maybe he is.

It doesn't matter. He doesn't -- Steve could probably do just about anything to him when his mouth is doing that, hot and heavy around his cock, and he'd barely notice, too blissed out to be paying attention, but that's not what sex is about, okay, not for him, it's never supposed to just be about him, and that's what it's been ever since those words came out of his mouth.

Which is why he's reaching for Steve's wrist, both of them, tugging them, wanting him back up here, wanting his mouth, to get lost in him, feel all of Steve instead of just his hands and lips and tongue. Voice low, and too sincere, but he doesn't give a single fuck, who cares? Steve's the only one who'll hear it.

"I know. Come on, come up here, with me."

[thebesteverseen]

It all hits across his head far too fast. The fingers on his wrists tugging. Danny's voice, that way. It's gotten low and just the edge into plaintive, catching like cold fingers in Steve's intensities and jerking hard. When he's reassessing a world of things. Like how things will be, could be, more problematic, inventive if not at all impossible, elsewhere. Before it slides straight into whether that's a cease fire.

Whether it's because of those precious few seconds of pause when he got the lube. Whether he should have gotten it before getting on the bed, shouldn't have paused at all, or done it later on, or at all even, that one digs in the edge of a shard deeper. Maybe it is as far as Danny can, or will. Maybe he shouldn't have even done that that first night he said anything back. He said.

He said any of those things, that are one side too blistering hot to drag up with fingertips, piercing singe to his thoughts, even as they are sinking like solid steel lumps in the bottom of his stomach suddenly. Maybe he is trampling, already trampled, across the only step Danny wanted to take. Putting it all out there, possible. Possible (still possible) instead of impossible.

Steve's head moving too much, too fast, when seconds are only passing and he keeps coming back to the one thing he can't ignore. Not even for his thoughts. Fingers circled around his wrists. Danny's hands. Warm. Solid. Undeniable. Unignorable. Tugging at him still. Necessary, direct, almost and half of him is already going before the thought about going is even a question about whether to go. Before the reassertment of how moving could, would, might be more problematic.

Before he pulled back at hand, twisting sideways and pulling it for a fast circle, to breaking the hold of Danny's grasp one of his wrists, hand scrabbling down against the blanket for the bottle against one of his calves. Even as he is ending up over there. The other side of Danny's leg. Outside of them, ending up toward Danny's side, on his side, half propped by the arm that caught his weight moving that way.

[haole_cop]

It's dark, but not dark enough that he doesn't see, okay. He sees. He knows every one of Steve's expressions, from stony to thunderous to brilliantly lit, and this one is some stumbling combination of consternation and the kind of preoccupied withdrawal that comes the second before someones fist comes flying at your face: the anticipation of a hit.

Which is just about the stupidest fucking thing he could be thinking right now, alright? Danny's not going to hit him. Danny's hauling him up, tugging on the one wrist he's still got a hold of, and waiting to find the other one again, fingers looping like warm iron, until Steve is closer, gravity of the bed shifting along with his weight, long lean frame slipping to the side. Propping himself up, which is all wrong, and Danny's deeply annoyed at the whole prospect of it, decides to tell him so.

"What are you doing, where do you think you're going, I said come here, what are you, deaf? Come on, we haven't even gotten to the mindblowing stuff yet, pay attention."

Hands working up Steve's arms like he's pulling in a rope as he talks, fingers finding a shoulder to curl around, the back of Steve's neck and the rough edge of Steve's hair, dragging him down as Danny's whole body shifts towards him, half-rolling, and he's always been a tactile person, but there's so much more than hands that can be put into play, here. He can roll flush against Steve, box him with his whole body, leg sliding over Steve's so the outside of Danny's ankle bumps gently against the inside of Steve's calf. Tangle him up, find every possible connecting point.

Hand drifting from Steve's neck down over his shoulder, pressing firmly down the slope of his back, hooking briefly at his hip, moving to curve, proprietary and jealous, over the curve of muscle that, really, those cargo pants do not do justice. Soft skin, hard muscle, pliant and pale after the long stretch of tanned, tattooed skin -- though Danny's thumb rubs familiarly over the ink that's normally threaded under cargo pants, just peeking past board shorts or boxers.

And because Steve had that look on his face -- that one that said he's thinking too hard, and about something Danny would probably yell at him for -- he keeps it up, nipping at Steve's bottom lip before messing it back up with a kiss that is genuinely messy, open-mouthed and decisive, selfish, wanting Steve's mouth all for himself, wanting Steve's teasing back, not soft words if they're coupled with Steve being too far away to touch.

He doesn't want that. He wants this. To wrap himself entirely around Steve as possible. To be part of this, because Danny accepted long ago that Steve is probably going to be his downfall, but it's not like he's isn't running towards it, refusing to leave.

"They let you get a tramp stamp in the Army?"

[thebesteverseen]

Danny smashes back into him with the force of a wave, getting everywhere. Taking every one of his last silent, few words and his efforts to touch anything but Steve, and blowing all of them up with a sudden, absolute onslaught that nearly makes Steve tense up rigid. Muscles tensing under suddenly moving hands, trying to get everywhere, dragging him in, dragging him down, shoving up into his space noisily.

Maybe the water analogy is wrong. Maybe it's more like a bomb. Loud and everywhere, splitting seams without warning, before you can even be sure that walls were around you they are done, gone, every bit of them flying at you. The first set of words shoving sort of like a wire brush, sounds connecting with fingers on the fragile skin of his neck, heels being thrown over digging into his calf like his body is made of pillows that will adjust to Danny.

And just when there's the kind of overhaul of everything everywhere suddenly, rising like unexpected bile, this need to fend off, to shove away, hold, find a breath, breathe is, release five or ten triggers all being jammed, going off at once, loud and red, then Danny's mouth is on his. There are teeth digging sharp into his lip, even if briefly, causing his fingers to catch on Danny's side, dragging him closer as his skin is palmed harder against a shudder. Neither of which he can actually pay attention to. None of it. Because then Danny is kissing him.

Forget explanations, or plans, or yelling at him; Danny is kissing him like he wants Steve to forget he's thinking. Which half is working, when Steve's hand is finding his shoulder and cheek and his hair, and he's kissing Danny back about as recklessly. With a sharp jagged razor of relief that doesn't even stop burning for the hands everywhere, for Danny taking away his air. Because he's wrong and he's an idiot and fucking hell, he doesn't even know, but he knows Danny's mouth, and he's taking on the taste of it like someone who hasn't had anything but sawdust for decades.

When all of that throbs under his rib cage, high pitched and hard, when Danny pulls away to mocking his tattoo, like his fingers are currently tracing it and digging into it, and everything around it, in equal measure. When the first burst of frustration and fire is easy to twist into a word, even the word Danny is begging for. "Navy, Danny." His name, more like he's saying asshole, somewhere between a burst of annoyance and sardonicism.

Then. Like he's saying it for a child, he enunciates it a second time, in two syllables. "Na-vy."

"And no one gives a damn what's under your A.J.'s." he clarifies, like it matters at all here.

With Danny's fingers running prickles down his skin, that are still running both directions in the line of reasoning. When he's dragging Danny closer, liking at the light at the core of madness, because they already are flushed, and it's so goddamn easy to thrust up against Danny and his stomach as he says, "Unless they have a reason to be under them at the time."

Which his tone is already implying, heavy laced, no one ever has a problem with them at that point either.