(no subject)

[gonna_owe_me]

Steve is really good at avoiding her.

Normally, she probably wouldn't even call it "avoiding."  Normally, she would call it his usual M.O. and chalk it up to being a side effect of being halfway around the world from each other.  There are times they've gone for months with no contact, and two weeks is barely the blink of an eye, particularly when she's busy and he keeps getting high-profile, high-priority cases.

At least, that's what she hears, when she hears anything at all.

But those weeks and months of zero contact, running silent, off the grid: those days aren't exactly applicable when there are extenuating circumstances such as A. they are living on the same island and B. she knows there's something he really doesn't want to talk to her about.

Ergo, avoidance.

She's not an impatient or nosy person, though, so she lets it slide, for a little while.  He clearly needs to get used to the idea himself, and, frankly, so does she.  It's not that they haven't stumbled across a situation where one or the other of them was out of commission for their normal arrangement, but in general, those interrupting factors were not potentially career-threatening.  Not to the extent of sleeping with a subordinate.  Not to the extent of sleeping with a partner.  Not seriously.

And it is serious, whether Steve is admitting to it, or not.  It's splashed across him like someone doused him in paint and sticky sunlight, in the way he'd magnetized towards the door, the way he'd run out after Danny.  Maybe even more because he didn't bring it up until he absolutely had to.

So Steve is avoiding her, and she can sympathize, because this is not a conversation she particularly wants to sit through, either, but it still needs to happen, because, knowing Steve, he hasn't told anyone else and is shutting it back into compartments poorly designed for a situation of this magnitude and complexity.  

Which is why, when she called him on the next weekend inferred to be Danny's weekend with Grace, she's given him the benefit of both giving her the slip for two weeks and the peace offering of meeting at a place with really excellent drinks, one of which she has in hand as she sits at a table by an open window, chin in her hand, looking out at the quietly rolling ocean.  It's early evening, and she's come off a twelve hour shift, so it's nice to sit, let her thoughts unhinge, ebb and flow with the waves and mild breeze.  Wrangling an affirmative had proved to be difficult, but she'd managed it, pointing out that they might as well meet out, seeing as they're definitely going to make it to the restaurant this time.

It strips him of the home field advantage, too, but he's not the only one who knows how to keep a wall at his back and a few tricks up his sleeve.

Comments

[haole_cop]

Steve's arm wraps around him, just like before, only this time, Steve's nuzzling into his hair, and Danny's chest is pressed so close to his that he can feel Steve's heart beating, wings against a wall. Without making fun of him. Just letting him hold on, letting him find his center of balance again, the gravity that's been missing from the toddling steps his thoughts keep trying to make.

When it's not a big deal. Shouldn't be. But it is.

It's embarrassing. Despite his bluster, he's not a prejudiced guy, unless he's being asked his opinion on drug runners and the lowlife scumbags who do shit like kidnap women and children and sell them on the street. His precise and stubborn opinions on food and the superior state in which to live and raise a family do not extend to ragging on lifestyle choices, because who the hell is he to judge? Some single guy, living in a series of progressively worsening apartments, divorced dad who ended up falling for his partner, boss, best friend.

Yeah, he's in no spot to lay judgment on what anybody does in bed with anybody else.

But that doesn't mean it's not still weird. Strange. Unsettling. It's a first time, he wouldn't expect fireworks, or for it to be anything but a confused mix of unpleasant, awkward, and the kind of clumsy-good familiar to teenagers just trying this whole sex thing out for the first time the world over.

So it's not unexpected, just...annoying. Which is why he huffs laugh into Steve's shoulder that's as skeptical as an eyeroll, as much as it is dryly amused. "You think I've got a dance card for anything, McGarrett? Still not a girl."

But. No. Not off the card. Or off the table. Nothing is. He just needs a little time to work up to it. To ease himself into it. Going full-bore is Steve's style, not his. But, still. There's that tone again. The caution Steve never has. Wary and sincere all at once. The tone of a man willing to not just rip off a band-aid, but saw off his own cast, if necessary. Or maybe a leg, or an arm. His voice coming stripped down to the skin, waiting to be flayed or snapped at.

Danny shakes his head against Steve's neck, lets out a breath. Easier with Steve's arm wrapping around his back; he's not going to question it, just let it carry him along. "But no, no, nothing like that, okay? It'll just take some getting used to. This isn't exactly how I usually do things."

None of it is. Not the sex. Not the speed. Not staying over four or five nights a week. Not getting involved with his boss. His partner.

[thebesteverseen]

He's relaxing slowly enough. Steve can feel it. Slow increments, the way you can begin to notice even infinitesimal movement when you've been stuck in a tree or a hole for days at a time. Until you are so lost in utter stillness, everything else is a little jarring, a little, sometimes a lot, like having a boiling red spotlighst and blaring sirens going off. It's a little like that. Not the spotlight, and the siren. But he can feel it going.

Under his arms. Under his head. Against his chest. Danny undoing with the slow, steadiness given perfectly timed second hands on a good watch. Unfurling not in seconds, but in breaths. Pulled in, through his nose against Steve's neck, and pushed out in these solid warm gusts against his shoulder, the top of his chest. When it's only marginally better, Danny coiled into him instead of away from him. But it's a marginal he can deal with. A marginal he can feel.

His mouth curves just faintly when Danny laughs. That sounds almost hurts, but it's perfect, too. He wants ore of that. Even just barely there, before Danny is smarting off at the words Steve put out there. Not letting go, but waving what verbally amounts to a hand brushing the implication away. As though anything about Danny could. Make him think of a girl. Make him want a woman. Want anything but this.

The confused muddle of knots inside his arms, that he's pretty sure starts at Danny's spine beneath his fingers and does not stop until it comes out the other side of his own back. But it's still true. This. He wants this. More than anything. And he knows what it is. And what it isn't. And, he's aware, even, of what it really might never be. Of the razor edge it walks in terms of the timeline of Danny's future, and the seismic ground Danny dropped on to with one kiss.

Even when Danny is finding more words. Less careful. Repeating, denying. Like he's fighting away some assumption of Steve's, and Steve can't even be entirely sure what it was. That was seconds ago. But Danny was now, which was the only place he could be, knew how to be. Before stopping with that implication. That Steve knows. Because Steve knows Danny. What Danny can give, will give the world. A person. And all of it doesn't match here. Everything Danny does.

"So you just like me more than the rest of the world, is what you're sayin'."

That one at least tries to cross over earlier. Thick, but just tripping toward assumptively arrogant.

Like the only reason Danny could ever have chosen this path, chosen these choices, attacked his coffee and been willing to be kicked out of Five-0, jumped through a hundred hoops in so many days, when he threw a fit about take one step even toward a hoop in the direction of Gabby, be here at all, in his arms, his bed was that obviously Steve obviously was better. More. The Best.

Because everything else. Every other else in his head. It isn't supposed to be there. It's somewhere else. Behind other doors.

[haole_cop]

He grimaces into Steve's neck, digs a little with the tip of his nose, disgruntled.

"No, no, no, incorrect, that is wrong, that is not what I'm saying. I can count at least three and up to several thousand people I like better than I like you. People I haven't even met yet."

At least that's easy to rebuff, to shove back, rough and aggravated at the assumption, at Steve's arrogance. At least Steve's tone has dropped from tense and wired up to crisis-management-mode and back down to something teasing, poking at Danny as if he didn't have his fingers flat on Danny's skin, as if he didn't have his mouth and nose in Danny's hair.

And the answer is so obvious. As if there's a rest of the world to compare to Steve, like Danny could wave a magic wand and put any of the people he's ever met even in the same category. Like there's any one category.

Like Steve isn't talented, capable, competent, exceptional. Like he's not the best. The best the Navy had. The best of his team. Like Steve doesn't have a massive, fractured heart that beats for the ones who can't save themselves, who need him. Like Danny hasn't seen him hunt down criminals no one should be able to get, because Steve is willing to do anything to bring them down, and then play with Grace the next day looking like nothing so much as an over grown kid.

Like there's any part of him that doesn't know, in his core, that Steve is one of the best people he knows, has ever seen. Is dedicated, devoted. Sure. Married to the job, like they all are. Crazy as a loon. Prone to horrific damage because he just doesn't give a shit about what happens to him, because he is always, always collateral, acceptable damage.

But he isn't to Danny.

None of which he can say out loud, so he shoves it further into familiar territory, even while he's betrayed by the way his fingers splay possessively over Steve's back, dipping gently into the track of his spine. "You're just prettier than most of them."

Because this is shallow, non-serious fun, and Danny has also recently acquired some new property, right, if Steve believes that, Danny's got a bridge he knows Steve would just love to buy.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny puff's up, wordy, with heavy denials, and Steve is failing, entirely, not smiling.

Even if he might be trying to press his lips together to let it out entirely. But that, that is so much better, too. He doesn't mind which words Danny says, which subject he decides to talk about, to lodge in his skin, but more of them. He needs more of Danny, and more of Danny's words, or less of then, but Danny loose and easy, ready to sleep, not so silent, so trigger tight Steve begin's to think of him more as a threatening bomb than a person.

But that thought doesn't stay, when Danny fingers are widening on his skin, covering more ground while Danny rolls it off as being superficial. As thought Danny has more than two or three inches of superficial bone in his body. He likes attention, of course. He likes a pretty face, as much as the next man. And he likes the two together, because who wouldn't. But Danny Williams couldn't live on a buffet of that.

Steve hasn't even ever seen him give more than twenty or thirty minutes of a night to that.
Before the rest kicked in. Before everything a pretty wasn't, didn't measure to kicked in.

Which makes it even more hilarious, mocking and disagreeing, even when his voice simply dips warmer.
"At least you're admitting that now." There's a laugh, rumbling in his chest and falling out free all in Danny's hair.

Even though it doesn't sound like Steve ever had cause to doubt. Or ever did. And maybe he didn't. Hasn't. Ever. But maybe it's nice to hear it fall out of Danny's mouth. Even as insult. A good half of the best things to ever fall out Danny's open mouth were. "And that's, what? Half the war, already?"

As though Danny could ever be won by a pretty face, as though Steve ever gave his own face and physique a moment's benefit of the doubt to even mattering where it came to Danny, long before now, before coming home. Danny who had seen his face every single day in and out. Seen him get rid of clothes in the name of cases as much beaten to a pulp and in need of rescue from Wo Fat. If anything it was one of the things he probably thought mattered the least, didn't register in the line of important things to Danny right after guy, partner, boss.

This was Danny, after all. Who had fits about cups of coffee Steve forgot to even have over meals he forgot to offer to buy.

[haole_cop]

He can feel it all starting to slide away.

Not that it isn't still weird. Not that he doesn't still feel strange, loose in some places and tight in others, still messy, wanting a shower, wanting sleep, wanting to leave it alone and go back to nothing threatening, like necking on the couch for hours instead.

Except he doesn't want that. Not really. Because it doesn't actually matter, the way Steve looks, but the truth is Steve is impossible to resist. Impossible for Danny not to want to touch, to run his hands over hard muscle and softer than expected skin, rasp lips against stubble, taste Steve all the way down, salt and sweat and musk. Beautiful in a way Danny can't even comprehend, sometimes, because it's not like he always saw it, knew it was there. Sure. He knew Steve was good-looking. Got more than his fair share of female attention. But beautiful? Irresistible? Something Danny has to reach out and touch?

That's new. New-ish, anyway.

It's something else. Lots of things. He could spend hours listing them all, and never really get to the bottom of it. Not like Steve wants, with his how did it start and why and when. Like Danny could even have just one answer to that.

He doesn't know. It just is. Came upon him all sneaky and slow and then slammed him into the cement with the force of an 18-wheeler.

Okay. So maybe keeping it G-rated for a while won't be happening, and that's fine, too. It all is, if it ends up like this, with Steve here, arm looped around him, breathing soft and even into his hair, taunting him like they're in the car on a case and he's got nothing better to do. Making every knot loosen a little further with distraction, with each smile getting a little drowsier.

It's warm, and he's tired, and morning is going to come far too soon, even if it can't be that late, yet. "There you go, you only got half left to try and get."

Which is another lie. He wouldn't be here at all if it weren't already a hopeless cause.

[thebesteverseen]

"Another month, then?" Steve is shooting off his mouth and he knows it, but he lets it go. Lets everything go, because Danny is. Slowly. Letting everything go, getting heavier against him and the bed, breathing deeper. Driving Steve for wheedling against a burst of relief so massive it feels like it pulsated as a small explosion in his center, hiccuping his sanity, toward a brief, brilliant moment of being high.

"Three and half weeks for good behavior?" Like a prompt. Before it shifts, smugly, like a dauntless promise, "Or three. Maybe three. If I decide to actually put my back into it this time."

As though every single day, every single moment since Danny said those words, and told him he was ready to be fired now, because he had to be honest, had to answer the question, wouldn't lie, hasn't been something like counted. Precise. Known. Seen. Recognized. Each day, like single grains of sand in a too large jar. Not even enough to fill the space between two fingers pinching some yet. Which is he knows insane really when he puts that together with it being Danny.

That any of this. Any of it at all keeps happening.

But it is. He is. Here. Still. In Steve's arms. Said all those words. Earlier. Is breathing, slow relaxing in his arms. Now. Where times matters to Steve as much as dawn, as much as other people, as much as any rule in any rule book sitting outside this room. This bed. This house. Them. Nothing and none of them matter. Except for Danny. Except for the way he's slowly talking easier, unwinding toward what might be actually be relaxed. Might at some point become sleep.

[haole_cop]

There's that arrogance back again, soaking into every word and insult, suggesting there's no part of this Steve won't hit out of the ballpark, just like he does with everything else.

"It is hilarious to me that you think 'good behavior' is on the list of things anybody anywhere could actually expect from you."

Because Steve is purposely ignoring the fact that it doesn't work like that, one month in and halfway there doesn't mean it'll just double by the time the two month mark rolls around. Except Steve's joking about making it two months. Which hits a soft jolt to his sternum, because nobody's even made faint allusions to any kind of continuation, yet; those conversations had been fraught with tension and then degraded into stupid jokes from Steve, and the topic just hasn't come up.

Which makes Danny kind of want to nudge at it, carefully, like it might accidentally get shoved off the tabletop and smash on the floor if he even breathes on it too hard. Who knows what might happen in a month? "We'll reassess at a later date. I want to see some of this so-called 'effort' you think you can put in."

Shoveling derisive disbelief onto Steve's shoulder, and slipping back, finally, to find space on the pillow, breathe air that's not flavored by Steve's skin. The gorilla that had been sitting on his chest has apparently decided to move elsewhere, and he's okay with that, but he's not moving far, either. Unwilling to break this cocoon, where everything's fine, and panic can't find its way past Steve's barrier arm or the low comfortable rumble of his voice.

[thebesteverseen]

"Oh, I'm good," Steve strives at smart mouthed, words pressing down in the air, even when they are flash-bright bragging straight though the first appearance of a yawn, when he's releasing the hold of his muscles. Not enough to move himself just then. Not enough to let Danny escape. But enough to sort create a cage Danny can wiggle around in.

Being obnoxious, even as he's watching Danny settle down. "I've got references."

Like they matter. Like anything, anyone, outside of watching Danny settle down did. Even existed.

Shifting his own shoulders, Steve slid himself down a little. To where his head won't only hit the head board and the top half of the pillow now, since Danny is finding the pillow, which makes Danny's head and his hair less apt to be the structure supporting right where Steve's head had been resting. Puts him in a closer vantage point. Gives him the ability to see Danny's face, again.

Danny's face which, at the very least, has gone back to looking something more normal. Which makes another set of knots in his shoulders undo. Like somehow the sight of it is a surprise, a relief, even when Danny's voice has been fine for the better part of a minute or two. When Steve finds other words lodging like rocks in his throat. Comfort, with words he doesn't own, has never needed to hear or say. That stay there.

Lodged in his throat, behind that boasting twist of his mouth, and that hand, flat and unwavering, on Danny's back.

[haole_cop]

"Yeah, I think I'm okay with not checking any of those, thanks."

He's pretty good with never wanting to think about any of those references, or what Steve did with them, or what glowing reviews they might be able to paint. It shutters something close in his chest, that wants to be held jealously in a closed hand, hidden, protected. He knows there have been other people, women, men. He's seen a few of them. Can't forget the sick surge of annoyance that climbed into his throat every time Kaila smiled at Steve, the way he'd wanted to shred the napkin with her number on it.

He might not get to keep this, and there will probably be plenty more through the revolving door, but for now, it's his. Steve is. And he doesn't feel like sharing, even with people long gone -- or not so long, considering Catherine's back on the island.

So the comment comes with a twisted grimace, exasperated, but falling short of being actually annoyed or unhappy. "I'll come to my own conclusions."

Which is what he does every day, for his job, and this is no different.

Nobody's pushing anything right now, though, unless he counts sleep that's starting to weigh down his eyelids and muffle the world into something hazy and forgettable, existing somewhere outside the heavy half-circle of Steve's arm. Nothing he needs to deal with, nothing to worry about. Stress leaves behind a kind of dulled drowsiness as it seeps away, and he's feeling a little dopey now that he's not continually hooking himself further and further up the rungs of self-conscious fear.

[thebesteverseen]

"You do that." He said, with this snort was still more half a quiet laugh.

Steve would be just fine with that. He's not sure he'd want any of them near Danny either.

He's not even entirely sure about this whole BBQ, which decides to reassert itself along the lines of other people and Danny, and anyone knowing about Danny to comment to him about anything at all. About him, about things Steve'd probably like best left in the far past, too. Never heard about. Never known about. About Cath and Danny in the same space, which happened to be the same space where all the rest of his people would be at that time.

Which didn't change he already put it out there, like a bet he wouldn't lose. Nor that Malia truly could use people.
Thoughts that spring in, swirl around, and slide away. Leaving the ground under his thought slimy and stilted.

But still incapable of not getting caught up on watching Danny make faces. The way he can make out the movement of Danny's cheek, his mouth, his eyebrows even in the little more than half-darkness. The way there's something in that, complicated as it is uncomplicated, that he wants to hold on to it. Wants it to be his only, and not touched by anything, anyone else. Even if it doesn't make sense. Even if it doesn't answer any question or problem.

When he just leaves it there, all of it, with that last senseless, pointless, flippant set of words and the settling quiet of the room around them. The way he's starting to feel slowly, inch by inch, like maybe he can let go. Relax away from attention and focus, away from too much awareness. Except for how, even when he rubs the side of his face in the pillow, eyes shutting a little, his attention and awareness of Danny doesn't dim in the slightest yet.

[haole_cop]

Everything's winding down, lead in his eyelids, sand gritting up his eyes, every breath getting slower, deeper. There's more to think about, there's more to wonder, there's a whole world of potential panic to trip and fall into, but it all seems pretty far away, right now.

He's pretty sure Steve wouldn't be watching him like he still is, if there were actually something to worry about. If he's disappointed, somehow. If there's something to second-guess.

Who knows? He's not up to analysis right now, when Steve's rubbing his face into the pillow like an oversized cat, face loose and tired, making something stupid and clumsy like affection well into his chest, like blood from a papercut. "Yeah, I will."

He nudges forward, eyes heavy-lidded, butts Steve's forehead gently with his own. "Now will you go to sleep, or did you have more you wanted to discuss? Like maybe you want my opinion on the niceties of due process?"

Bluffing. Blustering. Voice going low and grumbly, sleep-thick and aggravated, while his thumb starts dragging slow, deep circles in the skin of Steve's back. Not quite moving to work out knots, not hard or heavy enough to keep either of them awake.

Just around. Around. Pressing into relaxed muscle. Heartbeat against his palm, settling his head back on the pillow, eyes sliding shut once, blinked blearily open; twice.

Maybe it's okay. Maybe it really is. Maybe he really is. Like Steve said. Like he did. Maybe being new and slow and not really someone who does great with change isn't a death knell, won't ruin everything. He's willing to try, okay? He said so, and meant it. Because he's willing to try so much else, to do whatever it takes. Fight for it. This. Steve. Like he said outside. Sink his teeth into it and refuse to let go. Let it drag him so far out to sea there's no coming back from it.

Just so long as Steve's there, too, he doesn't mind.

[thebesteverseen]

"I would be," Steve muttered, with a glare through the mire of darkness. "If someone else would shut up."

But there's no actual steel or fire to his tone. Not when he's curving his back and stretching into Danny's thumb. Listening, with something like surprise and something like resignation, to realization the muscles through his right side, front and back are sore from holding in a different position for so long, even while moving.

It's not surprising, and yet it's not like he noticed either. There were other things to focus on.
Which makes the pressure feel even better. Sore, but good. Like it's pushing in pools of warm water.

Leaving him with his head still where it was, when Danny bumped him, pushing an urge to tilt his face and just kiss him again through Steve. Even though he doesn't do it. Doesn't move. Only watches Danny settle, through half closed, and mostly closed, eyes. Edging, without a single movement, toward the thought it maybe finally, actually, is okay. Because Danny is settling, and breathing in and out long rusty, stomach deep, breaths.

[haole_cop]

"So shut up."

Muttered self-righteously, like Steve might somehow have forgotten, and been talking about himself instead of Danny. He follows it up with what's got to be a conversation-ender; pushes closer and finds Steve's mouth for a brief, quiet kiss, mouth warm, pressing softly. Not clumsy, not insistent. Just to go to sleep with the feel of Steve's lips, a last breath that's full of him.

Eyes already closing, jaw cracking in a yawn as he pulls back. "Goodnight, Steven. Try not to accidentally kill me in my sleep with whatever weapon you keep stashed under your pillow, okay."

It's already fading off as he settles back into the pillow, thumb still circling gently, a little more erratic, loops going oblong, slower, slower. Along with his breath deepening, going slower, slower.

They're still here. Even if it doesn't make everything okay, it's a hell of a start, and it's enough. Enough to let him slide sideways into sleep, somewhere between one breath, and another.

[thebesteverseen]

It's so simple for him. Suddenly; and a good half of all the time. All the times that weren't ten minutes back. Danny just pushes into his space, rearranges his world, flashes warm against his mouth the way a light flares blinds your eyes, without warning, leaving you staggered, and everything goes on while you're still stuck. Already muttering words, yawning and curling into his pillow. Cajoling the world, in this dwindling roar. Like he's all in charge, never had a second he wasn't.

Leaving something in Steve's chest stumbling, bumping along just a step too fast and too dizzy, disoriented, right into the walls, even for all his quiet, stillness. Focused on the way the last breaths take Danny's shoulders exaggeratedly up less and less, as he slips away. Trailing the warmth, still, into Steve's side. Muscles and lower ribs, movements slowly, like they are being pushed through mollasses, before, between one breath and the next that hand on Steve's back succumbs to being boneless and heavy. Laying there only only.

Like Steve, watching him, in clips and flashes until he's gone. Somewhere else. Able to find peace now. Leaving him alone with the night, the waves, the wind, the darkness, those heavy breaths coming into and out of Danny's body. But not alone the way he was supposed to be tonight. Doesn't leave the night any of the ways it was supposed to end. Danny fighting, pleading, giving himself in, over, to something even newer.

Steve doesn't, honestly, think he's tired, or if he is he's so tired it's somewhere out the other side of it. Combined with how watching a spec through vision goggles for a whole shift night of black sky, makes it so easy to just stare at his face in the dark only inches away. Like somehow if he closes his eyes, it'll all change, again, rearrange itself, again, and he barely even know what to do with what keeps being left in his hands at the end. How the outcome keeps break every expectation he walks into this with.

Can't ignore the confused tangle that says it should have gone, be gone, but isn't, and will be, if he just closes his eyes a second.