There's a hand in his shirt. Scrabbling against the muscles of his chest, before there's fisted fabric and that attempt to jerk him closer. Which bows Steve's shoulders, dragging him a good half foot, into the space where Danny has his other hand moving this way and that in the dark, as the tense, but never quite peaceful, silence of the night here is broken suddenly by a windstorm of words.

When he knows. Of course he knows. Maybe he hasn't had to watch someone stare at Danny like they had a momentary job for him to fulfill. But he got to watch him find, fall for, and start taking all these steps towards having a serious future with Gabby. Serious enough to involve Grace. Serious enough that needed to involve the whole team, Steve included. Who got a front row seat to why this was not possible.

Was never going to be. Was not in the cards for what Danny liked or wanted. Didn't conform to his cookie cutter.

So. No. Maybe he didn't know what it was like to have someone eye Danny like he was a great distraction to be won.
He'd only managed, mannerly, to walk through, push, shove, stand at Danny's side for something that might get forever.


"Easy?" Steve cough the word out almost like a too sharply surprised, amused sputter. Breaking glass at the edges of itself. As he reaching out, to counterbalance being drug forward, shirt being shaken, for the first time since the car, since too long before that.

Too long, with the bar, only barely glancing, and a work day, of the same. Too many back to back days. When his fingers find the Danny's bicep and his shoulder, tighter, thumb brushing a little too hard for one stroke out and back, like somehow this isn't real enough, when his eyebrows raise. Sharp, rhetorical, exasperated, even when it makes him warm.

"What about you insulting or yelling at anyone who came within five feet of us did you think was easy?"