haole_cop | (no subject)

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"All I'm saying is, if we'd stayed on land last week, the chances of us getting boat-jacked and left to die out in the middle of the ocean in a sinking boat -- I'm sorry, dinghy," his hand drops from where it had lifted, preemptively, to stop Steve from arguing, "dinghy, I know, I know -- would have been much more slim. I'd say that there would easily have been a zero percent chance of that happening. Mainly because one does not use boats -- or dinghies -- on land. Don't get me wrong, I fully accept the possibility of something else horrible happening. It always seems to, every time we leave civilization."

Which is why they are here. At a bar. Having a few drinks, while Danny eyes the pool table and the TV with equal amounts of casual interest, catching a few glimpses of the previous week's games and keeping an eye out for the Jets.

More to the point, as great as it is that Steve wants to show him his favorite hiking trails or mountainous drives or fishing spots from when he was a kid, the guy is already surrounded by memories of a life that, all of a sudden, turned out not have been necessary at all. The thought of Doris McGarrett, hiding out somewhere on the island, unapologetic for doing what she'd called necessary and what Danny counters was cruelty, makes rage spark low in his stomach and burn up through his chest, so they're out of the house that she'd left so miserable and broken twenty years ago and planted solidly in the present.

There are worse ways to wrap up a week. Actually being around other people, instead of opting for Steve's lanai or living room or kitchen. When, somehow, miraculously, Danny is still wanted there. Around. And they've fallen into something almost like normality.

He hasn't thought about it too hard. That's how you jinx a good thing, and this is good, a bright light shining somewhere in the cave of bullshit that collapsed around them the day Fryer was murdered and Shelburne turned out to be Steve's not-nearly-as-dead-as-she-had-previously-appeared-to-be mother. Add it all to the firestorm of a custody battle from hell, and, look, all he wants is a decent night out at a bar before, hopefully, going back tipsy to Steve's house and enjoying the comfort of his couch or bed.

Is that really so much to ask?

"Best to just resist the impulse to tempt fate, my friend."

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Who else?

Anyone. Everyone. Because the world doesn't stay out of their lives, and there is always someone else willing to step in. He knows. Has seen it. Lived through it. And a month of...this, whatever it is, miraculously still happening, giving him a little something extra to look forward to, to hold onto during the worst days, when he and Rachel are at each others' throats and the whole island seems like it's about to go up in flames, is not enough to convince him that it could all end just as suddenly as it started.

"Well," he says, and now his hands are back in motion again, palms and fingers flat, forming a loose V in front of his chest, that expands, contracts. "I know you may have lost count, but I definitely spotted at least three people back there who would have been more than happy to get involved, but of course what it comes down to is you, right, I mean, I appreciate that you find my opinion so informative, especially considering it's not like you usually listen to me, but it is not like you can't make your own choices about staying or going."

After all, supposedly, Steve is a grown-up, though Danny has yet to see comprehensive evidence of that theory.

There are words happening. Steve is sure of that. About as sure of that as he is that the flicker of color and movement to the left of his vision is the light actually turning green. That same shade that's been painted all over Danny, he thought. Except this is. And he isn't looking at it. The light. Because it doesn't seem to exist anymore.

He's narrowing his eyes, just enough during Danny's barrage of words, when his hands suddenly start moving again, pulling a cord of barbwire tight around his chest. Tightening with emphasis at words like definitely and appreciate and usually and your own. When there is nothing behind him, and nothing in front of the camaro, that isn't right here.

Where he's looking right now, when Danny's voice is goading him to try and consider anything else. Like he should have.

But he rejects it, with the closest thing to a frown he's probably found in over an hour. Reject every edge of Danny's words that cannot be missed. That he was supposed to be considering other people. Other ways for this evening and tonight to be ending. Somewhere else. Somewhere that was not here. With someone else. Who was not Danny. When the whole feeling is so desperately sharp it's dangerous painful.

When he's shrugging, shoving if off, like it's not burning down the ground. "Nope. No idea who you could be talking about."

When he thinks he knows where that could go, what that might make Danny recite for him. When he's shoving out exasperated words, like an brittle edged order, when his hand is out, shoving into Danny's space, up to the place where his hair and his neck meet, dragging him forward to meet them, "Shut up, before I forget this is the only thing I've wanted to do all night."

When the camaro wasn't exactly where he'd planned for. In the middle of a city street. With traffic cams and possible other cars. But everything else is minute whine of noise beside the need to kiss Danny. To take each of those words back, like he could rip them out of wherever they came from.

Because it's not true, and there was never a chance, and his stomach edges over ice, with whether Danny didn't want this now, somehow, after making it clear for over an hour that every other person who looked at him should be burned alive for the assumption of right.

He's got one hand extended towards the windshield, words to tell Steve to hurry up and drive, already, did he miss the light, hello, Steven, is he now just waiting for the red to appear so he can blow through it? Except it all get s shipwrecked with the sudden electric weight of Steve's hand at the back of his neck and the way he gets dragged into the center of the car only to come up short against Steve's mouth. Against those words. Rough and almost annoyed and something he should respond to, only he's busy, his mouth is busy, opening against Steve's.

And it's just like all the shit that's been floating around his head just up and leaves. His hand comes up like it's instinct, curls at Steve's neck, thumb brushing along the line of his hair as it angles down, where sunlight picks out bits of silver in the mornings, on the few occasions Steve has stayed in bed long enough for the sun to come up at all.

Just this. Just him, and Steve, who is -- and the car, that they should definitely not be doing this in, at a green light, not late enough at night that no one could come by, but he can't pull away, finds himself pushing closer. As jealous of the space between them that he hates, that can burn away any time now, as he was of the eyes on Steve before, the smiles, the tossing hair and flirtation. Fingers tightening, and this is dangerous, he needs to let go, now, before everything catches back up with him and he can't. Before he remembers that he'd thought maybe, somehow, all this would slip through his fingers without him even getting a say in it.

It's like tearing out seams, though, to pull away, and he can't let go, is too selfish, fine, beyond selfish, because he wants this, Steve, for himself, and that's wrong but that doesn't make it any less true. Still gripping the back of his neck, licking at his bottom lip, and feeling like the night's just run over him like a train.

"There is something wrong with you," he points out, for the thousandth time, but with that edgy, sharp hollow in his chest smoothing itself over, "and this is driving me up the wall, so can you please, just, seriously, Steve, the light is green, so go already, Christ."

He doesn't know if he shouldn't. Maybe even better he probably doesn't care enough in that second not to. That he laughs under the rush of Danny's words breathing against his lips hard and a little fast. Complaining about there being something wrong with him, in that spastic half pleading half ordering line of words about how he should move the car. But he hasn't missing it. Not at all.

The pressure where Danny's fingers are still in the muscles of his neck and up in his hairline while he says this.

Somehow instructing Steve to keep driving the camaro even when Danny hasn't let go in the slightest.

And, this. This is not the place to do this. Not the place to watch Danny's eyes widen and too many things cross Danny's face in the shadows, too fast and dark. The wrong place to want to draw out and line each one. Tiny seats, and that damnedable center console. When he's still watching for lights out of any part of his vision, not closing his eyes once, like it just became tactically required.

Because it is. Because there's an alarm, with flashing light and flaming signs screaming to stop this now. But Danny's fingers are tangled up in his skin, his hair, and he can still see him lick his lips, and just watching that barely a second movement. Against those lips, swallowing, in the dark, not letting go, is setting fire to the center of Steve in a completely different, completely more dangerous way.

So, maybe, laughing is the only way to go. Because this is insane. Danny telling him to go but not moving, his own skin screaming at him to pull away, at least for five more minutes, which just makes him laugh. When all he does, is tip his head, looking up toward the roof like he's thinking, mouth tugging darkly irreverent as all the warmth flooded fighting against every warning. "Alright. Fine. The blond was pretty distracting."

When Steve only gives Danny the beat of a second or so. Long enough to let the line connect with the bartender he hadn't thought about until now, and wasn't referencing now. Even if the words would fit. Long enough to let Danny think it for a second, but not long enough to let Danny's face fall. Long enough maybe for a freeze, when he's smirking.

Still smirking, sharp and caustic and so pleased with himself when he rolls right on. "Sensitive and mouthy as all hell."

Which were not traits he would have told you he wanted in someone, but he wished tonight had been recorded.

Steve's laughing, and it's beautiful, the way he shines up, even in the dark, sick pale lighting seeping in through the windows, and Danny's pretty sure the light's changed at least once, but he does not give a single damn. Not when Steve doesn't move, doesn't pull away, not when he's smiling like that, laughing like that, and it's for him and not some overly friendly stranger with a nice ass and a pretty smile.

It's the kind of thought that knocks him backwards, like a sudden heavy wind, or a tackle to the shoulder, because it's impossible, but there it is: Steve, eyes gone dark and bright all at the same time, glowing like sun shining through water, and it's astounding how quickly that punches the air from Danny's lungs. Replaces it with something huge and fragile, an elephant made of glass, taking up the space where his lungs and heart need to work, straining at the pressure on his chest.

Which suddenly shrinks into a lump of cold ice at the thing that comes out of Steve's mouth, feeling like a punch to the gut, and making his hand freeze where it's still curled at Steve's neck. The blonde, the bartender? Images from the night overlapping in his head, flipping magazine pages, until he can just get back to those few minutes where she'd decided to stick around and give Steve a free drink, just as Steve continues and Danny blinks, trying to remember when she mouthed off. What the hell is Steve talking about? She hadn't said anyth --

The look he levels now is flat and unamused, nothing like the previous ten seconds worth of scrabble for his heart to start beating again and his stomach to lift from the cliffside it plummeted off of. "I hate you," he says, annoyed, and relieved, and annoyed that he's relieved, and he really does, he hates Steve like fire, a thousand angry suns burning themselves out in vengeance for that stupid trick.

"You enjoy this too much, look at you, you look like it's your birthday, it's sick." His hand finally lifts, and he waves at the road ahead, exasperated, all too aware of the pit he'd just tripped into, that Steve both pushed him into and pulled him out of.

"Will you get going, please?"

It should not be so sweet and victorious. Those three words, smoldering coals drug from Danny's mouth. But, oh, it is.

When Danny's pulling away, and Steve follows suit with no more than the fingers and hand lifting from his skin. Not that the words don't shove int the same direction. But if one of them can pull away, then both of them can, and they can stop doing this right in front of God and all. Even if at least a third of of that equation, maybe a half if he was lucky, were sleeping. But still. Unnecessary risks.

When Steve's snorting, as he looks up at the red light and lets his hands settle back on the wheel. Regards Danny from one side, without the faintest remorse in mind. Voice drift thick and mocking. "I'm just calling it how I saw it. You can tell me I'm wrong--" But there's nothing in his voice to even hint he'd listen or that Steve would believe it in the slightest, when he's rolling on.

"--But I'd hate for you to go on thinking my observation skills were as incapacitated as my free will."

Green light. Which sends the camaro, with a squeal of tires, back into motion, blowing down the street, outracing the wind with Steve at the helm only barely not breaking into a smile as he stared between the long dark road they all ran toward and Danny over there in alternating light and dark, depending on street lamps and shadows.

His mouth screws up, irate, and he turns his glare on the windshield, the spashing pools of red light, which, what the hell, can they not turn, already? Is this the longest red light of all time, or what, it decides to stick just as they're actually trying to go?

Someone should really talk to the DPW about this intersection.

"You," he says, pointing at Steve, before his hand opens wide, makes a wax-off half-circle in Steve's general direction, "are seeing things, okay? Don't you go getting any ideas rattling around in that empty head of yours, alright, how you saw it. There was nothing to see."

All bravado, sounding convinced, even irritated at the suggestion, at the easy confidence in Steve's voice and the smile he's keeping under tabs but that's shining out dark and amused in his eyes, through his tone, and it grates. Grinds down on that raw patch that's been rubbing against sandpaper all night, and Danny definitely has no intention of admitting to anything, least of all how crazy the whole scenario made him.

Jerking back in his seat against the momentum of their acceleration just feeds his aggravation, gives him another rock to lob at Steve's head from the passenger seat.

"I should arrest you right now for reckless endangerment, will you please stop driving my car like you just stole it off the lot?"

"I'd like to see you try," Steve said, smugly, flicking a look at him. Even if all he catches is the dark profile of Danny's face and his upper body as the light from the passing lamp fades. It doesn't matter. It's enough. The car. The evening. Danny sitting over there, acting less and less innocent of his actions the more sharp and irate he gets about it.

Steve doesn't slow down in the slightest really. The car is outfitted with the best for his class and size, and seen to every single time it has any issue that can be claimed as work related. And maybe a handful that might or might not be. You never know with cars, and this one has certain been through enough in the service of their job.

"Nothing?" It escapes, dryly hilarious. "Nothing as in nothing? Nothing to see, because nothing happened?" which is why he was yelling from the first second he got in the car, only momentarily soothed in the second he got told to shut up so he could be kissed, before going back to nursing his nothing at a seething volume.

About the nothing of three different people who only existed when Danny wanted him to consider something else. But not now. Not with any reference to the fact of any of the rest of it. That never happened, apparently, as much as Steve never noticed any of the three of them.

"Right." So rich with sarcasm even standing still. "So." When Steve rolling right on through that. Like a tank through a glass window. "Then, we should be able to just enjoy a quiet, peaceful drive back." At break neck speed through downtown at near midnight.

When silence was not something he was banking on Danny getting far into lest each extra few seconds or minute of silence continue to multiply those words begging to escape and be thrown at his own head until he exploded each new again. It's fine. Steve thinks, as he checks his mirrors, still warm and light.

He'd waited most of a night to get to this as it was. He had not problem with it lasting as long as it could now.

"That's right, nothing. What, you need me to spell it out for you?"

He's aware that each argument is just making Steve more and more certain, but he can't help himself, fueled by aggravation and the sharp burn of embarrassment, still added to the sting of someone else thinking they get to touch Steve, like it might be allowed, like it might be wanted. More than half his own anger sparked by the uncertainty of not knowing, himself, because, what the hell, it could have been, right? It's not like Steve pushed any of those girls away, or did anything to shut them down.

But that way lies madness, so he grinds his teeth and grips the oh-shit handle above the window and wrenches his thoughts in a different direction.

"Yes," he agrees, even though it is physically painful to agree with Steve right now, while Steve is a sparkling fuse in the other seat and is far too sure of himself for his own good. "Quiet, peaceful. Two things I always associate with Steve McGarrett. However, potentially, yes. That is a thing that could happen."

He is nothing is not fair to the potentials, after all. It's just that, after two years of this crap, plus the added insanity of the last month, he is not what he might call optimistic that their ride can really be anything of the kind.

Yes, he does. He wants Danny to spell out every hilarious, little detail from the moment he slammed his beer on the counter. Or before that, even. Before when Steve wasn't paying attention, because he didn't know there was something to be paying attention to. That it wasn't just all systems go, a few beers and shooting the shit.

He knows he's already going to find himself watching Danny any time he interacts with someone now.

Has he missed it before? It's not something he can place to standing out in the last weeks. Which have been...busy, tight, heavy.

When there comes the first flicker of remembering he's headed back to that place, combined with the question of whether his prickly, snappish partner will stay. He really should stop feeling the at heavy resignation he tries to settle into his shoulders, down the muscles of his lower back, at the idea of being in that house without a distraction now. If the answer is no.

If he's just dropping himself off. Which he doubts while casting a sideways glance at Danny without saying any of those words, as he leaps on agreeing that silence will somehow last in the cab. When he he knows he's pushing, saying, broad lack of concern laced with too much rising challenge, "Oh, good. We'll just that now, then."

"Fine."

He throws up his hand, like he's tossing the whole conversation aside. "Good."

Lapsing into sullen silence has never worked out well for him before, but it's his last line of defense, here, because he really does not particularly want to get into the details of just why this is bugging him so much.

All of it. Not just the girls. The way Steve is ignoring the fact that there were girls, at all. How they just wouldn't stop coming. And, worst of, how he's going to be looking for it, all the time, now, because it will always be there. There will always be people looking at Steve and wanting him. There will always be girls hitting on him in bars, on the beach, randomly throughout the day. There may even be guys hitting on him, which...just sort of makes Danny's brain short-circuit, stalling before he has to decide how he would even cope with that.

After Steve said it's brand new for you, back at the beginning of everything, but not that it was for him, because it wasn't, Danny's not an idiot, he can tell that this isn't Steve's first rodeo. And he wonders about it, every now and again, before that same clutching hand grabs hold of a fistful of stomach and he has to stop before he unwittingly beheads the next person to ask Steve something innocuous, like the time.

Like now, when he has to pull himself out of his frozen thoughts, still antsy, worried down deep, all too aware of how fragile this all is, how easily he could still lose it, what that would do to him.

Offering it like a reluctant fold, against all his bluffing. "You know what, there are better bars to go to, anyway."

The hands go up and the topic goes out. Hard. Fast. Forceful. Those few words.

For a sleek, small sports car it suddenly has far too much space, seems too big, when everything gets quiet. The engine runs quietly enough and mostly of the lights are green. He might take the posted speed limit as a suggestion, more during work than this, because there's more reason then, but he does at least obey those laws. When he knows it's going to work. He doesn't doubt being right.

At least not at first. Not for a good few miles. Except that Danny is still silent. Still looking out his windows. Still too still. And he has to start wondering if maybe it was the wrong thing. The wrong option. When Danny's spent most of the night shoving comments in edgewise, sharp and angry and demanding to be heard, or standing at an edge quietly. When maybe it was the worst thing he could have pressed now.

When it's the last thing he wants. Okay. Alright. Really. No. He'd rather have Danny read out whatever the newest court case updates he'd gotten for the week were than sit in silence. When they're away from work, from the radio's and their teammates, and the job, as much as Five-0, without their phones on all night, is ever off the job, even when they're off hours.

But. Especially after what he just saw. That horrible travesty charading as subtly. The last thing he wants is silence now. With him. When Danny couldn't manage it for anyone else all night. When it's only adding to it, the slow claws dragging down the solid chamber of stomach, questioning whether maybe the end of the night might come very soon, and he may have to let it.

Something like this was bound to happen sooner or later right?

That house is both too close and not close enough.

Only another minute at best.

Before the tension in his lungs snaps with a side shuffle of nearly painful relief on that side of his chest, and a flood of possessive, reflexive feeling trying to re-choke him, for the tone those words come in. When Danny isn't exactly surrendering, but he's commenting. Oblique to the reference, to the evening.

Steve lets his head tilt, cant on the head rest to look over, as he's turning on to the road that will get them there. There's a faint air of success very subtle around his mostly bare expression, when he is at least regarding Danny with something as wary, not all that interested in planning another such night second free from it, as it is weightedly curious."Yeah?"

"Yeah, emptier ones."

He glances over to check in, rolls his eyes at the way Steve is looking at him now, letting out an exasperated breath. "What is that face, huh?"

He wants to warn him not to start anything, not to get into this with him, but part of him's ramping up for an argument, too, jsut like it had when Girl Number Two started running one manicured finger along the edge of Steve's sleeve. He wants to shove Steve's head into a wall, wants to grab his arm and shake him. His hands are itching to take hold of that cotton t-shirt and drag on it, and it's impossible to say whether he'd rather yell at Steve now or kiss him again.

Like it's his fault. And it is his fault, it's just not something Steve can actually control, this thing that makes people gravitate towards him. It's something he can't switch off, wouldn't, couldn't. The whole team is here because of it. Danny's here because of it, because after the first job was over, and they thought Victor Hesse was dead, Steve just never suggested that Danny go back to HPD, and Danny found that he didn't want to. Found himself already entangled in his brand new, psychotically violent partner, who already would not let a little thing like a nickname go without having to know every last stupid detail about it.

That part, he has no control over, sure. It's the rest that's gotten under Danny's skin, the fact that Steve might not have encouraged any of them, but he definitely didn't send them away, either, and, what is wrong with him that that is even any kind of a big deal? A little harmless flirting never hurt anyone.

He should really remind himself of that more often, but it got a little hard to see through the fog of fury clouding his brain earlier.

Steve doesn't know the answer to the question. Whatever it's ever supposed to be. He really never does. And it usually ends up making him make a worse face if he even tries to ask about what it is Danny is blundering at with that question. Undoubtedly leading to hand waving at his face and details Steve can hardly follow to make any kind of sense in the first place. So he doesn't ask this time.

He turns on to the drive for his house, which is racing closer and closer, and say the easy to say part, "Empty bars don't stay open long."

And, bars. Bars were crowded with all the people you didn't find anywhere else. Who were looking for other people who made their appearances in bars. All of whom actually paid rather good money for a mark up on their drinks, their food, and all entertainment offered in the establishment. It didn't make it not worth it. But it didn't mean it had very far to go before it hit its glass ceiling.

The car comes to a stop, with the engine going off and Steve opening the door. Two very close movements, with a look toward Danny as he's unclipping his belt and getting out of the silver car. The quiet night everywhere breaking in as there were no walls. The sound of the breeze in the palms and the ocean in the far distance crashing on itself and the shore.

Keys still in his hand, in the grasp of fingers and half dangling, warm and cold metal both digging in against the skin of his palm, when he's looking of the roof toward Danny, keeping his expression relatively casual in inquiry. "You coming in?"

It's almost like Are you staying? which isn't exactly a question that gets asked, and it's not like he doesn't still have to leave sometimes even after saying yes to the first, for work, for Grace, for other things, but more often than not it answers the other question to.

Though, in this moment, when the center of his chests twists, like its not casual, he'd be glad even with the first and not the second.

He shrugs at that, because it's not about the bars, or how well they do, it's about the number of people in them that would be likely to try and flirt with Steve right in front of him. Fewer people, fewer problems.

Of course, he's also considering the idea that staying in for the next few nights (weeks, months) might not be a bad idea.

Really, he has just never been so grateful to see Steve's driveway appear, for gravel and shells to crunch under his tires, and for Steve to finally slow the car down, after hurtling through thankfully empty streets. A low, violent throb is starting in his blood, beating against the anger that's still spiking into the center of his head and chest when he least expects it, and he takes a deep breath of cooler air as he gets out, only turning, once the door is closed, because Steve is asking that question across the roof.

Making Danny frown at him, forehead furrowing. Leaning against the car roof to wave one hand, idly. "Well, that was pretty much my plan, yeah."

It's not like they've talked much about it. Every now and again, one of them might suggest meeting up after work, a casual see you later? that ends up with Danny coming over here sometime after work, and not leaving again until morning.

Which, even after tonight, he'd pretty much figured would be what happened, once Steve left with him and not one of the multiple willing volunteers from the bar. Right? Steve came with him, kissed him at a red light, and he's got this itch under his skin that he's starting to get to know, a need like thirst.

"Come on, what's wrong with you?" Jerking a thumb over his shoulder, he gives Steve a bemused look and pushes off the car, aiming for the front door.

It's a good question. He's pretty sure it would go spectacularly bad if he said you. Most of all, because it's not true.

That doesn't keep it from sticking for a second to the inside of his head like mass adhesive got attached to one side as slid through. Danny could have changed his mind somewhere around the third or fourth beer, among the snapping, or during yelling about Steve even getting in the car. When Steve knows, okay, where this is all coming from and he's probably as relieved as he isn't at Danny's answer.

But more than he is. That it doesn't stop here. Or, well, didn't stop there. When he's holding on for a second to way Danny had grafted in against him in the car, almost fighting with the center piece, fingers light against the edge of his hair, when everything melted away for Danny. For a few seconds. Before it all came back a few seconds later.

Steve looked up at the sky, a quirk of raised eyebrows, before he shook his head and started for the door, "Nothing."

Not missing, the second after its out, that it's the same word they'd been tossing for everything that didn't happen, too. But not letting it show, or slow him down on his course for the door. Or for catching up with Danny. Either, or both. Unlocking the door, without touching the security box. Or really even looking towards it.

Rather like he doesn't stop in the doorway, even though the door opens and it lands somewhere in his center, like a heavy metal weight. Not like it just appeared. More like it just shifted, tipped on it's side, drunken and a little woozy, and needed to make itself known again. When absolutely nothing in the room has changed.

Which never stops it from being true, also, that everything that was anything already has been, irrevocably, without a touch, too.

"Yeah, 'nothing' is all over the place tonight."

Grumbled, but good-natured, mainly, if curious, because Steve's glee seems to have bled all away and that's -- that's not what he wanted, at all, and right in this second, Danny would put up with a dozen girls all vying for Steve's attention if it would get that brilliancy back in his face, the tease back in his voice.

To let him enjoy his evening, for once.

At least Steve's not arguing Danny coming in with him, which is good, right, which is a start to figuring out if things are still what they were a few hours ago, yesterday, last week, because it's one thing for girls to be throwing themselves at Steve and another one for this to have taken a turn for the unwanted.

But Steve's not arguing anything, which is sometimes a sign he's in a good mood and sometimes one that he's getting stuck in his own crazy head, and the way his shoulders are set, the way he's not grinning anymore, the way there's a minute pause in his steps once he opens the door and lets them into the house all set off warning bells in Danny's head that, really, seriously, he was hoping to avoid tonight.

That was part of the point of getting out to begin with, the way this house has been weighing on Steve ever since he came back from Japan without Joe and with Doris, and Danny hates it. It's a low-boiling hate that he's not allowed to let off the handle, that snaps extra aggression into every conversation with his lawyer, every fight with Rachel. This is always here, niggling at the back of his skull, impossible to fix, impossible to ignore, and it just shovels coal onto the banked fire still smoldering in his chest.

All of it focusing on the tattoo he can see, edging out of Steve's sleeve. The one the girl complimented, and traced. That Lani kept looking at, like she wanted to do more than track each line with her fingertip.

That might not have existed at all, if Steve hadn't gone into the service. Which he might not have done, if his father hadn't sent him away. If.

His hand reaches through the quiet dark of the front room, finds Steve's arm, just above his elbow. Jealousy and fury and the angry, confused hurt of the last few hours, month, striking up like a snake. Hauling him back, as if Steve were really on his way somewhere else. "Where are you going, huh?"

He doesn't know exactly where his head is when it happens.

It might be with the invisible itch that's woken back up between his shoulder blades. Or the negligent amount of alcohol sloshing around inside of him. Or the endless stack of this room, against a to do list in his head, things that needed doing here, that he put off more often lately. Or the newest unnumbered thing they aren't talking about, might not even talk about.

But he does go still, it all goes still, for just a second when it does happen.

Danny's fingers wrap over his skin. Warm and known (not smaller, not pushy) and insistant (not trespassing or feigning request). Everything silences, snaps to attention, head turning back to Danny before the rest of his tilts that way. When he's looking back toward Danny's face, half question and half denial all tangled up there.

He hadn't been going anywhere, hadn't been about to do anything. Again. Not anything yet that Danny might think he has to throw at his head. When he's all tight and looks a mess of tense and angry all over again, even without the lights. Which Steve isn't quite sure how stepping into the house happened to make even more broadly painted on him.

When it would be incredibly easy just to stare down at him in the dark, of this empty rooms, that both feels it and feels everything but empty, and say nothing. But it's the same urge, too expectant and guilty and not all at once, that makes him just return about as solidly as Danny's words, "Nowhere." The same as where he'd been heading the whole evening.

Even if Danny had thought he should be anywhere else, with anyone else who decided to throw their hat at him, somehow. Like it was that simple. Just go. Like every second wasn't lined in every single snapping, biting sign he gave that anyone near Steve should not consider coming near him, talking to him, looking at him, touching him, trying to do a single thing. Which didn't add up in the slightest. But there is was.

"Then come here."

Tugging, hand moving from Steve's arm to the front of his shirt, like he's allowed, like it's his, fisting wrinkles into it as he gets right up into Steve's space, everything boiling over: the girls, the court case, Doris, the look on Steve's face every time he steps into this house, these days. Tipping his head back and eying Steve with every inch of Jersey attitude he can dredge up from the bottom.

"You pretend whatever you want, but I am not sorry, okay, do you have any idea what a strain it is to try and be decently polite to some random girl who's undressing you with her eyes?" His free hand goes to his temple, explodes outward. "I thought my brain was going to melt out of my ears. I would never hit a woman, but I tell you I was seriously wishing there were at least one trap door in the place. And you."

Shaking the hand caught in his shirt, and he's looking up at Steve, sure, but he never feels short doing this, pulls himself up with a mix of righteous anger and jealousy. His hands want to sneak up past the hem of that shirt, cover Steve's skin, wipe away any other memory of any other touch, and just the thought makes hims flare up again, a rush of heat pounding at the back of his neck.

No one is allowed to touch Steve. He takes it back, no one should look at him like they think they've got a chance, no one should flirt with him, and Danny can't do a damn thing about it out there, but here, here, is different.

"Nowhere. You think you're getting off that easy?"

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?"

Edited 2012-12-02 05:52 (UTC)

"Insulted? I insulted no one."

Out loud, anyway, and he pushes closer, every inch of skin thrilling in a sudden slamming crescendo when Steve's fingers clutch his arm, digging in hard, thumb stroking along the fabric of his shirt in a way that is anything but gentle, and it's like throwing a can of propane on a fire. Everything that's been building up all night twists in his stomach, snakes up into his ribcage. "And I did not raise my voice even once."

Like Steve would possibly have missed any of that. Like Steve doesn't know every one of Danny's tones and moods, well enough that he can call him out on them over the phone, even if he's not there to see it in person. He knows when Danny wants to hit somebody, when he is running the ragged edge of restraint, has seen him hit rock bottom and give sanity and restraint a day off.

So he knows. Danny's banking on it. That the girls' might not have noticed, but Steve definitely did.

"You didn't seem to be having any issues with it."

Either Danny's reaction, or the attention. The whole stupid fiasco of an evening. It just left Steve grinning, delighted, teasing Danny for it even after they left the bar behind, and that deserves a flash of temper all it's own. His hand leaves Steve's shirt, bounces the edge off his chest, reaches for his arm again, fingers wrapping around bicep, pushing up under that sleeve to cover what he can see of the tattoo.

It's possessive. Pissed off. And he doesn't give a single shit, okay, he has spent more than enough time tonight not getting to lay his hands on Steve in any way other than the prescribed, appropriate for public ways. Hand sliding rough up over his shoulder, to palm his neck. "Let me ask you this, do you like driving me crazy? Don't answer that, I already know you do."

It's angry and claiming. It's the only thought that charges through him when Danny's hand wraps around his arm, and his gaze slides there, murderous and a little impossibly desperate. Like he still needed to cover this space from anyone pop up in the room or can't stop still needing to remove the hand that had been resting on Steve's arm, asking for more, even though Steve got her to stop.

That part he doesn't fight against. That part just inflates this white hot electricity through him. Jump starting straight through his heart, and down through every single vein. Because even here there's something for him to defend against, rail from-for. Because Danny's voice is shattering sharp, with so many different things inside of it. When his hand moves up, and Steve's stomach drags with it, suddenly.

Almost against the notion. Against wanting Danny to move or let go of that spot, even when there're suddenly fingers sliding needles up the tight shirt over his shoulders and then the more sensitive skin of his neck. When Danny's still pressing in, like even this is too much space. Words so pissed off, scalding the air, filling his chest with helium, and something so big it pressing out against his ribs again.

Threatening to crack his ribs, to make space for itself, with every new explosive word Danny was shooting out.

Words that should be a threat, should be insulting, should be like steel spikes pinning him into place for knowing what would happen and giving in and going where Danny wanted anyway. For lapping up every single second from the moment he noticed, and even on the ones he hadn't. When he wouldn't forget the look on Danny's face, or the way he held himself, for weeks. Weeks, if ever.

When Steve matches him for the stretch of voice, but it's not insult he throws back. Christ. When his hand snakes up from that shoulder. To find Danny's hair, fingers up the back of his neck and into his scalp, and drag him closer. Close enough Steve can see the faint reflective qualities of his eyes in the dark and feeling the rush of his breaths, the brush of his chest, the tighten of his hands, dragging him with back into the center of a field of fire.

But not kissing him. He's so close he should be. So close the fact he isn't make his heart feel like it's going to spasm until he gives in. Like he's denying a necessity. Like breathing of his heart beat.

But he doesn't. He leans in. Tall and looking down, that thing in his chest so fucking hot and wide, like the fire is only learning how to take flight in this job, with no inch of remorse in it when it washing through him, overwhelming like a tide, like every second spent watching Danny take on people who more like wind and ghosts than real to him. When all he wanted was more. All he wanted was to touch it, to drag Danny against him, and taste it.

"Did I like it that you couldn't stand still?" Fingers digging into that hair. Chest tightening like a vice with each breath out and swelling like a balloon of guilty arrogant possessiveness refusing to apologize with each new word. "Couldn't handle polite conversation. Or any other person. Without firing off your mouth, shoving in, answering things that weren't directed at you."

Christ. How is ever supposed to not have liked it. Seriously? Danny, could just stomp in and own all of it. Shove each of those people aside. Because he can't. God. He can't. At all. He wants all of this. If he could cut Danny open and put this part of it in himself, to remember it was real. To feel it, so it still didn't feel impossible, like he'd just somehow dreamed another insane, upside down spin to his life that was less a life and more a tilt-o-whirl that fallen off its track.

"That you were acting--" When his mouth can't even stop, not here, not in the dark, no when it's just them. "--jealous--." The word just slides out, oozes. Warm and smug and so his. Accusation point as much as shielded possession, that is his and can't be fought free from being his now. "--like you wearing a damn neon sign, that I'd be surprised if anyone missed, over nothing?"

Edited 2012-12-02 15:24 (UTC)

His other hand finds Steve's hip, seeks out a beltloop, grabs it, tugs on it, and it's not like Steve couldn't take him down if he tried, but Danny's not exactly a wilting flower, either, stocky and strong and he can give as good as he gets, when Steve's fingers grip into his hair and pull. He wants to shoot someone, hit something, is in the kind of mood where tying a person to the hood of his car seems like the perfect solution to a night gone so far south he can't see anything but the bottom he's scraped along. He wishes for a car chase, a violent suspect, someone he can slam into a car with their wrists behind their back and cuff them.

But there's no criminal, no chase. No one to book, or cuff, or fight; just Steve, and the glass ceiling his blood pressure is shattering against. And he knows he can't hide it, okay? He never has been, these things have always played across his face like a movie getting skipped over. It's how they ended up here to begin with, because he couldn't strangle it that first morning Steve came back, in the diner, the most innocuous spot in the world, as Kaila dropped a napkin with a lipstick kiss practically in Steve's lap and Danny's head exploded into a jealous rampage.

"I can handle polite conversation just fine." Grinding, vicious, the way every one around them had hamstrung him into sullen submission, because he wasn't allowed to do this, couldn't say anything, do anything, step in and force them to clear off. "That's not the point, Jesus, I'm not gonna just stand around and be fine with some random woman touching you, they don't --"

They don't get to. It's the only clear thought, clear like a campfire licking flames into the dark, like a bolt of lightning blotting out the details of the world. No one does. He doesn't care if he's got no right, if they never decided, defined, it doesn't matter when it feels like his heart is being ripped from his ribcage and all he can do is fight it with whatever he's allowed, and push for more until someone finally shuts him down. The idea of losing Steve to some pretty smile and flirtatious glance is too absurd, shoving a violent mess of murderous thoughts into his head, unstoppable and spiraling into insanity.

This insanity, that's got him shoving forward and pulling at the same time, dragging Steve into his space, pushing into Steve's, like he could possibly wipe away the memory of anyone else even considering being there, other people, who were, what. "Nothing?"

Nothing, like Danny said, nothing? Or nothing, like actually, who cares about the girls in the bar, nothing? "Did that seem like nothing to you?"

Some tiny spark of what is left of his rational mind is trying to pull his finger off this trigger, point out that nothing is exactly what he wanted, for them, those girls, any other person who looks at him, to be exactly that, nothing, ignorable and unimportant. But Steve is looking so damn arrogant and that dark brilliance is back in his face, and Danny just wants to shove up under his skin and stick there like a bruise that won't go away.

Bare inches from Steve's mouth, with his heart hammering out staccato gunfire, feeling like he's losing his mind all over again. Jesus, fucking -- they don't get to, no one gets to take Steve away from him, no one gets to even try, not if he's there to do his best to stop it.

Edited 2012-12-02 16:20 (UTC)

He has to jerk forward, when his pants get dragged. Hips jerked by pants, knees and thighs colliding, a shuffled step he wasn't planning for and they're quickly losing any space there was. Quickly losing the being any air left. Like this space, with it's wide layout and vaulted ceilings has shrunk sudden and drastic in a fire flash to the space barely right here. Not even enough of it for a bubble around them.

When his stomach seizes and coils on contact, driving his fingers in Danny's hair a little harder, and his other hand to find the side of Danny's body. Rumpled fabric and ribs. The fast rise and fall of them, like air can't seem to get out or in, among all the words that are taking up Danny's throat and his mouth. When Steve literally can't take his eyes off this, can't even wish for light, to see this more, because he can't envision it.

Anything that involves being one step away, one inch away, not flush with Danny. Able to feel him nearly vibrating to break open.

When Danny's mouth might as well be throwing shattering glass shards, vicious, defensive and offensive, all at the same time. While he's grafting himself in against every inch of viably able skin, and Steve is lost between the want to remind him this whole night was his and just to bite his tongue, finally. Because Danny even sounds like he just wants track down that unnamed girl and slash off her finger tips still.

Like it was Danny she was accosting by touching Steve, and not Steve, himself.

How. In any sane and rational mind is he supposed to hate this. He should feel terrible. He might. A small bit. It's not what he wanted, wants. But he does, too. He wants all of this. The anger. The possession. For everything to matter. Everything. Even that word. Confused and angry and thrown back at him two more times. Making him shake his head, heart headed for jumping jacks.

When he enjoys it too much still. Sharp, painful, hot, beautiful. That question barely taking a second to have, "Yes," fly out of his mouth as dark as it is bright. It's nothing. They were nothing. Absolutely nothing. He didn't feel anything like this. Need anything like this from any of them. Names and faces, sliding in and out. When the only thing that stayed the same was Danny. At his side. Danny. Loud and annoyed.

Like an electric current he wanted to shove his hand into even if it might burn off all his skin, wreck all the walls left standing.

Because. Just. There isn't even an explicative strong enough. When he's staring down at Danny. Because he doesn't want anything from his days, anything from this night. Not as much as he wants Danny. He wouldn't have even been there if it wasn't for following Danny's lead, and him wanting to have a night out, where he could bitch about the day out.

When both of them are ruined and riddled with fuck all from the world messing up anything they try.
Delighted with Danny, but beyond done with the rest of everything and everyone that don't matter.

"Because it was, Danny." Nothing. When he's leaning closer. His forehead is going to be brushing Danny's skin in second. The whole world is just going to turn into an inferno that's based on the rhythm of two hearts beating in, through, against his chest. "You're angry -- for what now? A drink, at a place you wanted to go? An accident, you would have stopped just the same if you'd been in my chair? One game, you didn't say no to either?"

He knows what it is. What it is more than that. When he's joining to jerk Danny even closer, even when there shouldn't be closer. When his spine is threatening to turn itself into lightning, grinding through his muscles, setting fire through his back, along his ribs, making his shirt too tight, hot, constricting, dividing. "I wouldn't have even been there, if it wasn't for you. I haven't wanted, even for a moment, one thing that wasn't--"

Except the word catches, angry and hot and bright, like silver melt fired so high it's nearly bleeding white-yellow. You. You. You. When he's done. He's just done. And his head tilts and he's demanding Danny's mouth again. Crashing his own against him with force that should involve far more space or lead up than the little space it gets. When he wants this still. He wants all of it. Insanity. Desperation. Anger. Possession.

Without a bar or people or the world or the stupid center console. Because this is close, and it's not close enough, and it's already so much everything he should step back and box it off, and he can't. He can't anymore than Danny can't. Because close is never close enough, and every time he can't have any of this he's so on edge, threatening his own seams like they are fragile as the first day and not decades old anymore.

Edited 2012-12-02 17:08 (UTC)

Steve's talking, and Danny's brain is misfiring, short-circuiting into cataclysmic shutdown, saying anything that comes to mind, just to layer his voice over Steve's, while the space between them crushes out to an infinite nothing that is still not close enough. Could never be.

"Will you shut up, why are there words coming out of your mouth?"

When it feels like his veins are full of gasoline and the touch of Steve's forehead is the touch of a lit match, chasing fire through his blood and choking him with it. Asking about Danny's anger, like Danny could possibly explain it in any way that does not paint him as a possessive lunatic.

Anger that he can't explain, that is way too much for what happened, and he knows it, should shut it down, because he can't. Just can't react this way every time someone so much as glances in Steve's direction with even the most marginal of interests, but he can't push it away, either, stomp it out or pretend like he doesn't care, because he does. This. This. Steve's hand, forceful against his ribs and stabbing electricity into his head, Steve, looking at him like Danny is some storm that's blowing in off the water and Steve's determined to race him out. All brilliance and bare, ragged lines that every one else looks at and sees as pretty, attractive, something to appreciate and admire, but that Danny knows like he knows his own face.

Knowing how he wants that sentence to end. What word should be there. The one he'd use. When the only thing he wants is Steve. And for the world to just lay the fuck off, just for a little while; for Grace to stay with him and for Rachel to drop this custody case, and for Doris to -- he doesn't know, morph into some person who can't hurt Steve anymore, and for Malia to heal faster.

But Steve. More than anything, in this second. Wanting him with every cell in his body, every scattered, melting thought left in his head, every striking beat of this stupid bruised goofy heart that just doesn't get the message, ignores everything except the look in Steve's eyes and the matching dive off a cliff in Danny's chest.

And finally, finally, Steve's mouth. There. Shutting off light and air and making Danny push into him like this is a fight and not a kiss, fingers carding into Steve's hair, arm wrapping around his waist, hard. Recognizing this feeling as desperation, as fear, as really actually thinking he might lose this for no good reason at all. With "Christ, Steve," jerking out of his chest, against that mouth, before Danny's kissing him again, hard and wanting and to hell with the rest of the world, this is what he needs.