(no subject)

[haole_cop]

"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."

Comments

[thebesteverseen]

Steve watched the reaction. The smile, smothered in glass, lip wrapped against dark glass, thinking that it was both a marvel he wasn't thinking worse of the second. Well. Before this second. When it slips barely, translucent and hazy memories. But the small smile might be worth far more than his own passing reaction. Private and personal, very nearly smothered in glass, like Danny was trying to keep it to himself.

Which splashes warmth, watery and unrushed, up across the insides of his chest, like gently crowning waves.

He doesn't really mind either. Some place that isn't his office or his house. The office is too public, with too many people who don't know things. But as much as there are seconds he feels the sting of frustrated patience with glass walls here, there's a part of him that is relieved not to be in that house. That house that had always screamed its history, with so little changed in nearly two decades.

And now it did even more. The lives of three people shattered and scattered over a murder that never happened, cased in ice there. Everything has always reminded him, but now it does, again. Trips him up in wholly new, different ways. Simple things like a cup, or furniture in a room. Everything and all the memories he lived with and in and through suddenly all that much clearer, louder and more demanding again.

Like the desk his father sat working late into nights after, before separating and shipping off he and Mary, working so diligently to keep them safe from an event that never took place. Like a punishment that either had no crime to lay its feet, or a deeper one than Steve wanted to keep facing. When there was no escaping it no matter which way he looked, room he chose, place he came or went there.

Which he didn't have to, here. Sitting with Danny, somewhere completely innocuous, with obvious boundaries but still Danny's smile.

When Steve can easily, wrap back to where they were, digging into Danny's smile and his words in both. Letting his gaze narrow in plain, and very bland, speculative cynicism. With just the hint of blankness laid out over all of it, like perhaps, he couldn't be sure at all: of the answer to the question or the likelihood. Like it wasn't the other of his jobs. Land and Sea. "Because it's not just as likely you'll get held at gun point or hijacked at a bar in a busy city?"

Though not as many people were found dead with cut motors at bars, admittedly either.

[haole_cop]

"Well, there would be a lot of witnesses."

He gestures, expansive and loose, towards the people around them, clustered into groups of two or three or four, a few individuals wandering through the crowd. Girls in brightly colored tops and jeans, guys in loud shirts. Everybody talking, relaxing on barstools or standing easily.

"Not exactly your major crime waiting to happen."

True. They've seen better situations go far worse, and he's been on the job long enough to know that just about any place, no matter how innocuous, can devolve into sudden panic and violence.

He's not really getting that vibe right now, though, which is nice, considering he doesn't have his gun on him, firearms being generally frowned upon in bars and them being off duty. Inasmuch as Five-0 ever is.

The angle away from Steve doesn't last long, though; he finds himself tipping back that way, beer bottle lifting and dropping with the motion of his hand, moving in easy circles. "Dark, empty parking lots are a much better bet for that sort of thing. Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty sure that there is not a single place on this planet that I -- or we, which would probably be the case, all things considered -- could not get held at gun point or hijacked. It is an inevitability, apparently."

[thebesteverseen]

Steve doesn't really think the number in here would contest much, given places they both had guns or very dead bodies appear before. In far higher numbers of people and far classier situations, both. If considering the odds, if was still nice. Relaxing, chilling back against the bar, a beer in his hand, Danny's voice running along different scales of amused, even when it was argumentative or pointed.

It's something about that. All the things that slide in and out from his thoughts, like waves gentle and peaceful for once. Even in the subject aren't all. That makes some of this easier to sink into. Toward. It might not be relaxing per say. But it was better than feeling like he was sitting in quick sand, counting the sand and the time passing while it slowly drug him into itself again.

"You could pre-empt it and wear the tac gear every time you aren't sleeping." Yeah. He's nowhere near serious, but he was tipping his head, eyes canted to be glancing toward the ceiling like he might be considering it. Seriously considering it. Up there with the grenades that loitered frequently in the glovebox because even the trunk was too far away for them.

Which isn't really a consideration. Steve would spend too much of his time having to get Danny out of it. Not that he was against the notion itself. But Steve would be hard pressed not to miss the way his shirts clung. Something he'd had an appreciation for before, but lately it seemed to be something that stuck out. How far they pushed up, where they strained at the sides when he turned to look at someone.

The lines of muscles he could picture perfectly sculpting themselves in cloth. Which he's not going to look over at.

He's going to take a drink of his beer, and add, smartly flip. "Maybe they have one you can put a clip on tie, too, somewhere."

[haole_cop]

"I'm beginning to think that's something I should have been doing all along." A quick quip back, while Steve is glancing idly up, like the ceiling is giving him suggestions on how to further being a smartass. Back and forth. Words aimed like the cue ball on the pool table, breaking each comment into a dozen different paths, all more or less aimed at perfecting Steve's ability to aggravate Danny.

Which he's not really doing, though the momentarily bared line of his throat as his head tips as enough to make something not unlike aggravation skitter under Danny's skin, thin legs pricking and stinging. "Utilitarian. Efficient. A little paranoid, maybe, but an excellent conversation starter. 'Why are you wearing body armor?' they'd ask, and it would be a very long story that would end with me explaining how people shoot at me on a near daily basis and also that you keep incendiaries in my car, so I like to keep my own person as safe as possible at pretty much all time, just in case of random shrapnel."

One hand lifts to his collar, where it lies, cool and unbuttoned, against his throat, and he tugs at it, eyebrows lifting into a skeptical arch that pushes deep ridges over the bridge of his nose.

"Oh, you want the tie back, now? You run out of other things to criticize, or are you just hitting all your favorites? Clip-ons, come on, this is not a bar mitzvah, I'll have you know, I never owned a single clip-on tie. They are an affront to the whole idea."

[thebesteverseen]

Steve's mouth lifted, smiling regardless of intent or thought to it, as Danny took it and ran with it. All those words pouring out, painting a picture Danny would certainly consider. Painting it into broader strokes he hadn't even considered, other people seeing Danny in this hilarious state at all time. Other people who, Steve was certain, would shake their head with him.

Though Kono would rag on him in a memorable fashion Steve would stand back and watch with unmitigated pleasure and no game plan on stopping her in the slightest. She would have done remarkably well in basic, in that respect. Kono could hold her own with just about anything when it came to that so far.

"If one of them blew up the car-" And he says, with the severity of being completely serious, without it touching the brightness of his eyes or the way this is still very much a part of this whole riff. "-the vest wouldn't help you."

There is a momentary very, very slight stiffen and swallow when Danny is gesturing to his throat, yanking at his collar, pulling the cloth tighter on his shoulders, accenting the space where the shirt is already unbutton, golden hair there at the edges. When Steve was rolling his eyes, but mostly martial his will to make it look simple, easy and blatantly, exasperatedly, amused when he's having to look the hell away from Danny's hand, throat, chest.

It really might not be working, though, when his eyes linger, against the skin flickering the beat of Danny's heart causing his own heart to pound harder in his chest, or was that his throat, before his eyes raised to Danny's. Words formed in his throat like stuck ice cubes, he was going to push out. Any second now. Barely enough time to catch the sudden tumble of fast movement to his other side.

The way he moved before quite catching what it was and snapped out an arm, catching his hand on the arm and side of what appeared to be the patron on the closest bar stool to him trying to come off of hers in the least likely way meant to do anything but accidentally face plant the ground.

[haole_cop]

It's, seriously, like having a hand on the gearshift of a V6, or maybe like pulling the pin on a grenade. Definitely playing with fire, tugging at his collar, which started out as an innocuous, unconscious gesture that's suddenly clarified itself into heady immediacy with the way Steve's eyes drop to that spot and stick there, sending a knife-thin line of heat along his collarbone. Looking up, with an expression that makes Danny fear for his shirt, and also sort of wonder what he's gotten himself into, feeling like a pinned bug. Twitching legs knocking unrelated words and thoughts into his head, like the fact that Steve's eyes really look almost green, in this light, and that he needs to seriously brush up on his observational skills if he has been missing looks like this for the last year, it's embarrassing, is what it is.

The sudden motion next to them snaps some singing wire in his head, startles him out of his momentary brainfreeze, while Steve is already moving, catching the arm of a girl who is -- come on, no wonder she fell over, by rights her ankles should snap just under the pressure of trying to walk in those heels, right? Never mind when one of them catches on a barstool rung, unsurprisingly sending her into an undignified dive.

"Sorry," she gasps, pushing glossy brown hair back behind one ear, staring at the ground. She's got a pretty party skirt and top to go with the pretty, party, apparently lethal, heels, and long legs with a golden tan that definitely didn't come out of a bottle and a tiny tattoo on one ankle of two cresting waves, and he can actually pinpoint the second when she goes from being embarrassed about falling into Steve to being embarrassed and also pretty damn happy about falling into Steve.

She doesn't outright say the word jackpot, but he assumes it's implied in the way her eyes, big and blue and blinking a little dazedly, widen when she looks up at him.

Shoes like that should come with lessons. Or at least some sort of test, to make sure you have the ability to move around in them without haplessly almost killing yourself and interrupting the people next to you.

"Thank you," she's saying, lifting her other hand to balance herself against Steve's shoulder as she pushes back up onto the stool, and is it hot in here? The AC must have gone out, because Danny feels suddenly like his shirt is stifling. There is no need to linger that long, right? She's upright now, she can let go.

She does. Only to tuck back a few more shining curls, eyes never leaving Steve's face, a shy smile starting.

"God, that was almost so embarrassing."

[thebesteverseen]

Steve's looking down and then up. Quick glances between the ground and her face, or the approximation of it, having slid from his chair about as fast as the first moment. When most of her weight settled into his hand and arm, and she was catching her shoe still, and his only thought aside from not letting her fall, was not dropping the pint glass in his hand, or sloshing it on the ground, himself, or her.

The heels aren't terribly well chosen, he has to admit, but you know, they aren't really chosen for walking. It's all about muscle extension and probably has far more to do with that shiny plastic coloring than he'll ever really understand in women. Appreciation he has, even for the long, slim golden legs, muscles there settling, stretching, testing weight and balance again as she gets her footing.

Understanding and caring and even attention to it, not really much in the way of either.

Nor a want to be changed to having any of them. When all he does is barely glance toward the hand pressed in on his shoulder, when he's standing straighter without straightening entirely to make her reach up, rather certain she's got herself now. "It's fine. No harm, no foul."

And no one hit the ground. He still has his beer. He actually has the wave of feeling pleased he thwarted that being anything from a solid impact with the ground to a broken wrist or ankle. Something that would have sent them both needing to help her far more than the few seconds catching her before she could fall. Which plays itself out across his expression, when he's looking down at her, head tilted, expression faintly concerned by way of simply checking.

"You good now?" Just in case she did happen to twist or pull anything. Not that it seems like it.

[haole_cop]

"Perfect," she smiles, sitting up a little straighter, shaking her hair back, and Danny notes with a strange disassociation, like the world slowing down around a crashing car, like the strange silence in his head sometimes in the middle of a firefight, that she's twisting on the stool so her knees brush against Steve's hip.

It could be accidental. She's talking to him, after all, and he's standing close enough that she would, inevitably, bump into him with that particular motion. So it could be.

Just like the sudden pounding of blood in Danny's ears could be totally unrelated.

"Good thing for me you're such a gentleman," she's saying now, eyes on Steve's face like he's the only goddam person in this bar, faint pink high on her cheeks.

"Yeah, well, those bar stools," he hears himself saying, hand tight around his beer bottle, "they can be tricky to navigate. You never know when one is gonna try to toss you off. Fortunately for you, no necks broken, day is salvaged, well done, Good Samaritan."

And that's it. Right?

Wasn't she going somewhere? She's looking a whole lot more comfortable now, glancing at Danny with some bemusement before turning her full attention back on Steve, smile breaking back into flirtatious apology.

"I'm happy to get you another drink, if that one was a casualty," she offers, which. Come on. Did she not get the message? Danny's hand is sore against the bottle, muscles aching, but it's that, or toss the thing between them, just to see if shattering glass will get her attention away from Steve.

It doesn't look likely.

[thebesteverseen]

It's not like he misses it, okay. It's not like it's hard to see a neon light flashing in your eyes. Especially when the divides between his world for over a decade were jagged and vastly apart. The same distance between endless weeks of back and mind breaking work in lesser able people, and the one of this world. With normal people and bars and the obvious reason they come here. That still related in his more to the novelties of bars in ports, crawling with 'juices.'

The reason Steve isn't missing it, almost like you can count it off. The way her hair gets flounced, or her shiny white teeth press into her bottom lip hopefully, as she looks up at him. When the hand that was at his shoulder is dropped, only to be replaced by her bumping her knees into his hip, calves and feet, bouncing just enough against the jeans and his own thigh, knee. Almost like an invitation to step even closer, without the words.

There's the smallest part of him, nearly tempted for a beat in time, beyond thought or action or choice, like it's easier to handle people that way. Be someone else. What they'd recognize and respond to. Smile bright and a little more expected than felt. That way lies the same as he's ever been, flirted with, or received the smile of a pretty face. And she is pretty. Her make-up isn't overly done, so the way she flushes actually highlights straight through it.

Except -- and this is the important part;

Except standing less than two feet off to one side is the first person he hasn't had to pretend anything for. For over a month.

Over a week ago he would have told you he'd never pretended or hid or faked anything where it came to his partner. But he'd always know. Somewhere in the back of his mind. Cold and sharp and vicious, it was at least one percent a lie out a hundred. Because he'd always been pretending this wasn't here, hiding it if he could even from himself, faking his way through those hours that flayed him bare before everyone except Danny because of Danny.

This is because of him, too. In a whole new way.

When the urge rises, more safe habit than considered option, and he doesn't want it.

He doesn't want to fake smiling or talking about his life or laughing about inconsequential things right now if he doesn't feel like it, or pull out a line in the space of time that is this minute, wholly divested from the one nearly two minutes ago. When the flash of heat, just from looking at him, watching Danny's eyes widen in recognition of it, seared through his skin faster than any words. Before this happened.

When it's really pale. Everything in front of him. Lovely hair, lovely face, tiny, well-bought outfit and insensible, but whatever, heels, and a body that means she either eats well or works out, or both. And he feels. Nothing. Nothing beyond a very programmed, even ignorable, appeal that does nothing but brush the skin of habit, or expectation, and slid away. Bare and bland in comparison to this other thing. This one he can't defined or name or forget for even one second.

"All in a day's work," Steve said, easily conversational but not inviting, sticking his one free hand back in his pocket and lifting the pint glass that was more than half full. "And, thanks, but it seems to have survived fine, so we're both in luck this time."

[haole_cop]

She does not seem inclined to agree that it's lucky, and her legs are still not moving, while Danny feels a little like his bottle is about to shatter in his hand. Not great -- sliced ligaments and tendons and muscles, blood and glass everywhere, but it would almost definitely get rid of her.

With her shiny hair, and promising smile, and those knees that will not stop brushing against Steve's jeans, a tiny nudge that he feels like a backhoe shoving into his stomach.

"Maybe the next one, then," she says, agreeably, and that should be the end of it, right, her friends should show up or her tab could come -- Danny would even take the bartender over her, right at this second -- but they don't, and she keeps sitting there, and then his head explodes in a sudden fury of heat that dissolves into a red haze through which he can barely see her tapping the edge of Steve's tattoo, just under the edge of his short sleeve hem, with the pad of one finger, a light and teasing touch that makes him want to break her hand right off her wrist.

"That seems like a hell of a piece," she's saying, he thinks, but he can't really tell through the fog clogging up his head, the blaring sirens and flashing lights and the sudden outraged instinct of no, that's wrong, she isn't allowed, no one is allowed to touch Steve like that, that's his.

He doesn't care. That it's a ploy to gain conversation, that it would be considered totally acceptable, if a little pushy, flirtation. That it has probably happened to Steve a thousand times.

He just can't. Watch that surfer boy smile replace the brilliancy of the actual one. Watch Steve's eyes go lazy-lidded and considering. Watch her touch him, like she has any idea who she's reaching out to, who she is so casually laying a finger on, like she sees anything past his blue eyes and easy smile and the shoulders and lean line of flat stomach. Like she's got the first fucking clue.

He puts his beer down, too hard, hard enough that it foams irately, spills over the mouth and down along brown glass to his hand, which he ignores, taking a step closer, around, more to Steve's front than side, aware that he's barging in, totally fine with the faintly flat look she gives him, a little bemused, like she thinks he ought to be playing along. Right, wingman.

Yeah, no. "Oh, so, you seem like some kind of connoisseur, right?"

He's gesturing to the tiny wavelets on her ankle, the Diet Coke of tattoos, compared to Steve's, which, seriously, if she touches them again, he is going to drag her barstool to the other end of the room. He's grinning, but there's something tight about it, as she blinks, trying to decide whether she wants to include him in the conversation.

She who hesitates is lost, and he goes on, pushing his way in, stubbornly, like always. "Are you waiting for someone? Because you seem, you know," he gestures to her outfit, "you look very nice, like you might be meeting someone, and we wouldn't want to interrupt your evening."

[thebesteverseen]

It says something that he doesn't reach up and catch her arm by the wrist before the first pad of a small finger is pressing against his skin. Tracing the bottom line of his tattoo with the edge of a nail, before pushing at the cloth at the bottom of his sleeve. When it is small, and he has to remember how very breakable the human wrist is. Especially the smaller bones in a women's wrist. Especially one who really can't seem to take the hint he handed out nicely first.

When he's reminding himself at least she's so far in the category of politely pushy and not jettisoned over the line.

Enough that, just maybe, the slamming sound behind him, whatever it was. Wood and glass and sloshing beer. Snaps some of the tension from the muscles between his shoulder blades, when they nearly quiver with the strength of holding still instead of reaching out. When he's surveying her pushing her luck, thinking about commenting with either the which term of service he got it in, which won't help, or, perhaps, the number of sessions and hours it took to complete.

Because he's down to a slightly narrow eyed, staring pause, but he's not going to rudely about face away from a bar fly.

But that's a decision that is very suddenly, very verbosely, taken right out of his hands and his mouth.

When Danny rounds from behind him. Close, but not touching. Close enough this a triangle, where Danny is foisting himself half between them, her stool and the little space he was already standing between his and hers to catch her originally. Shooting off words, sharp and fast and not nearly tinted enough they aren't almsot outrightly insulting first and then bare in the way of disturbingly obvious invitation for her to get up and vanish instantly. As instantly as possibly.

Leaving Steve giving a sharp, bewildered look at Danny, Danny who looked tense and annoyed straight through that smile suddenly, more than at the girl who was touching him. When the search for earlier words, is utterly replaced without a need, by the necessity of handling whatever the hell that was. Is. Something.

When it's for her benefit, but he might as well be saying those words to Danny, when he's looking at Danny more than her while speaking. "You're going to have to excuse my friend here. He's had a long day."

The last words are almost seriously solid. Like a question about what the hell Danny was suddenly doing there, snapping at her like the woman had insulted his daughter or the air he was breathing. Sure, she had bad planning in wardrobe or awareness and she was being invasive, and it's not even that Steve wants her to stay. But he wouldn't have chunked her out the window like a soulless, renegade pin-pulled grenade.

[haole_cop]

To his horror, she laughs.

No. He's not trying to be funny, this is not a bit, this is the very real danger of his blood pressure blowing the top of his head clean off if she does not stop touching Steve. But there it is, she grins, like she's got no idea what's going on, like she's just deciding to take his words at face value, like he's actually helping her along instead of debating the best ways to get her to leave, immediately.

"Oh, no," she's saying, waving off Steve's apology, which, that's another thing, why is Steve apologizing for him? He meets that questioning look with a faint raise of his eyebrows, like he's got no idea what Steve might possibly mean, as she goes on. "There's nothing to interrupt, you're fine. Besides, everybody needs to unwind after a long day, right?"

That's not what he'd meant, but he's hamstrung by the way she's playing along, and caught in a net of possible rejoinders when she turns back to Steve, shrugging slim shoulders elegantly. "Not a connoisseur, but...do you mind?"

He minds. Danny minds. Danny minds very much the way she lightly pushes at the sleeve of Steve's shirt, to expose a little more of that tattoo, while he is suddenly flooded with a crystal-clear memory of that ink under his fingers, traced, gripped, covered and curved around while he drifted off to sleep, and it's like an explosion hits, soundless, against his skull. It's impossible to look away, like she's yanking on a cord attached to his ribs, tugging on it with every half-second she doesn't move her goddam hand.

Seething anger whites out his head for a second, but it's no better once the fog clears, because, what, really, are his options? He can't actually snatch her hand away. He can't tell her to leave. He might be able to fake a call from Chin, but that seems desperate, even for him.

He sort of wishes someone in here would open fire.

But he's caught, like a fish on a hook, by the way her finger traces lines of green, aqua, blue. Stomach hoisted somewhere out of his body. Her finger, where his had been, not so long ago. Like she's got any right. Like Steve might, he doesn't know, want it? The touch. The attention?

She fits the bill. Right? Not Cath (which is still complicated in the extreme to think about, so he bypasses it for the moment), but pretty, flirtatious, looking for a night of fun and not much else. He's seen it before, he'd be stupid not to recognize it now, or forget how many times and how this has all played out for Steve in the past.

He doesn't want to look at Steve's face and see any evidence that might be true, so he drags his eyes away from that finger, to look at her, feeling like his jaw might shatter from tension, a spiking pain starting in the small of his back, shoving a hand in his pocket so he doesn't do anything impolite, like strangle her.

"I don't know," he says, just to keep himself in the game, knowing he's being abrasive and not giving a single shit about it, "you want crazy tattoos, this place is pretty good, but not as bizarre as L.A. I saw a guy there with a tattoo of a face on his face, very odd, possibly some sort of metaphor for multiple selves? Anyway, like he said, it's been a long day. You know how it is, you want a couple quiet drinks, unwind."

Which is the opposite of what's happening inside his chest right now, sharp coils cutting into every breath. "This place is getting pretty busy, though."

[thebesteverseen]

Danny blew off his quick cover-up like it was nothing, the raise of his eyebrows, and a stubborn set that looked nothing at all like Danny didn't know what he was doing. Just like he was stubbornly refusing to acknowledge he was doing it as he was doing it. Far less obvious and graceful was at least the laughter and polite brush off from her. Even if she had not let go of her bare grip, fingertips pressing in against his bicep.

Tracing against skin, pushing his sleeve higher, over the raise of the lotus petals as she pressed for a completely different question and action combination when he hadn't ever answered the first one. Due to Danny stepping into it and then having to be cleaned up after. Who seriously seemed to be taking anytime she opened her mouth like it was an invitation to snap at her. Like she'd done something.

Like he'd been insulted, or interrupted, had some reason to feel slighted, or be jealous, like he'd been with Bull Frog or Kai--


Something in Steve's head went to a skittering halt, as his free hand, pint glass included, raised toward other his arm. Pressing on the cloth of the shirt, even if it meant brushing where her fingers were just then. When he was trying to question too many things. The irritable snapping, and the slam of sound behind him that must have been, when his eyes dropped briefly, a fast flick, and yeah Danny's beer bottle is gone now.

When he's juggling, but he'd always been good at that. Even when something sharp and fast, and nearly hot, is shoving under his skin with a confusing suddenness, as he looked back at her. Her, still with no name, leaning into his space as much was just barely into provoking, with her hand on him, and all of Danny's whip-sharp insinuations that might as well have been screaming for her to go away now.

When Steve's brow furrows a little first, distracted apologetic this time. "Actually they're personal." Beat. "From when I was in the service." Which is true. That much just sort of slips out, when really he's trying to compare Danny and his coffee cup from weeks and weeks ago, to Danny now. Not even looking at him and shoulders suddenly tight wound. Like it couldn't possibly be.

And yet. It was. Wasn't it? When all Steve could remember was something he'd nearly forgotten in everything else. When he wanted to be sure, back, back right at the beginning, when the ground split open and Danny hated him, admitted he hated being near Steve, because it was too much with everything he was feeling. When can't get you off my mind, and I should not, should really, really not, be feeling the way I am, but I am was so much more important than what came before it, I can't even handle watching some random girl come flirt with you, how sick is that?

And even after he pressed not seeming to understand hearing it, where Danny was admitting it made him want to punch himself in the face.

Christ. He really can't help it. Somewhere, something far too big was trying to explode the inside confines of his ribs, unaware there was only too little space to put anything. With all those organs and muscles, his lungs. But it didn't care. At all. It was trying, bubbling up, pushing into all the spaces, shoving outward, looking between them. Aware he shouldn't, he shouldn't be staring at Danny, but unable to keep from looking between them, from looking at him, too, suddenly.

[haole_cop]

He really thinks he might actually prefer getting shot, to this. At least grazed. Punched. Kicked. Anything but the way her face lights up, like she thinks she's found an in, eyes widening with what has got to be overly exaggerated curiosity.

"Oh, wow, you were in the service? What branch?"

Her fingers spread a little wider, palm resting against Steve's shoulder briefly, before she pulls them away, yanking Danny's guts right along with that touch, incoherent fury bubbling into a high-pitched shriek in his head, the wail of a teapot boiling over. Unable to keep from focusing on her hand, a laser sight graphing every second her fingers are on Steve's skin.

His free hand lifts, scrubs at his mouth, and it's like trying to lift a tank with a fishing line, but he manages to drag his eyes away from her, to glance at Steve, only to shift away again almost instantly, because Steve is looking at him with this...face, and he doesn't know what face that is, just yet, it's a new one, but it doesn't look unhappy. Which is just great, it's great, just perfect, and Danny wishes he hadn't put his beer down.

At least her hand is off his arm, now, so he's a little less likely to want to rip his own hair out, but she's leaning forward, all interest, clearly considering she's gotten past the possible conversational rejection, and he would love to clarify for her just how inaccurate that thought is, except Steve is not doing anything to push her off.

He's not really being inviting -- Danny can see that, even if she can't -- but he's not pulling away, either, seems fine with her sticking around, and that is just, you know. He bites down on the inside of his bottom lip to keep from saying anything too blunt, anything outright rude, but she is seriously trying his willpower, and Steve is not helping. Which, okay. Fine. Maybe he's actually okay with this. Being flirted with. The attention.

And it's childish. This need to shove his way into the conversation, between them, the sudden desire to take a fistful of Steve's shirt and drag him out of touching range. When his fingers itch to wrap around his wrist, his arm. Cover up the lower edge of that tattoo with his hand.

Which he can't do. Here. In public.

And he should really stop considering getting her name just to see if she has any unpaid parking tickets he can bust her on.

"The Army," he says, just to be a dick, and feels like a jerk for saying it, but it's an old joke and he can't help himself, even if it's feeling a little more bitter than amusing right now.

[thebesteverseen]

She's lights and Steve doesn't grimace but does have to place why, when her words fill it in right as he recalls the last ones he said while he was busy with far more important thoughts. The same kind that can't stop his mouth from twitching at the edges, threatening to tug them upward. When Danny's eyes are glued across them, and Danny snaps out the answer that makes him frown in time worn insult and annoyance.

He is. When the annoyance of the tested, long known, long harried points on that one still sticks hard each time. In his pride. In his past and present, a large part of who he is. He's started to see how Danny is forcing himself right in between, standing near to them, almost between, answering each one of the questions or statements she tossed at Steve before he would be allowed to answer them himself.

Like somehow this nameless girl need to what? Be chases off before, god forbid, she had what? Some chance at actually gaining his attention? The reaction to glower at Danny masticating his service again is slamming a wealth of warmth start to splash wild and faster through his chest. Amazement slamming headlong with ludicrous amusement. When he wants to start marking this all down in his head. Danny's tone, each of the words, the way he's holding himself, demanding every minute.

When Steve's vaguely annoyed he can't reach out and do too many things.

To lean over and let his mouth, brush far too close to Danny's ear, right against the shell where it makes him shiver, and tell him to breathe. To pull him, and his too loud, too sassy, too sharp, obvious worried to the point of angry biting attacks, mouth over and claim it. Shove Danny into silence and some understanding. That this is nothing. That even in comparison to some of the situations he'd been foisted into it in the past its even more nothing.

When he hasn't a clue really how it plays out on his face, when he shakes his head, recanting those words with doing what little he can. Reaching out with his left hand and rapping those knuckles, from the fingers wrapped around the glass, against the side of Danny's the corner of Danny's shoulder, with what could easily look like an easy reprimand.

Correcting from somewhere in that mix of everything, even if it was still a little sharp toward him and more polite toward the end for her. "Special Forces for the Navy." When he glances somewhere over Danny's head and across, and it strikes him pretty much as he spots it. Mostly because he's probably saving the bar from Danny's sudden rant at every word headed in the direction of Steve.

When he opts, like it's casual. Just a followup. "Hey, Danno. One of the pool tables is open now, if you still wanted a game."

[haole_cop]

Okay, so he's a jerk. He knows this about himself; Steve knows it, too. Manners get tossed out the window with alarming frequency between the two of them, and that's fine.

Right now, though, Steve is looking a little like he's seriously considering kicking Danny in the shins, and Danny can't help it, he seriously can't, if he opened his mouth now he'd probably say something about how she should stop touching him because Steve knows five hundred ways to kill a person using only the objects in his immediate vicinity, the bar included, and he can get pretty twitchy, and it would just go downhill from there, which just makes him set his jaw tighter, wondering when, exactly, his mind decided to take a rain check for the remainder of the evening.

He's always been a jealous person. Sure. Has gotten so used to forcing his way into the attention of people who don't take him seriously as a cop, a dad, a husband, that it's a kneejerk reaction to get louder, to shove his way in, but he wasn't always this bad. Rachel had always gotten her fair share of attention from other men, who looked at her and looked at Danny and asked the same goddam question Steve did the first time he met her, because it was, apparently, so entirely unbelievable that a woman like her, all elegant class and beauty and whip-sharp intelligence, would possibly want to be with him.

And then it turned out they were right.

Right? So now the tables are a little turned, and he's jealous of Rachel and jealous of Stan, because they have what he thought he and Rachel had, and also, they have Grace. And he tries so hard, but how can he possibly compare to Step-Stan's millions, and the things he can get for her, do for her?

So now there's this. Another unbelievable thing that he's been allowed to have for way longer than he would ever have guessed, and, you know what? He just seriously cannot handle the idea of watching it slip away, right in front of him, without doing a damn thing about it.

Which is all too much, way too much, clogging up his head and heart and spiraling him into a cycle of angry thoughts that all pause, interrupted, by the light rap of Steve's knuckles against his shoulder, making him look down at them in sudden bemusement before following the glance behind himself, and God bless the empty pool table. He'd like to buy all the players who just left it a drink.

"Yeah," he says, hating the way the alarms in his head stand down, the way his back relaxes, minutely, at the idea of escape. How that nickname (and he's never going to be able to hear it without thinking of Steve murmuring it low and rusty and content against the back of his neck, is he?) drags him out of murderous thoughts and back into reality. "Let's grab it before it gets snagged."

[thebesteverseen]

He watches as Danny seems to get the first burst of clear air, in the way his shoulders drop, ever so marginally, and he looks back, glomming on to Steve's exit strategy like he needs it to be able to keep going. When Steve is actually trying not to let the birth of the sun going on in his chest massacre the control of not smiling. He's probably failing it even.

How can he not? How is he supposed to ignore this?

Steve turned back to -- he never did get her name, did he? Oh, we'll. That's probably for the best, since he doesn't actually care and doesn't have a reason to know it in any moment beyond this one -- raising his eyebrows and tipping his head. A clip, short movement, that goes with his words, "Remember to be more careful next time."

About as simple, regimentally, flat and direct as though he were dismissing any civilian witness, HPD officer on a scene or in his office, or one of any number lower ranking officers or team members he's had over the years. Not even waiting for her words or the expression on her face when she'll realize he's been sidestepped in the middle of thinking she had something. Which she didn't.

Prompting Danny with another push of his knuckles, to turn and go, before he takes a drink from the pint glass, again, finally, stepping through and headed with him for the as of yet unclaimed table. They hadn't actually discussed playing, but at least Danny hadn't argued. No. Not at all. A strategic retreat that he'd grafted to without resistance. The whole thing. That reaction, every sharp word flooding through Steve head, bubbling up through the cavity of his chest, flooding into his head.

The smirk that was taking his mouth as he pulled the glass down was uncontrollable. Slipping through his fingers, even as he barely cast a look at edge of his peripheral vision toward Danny at his side. Coloring distant disbelief, easy exasperation and such warm arrogant smugness, when all he asks, can say here, as they're approaching the table is, "Really?"

[haole_cop]

He's got enough time to snag his beer from the bar before Steve's pushing at his shoulder again, and it is really alarming how much easier it is to breathe when they're a few steps away and the girl is still sitting, looking a little bewildered at the sudden change of weather, at the bar.

Except there seems to be something wrong with Steve, some bizarre lightness to his step and the look on his face when Danny glances over, shoulders set, all ready to get into it, whatever Steve decides to toss at his head, because Steve can never let anything go and he loves getting under Danny's skin. With that one word, colored strangely amused as much as it might be annoyed, making Danny burrow deeper into his own stubbornness. Look, he's not proud of himself, but what else can he do? These are things he should have realized before coming out here: that Steve is an exceptionally attractive man and that most people go to bars to get picked up or to do the picking themselves.

Stupid, stupid. Pissed at himself for not thinking it might happen, even more for letting it get to him, what does he care, he's seen Steve get hit on a thousand times before, right?

It's just that he doesn't want anybody else doing it now, is that it? Doesn't want other fingers tracing over his skin, doesn't want that stupid heavy lidded quirk of a smile to shine for some random barfly. It's pathetic, and he knows it, which just makes him even more annoyed at Steve, the girl at the bar, and the world at large.

"What?" Almost growled, sharply defensive, as he's crossing to the other side of the table to take a cue and find the chalk. Noticeable. Of course it was. Of course he was, and he doesn't want to talk about it, okay, he'd rather just forget it even happened, though the relaxed air he'd been enjoying at the beginning of the night has pretty much packed its bags and left, leaving behind a sore sense of misuse and the knowledge that he'd almost definitely been out of line.

"Shut up and rack, huh?"

[thebesteverseen]

Yeah. That only makes it that much more impossible. Not smiling.

Grabbing the triangle and dragging it toward the center-top, placed exactly on the faded dot there. He snorted at Danny's sharp, belligerent order slash denial of that being anything. When his cheeks might hurt, even when he's sarcastically adding to Danny. "Grab me the tallest cue you can find."

This night is totally going to be worth it. Already is.

Even a game with a stick that definitely won't be long enough and will inhibit a perfect game, not that it'll stop him from being good, because of his height and reach. When he usually cares and half the time avoids it without his own because of it. But even that is the smallest of inconsequentials in comparison to the show Danny is putting on over there.

When he's rounding the table checking a second pocket, before catching a hand on the bumper and leaning over to check the side of the table. Not even considering, smirk still hanging on his mouth like its been burned into his muscles. Brightening up his eyes terribly, when he pulls back up. "Hey, it needs three quarters."

Obviously this is Danny's job, too. If nothing else than to continue to snap about.

[haole_cop]

It's infuriating, that smirk, and Danny's jaw sets further at the sight of it, because, what, Steve thinks he's being funny? He's braced for some other comment, something from Steve to let him know that he's on notice to get his head back in the game, but there's nothing; just an enigmatic smile and a comment about the table, which just makes Danny's eyes narrow, suspicious. Steve never drops anything, okay, Lieutenant Commander Single Track Mind is entirely incapable of letting things slide. He has resorted to interrogation techniques more than once to get something out of Danny, and he never rests until every last secret has been pried loose.

So it's a little unsettling, to say the least, that Steve just smiles and doesn't say, do, or threaten anything, making Danny twist his mouth, exasperated, as he tosses a cue over. "What, you can't pony up seventy-five cents?"

He could probably get the house to pick up a game for him, too, but Danny's sure as hell not going to put that option on the table. "Would it kill you to pay for something yourself? Do you even carry money? Because I am seriously starting to consider the very real chance that you just never have your wallet on you, in which case, you also need to stop driving my car, before I arrest you for driving without a license."

Ignoring that stupid smirk, and the even more stupid chain of reactions in his chest, beginning with a sudden sideways jerk of his heart and flopping into warm waves lapping around his ribs as they grow tight, while something skitters relentlessly under his skin. Steve's not helping, leaning all loose and languid over the edge of the table, drawing the cotton of his shirt snug along the curve of his back, making Danny's stomach curl tight, knotting in his throat.

He takes a deep drink, and considers the possibility that he should take a long hard look at the ridiculous state of his life, that this is even happening to him, and Jesus, look at that smile, Danny needs sunglasses just to look at it dead on.

"Quit hanging around, the sooner you accept the fact that you are about to get schooled, the easier it'll be."

[thebesteverseen]

Steve just stares at him through the rant at his wallet, face pulling long and far more fakely-blank, patiently exasperated, with the need to listen, or for Danny not to just be following his direction already, than anything really going on beneath the surface. It's actually such old hat now. Tossing Danny a bone. He's got a card. No ID, but a card. In one of his many pockets. But there's no point in going quiet and doing whatever, not with Danny.

Not when he's huffing and snapping at a boil. Not when Steve can keep tossing him things to rail and rage against. Both because it continues to be the thing dragging floods of warmth up through him, and because there is too much that honestly cannot make it's way to falling out of Danny's more. No matter how much he deserves a right to say. He doesn't have it here, and Steve is precarious of that line. Even more reason to throw things in Danny's way.

When he tilts his head, raises his eyebrows like he's considering and holds out his hand for the money,"'Pparently not."

Beat. "Where's my pool cue? How are you going to accomplish anything if you can't even collect the correct pieces to start?"

The disappointment doesn't reach his eyes, but he lets his voice get sardonic and a little sharp. Easy to play along, easy to keep up, and press a little harder. Distract and demand. To try and convince himself he isn't simply because his smile won't stop, even when it's pressed smaller. Because he just wants to watch it. Even more. Tossing gasoline on an unstable, unpredictable, fire.

When he's so caught. Like there's a damn hook sunk somewhere right about the middle of his chest, with all those waves of light and heat. Watching the way Danny moves too fast, the ways the muscles in his face keep tensing and the words fly like draggers. How he keeps looking around and then settling on Steve, who isn't really looking anywhere. (And could with a very small margin for error, still point out where the five nearest people are and how little effort it would be to knock them out between the triangle and the table.)

He shouldn't. But it mesmerizing. What the hell is he supposed to make of it.

Danny going off like a junk yard dog because some girl nearly tripped and landed in his lap, and decided to do with that what people do in bars. When Steve couldn't care less for the girl, who is somewhere behind them, maybe even pulling the same stunt again, because he can't even look away from this. Feeling the warmth and cold, such vastly different wants and actually realities colliding all under his skin.

[haole_cop]

"Christ, you're hopeless."

It's digging in between his shoulderblades the same way he's digging in a pocket for a couple of quarters: two from the last beer he bought, one more found in an aggravating medley of pocket lint, receipts, and a movie theatre ticket from the last time he had Grace. Three, altogether, that get slapped into Steve's waiting hand, that smile still knowing and aggravating as hell, blackening the storm cloud hanging over Danny's head a little further. "Here, you cheapskate, let me ask you, who pays for things when I'm not around, huh? Do you just shake people down like a kid running a lunch money racket?"

Or maybe helpful, hopeful women pay for him, who knows, Danny doesn't, and that's fine. Just fine. As he gives the line of cues a frown, grabs the longest one they've got, shoves the blunt end Steve's direction.

It's a little easier. Now that they're away from the bartender, and that girl, who is -- Danny glances at the bar while Steve is busy with the table -- looking equal parts disappointed and confused, but whatever. Looks like that, a fair amount of bravado, she'll get plenty of attention tonight, if that's what she's looking for.

Just not from this corner, alright? Is that too much to ask, after the month they've had?

Throwing an unimpressed glance in Steve's general direction, as he pushes the cue towards his chest.

"I had no idea you weren't able to find the cues yourself, genius. In the future, they're --" he gestures toward them, hand drawing a line horizontally along the wall, showing them off like a game show host, "-- right here. This game was your idea, you'd think you would actually be even half ready to play."

[thebesteverseen]

He waits till Danny is thrusting the coins at him, through the insults and questions the rain down, pelting like the kind of tiny, sharp hail that Hawaii almost never sees, except under almost miraculously circumstances. Waits, unimpressed and letting his eyes roll, until there are Danny's fingers grazing his palm, metal touching his palm, skin-hot, making him think all too quickly of it getting that way pressed against Danny's thigh for a long go.

When he has to reign in the way that thought makes his throat tighten, easily having to short circuit the fast comparison to his own hand warm against Danny's skin there occasionally on waking, and just shove it all, a little madcap manically, into beaming. Arrogantly. Like he's won something because Danny just surrendered without anything more than a volley of words, and to cave to his demands.

Danny grabs a cue, busying himself only moments before thrusting it toward Steve. Steve, who could not miss the propellant of any objects that could be used as a weapon getting shoved at him. Not even if he tried. When it's an actual effort, almost lock-stiff-jerky in his back, to try and not let all the muscles between his shoulders and down sieze like it's a threat. Because it isn't. And Danny would never.

And?

Because he's busy. Ignoring Danny's trying to force it into his hands, flat and outright. Crouching, one hand wrapped around the wood and bumpers again. Eyes, and hands focused on dropping in the coins. Slamming it with a metal crunch, that releases the balls. When he grants Danny a still successfully smug look and stands up and still ignores the outstretched pool cue.

"Oh, I'm ready. It's all up here," Steve says, gesturing to his head. Totally looking like he's not even paying attention to what he's obviously missing, hanging out in the open air, except for the wide turn to his mouth. As he's going between leaning and grabbing the balls from the opening on the side and racking them in a proper arrangement in the triangle, placing the one early and still looking for the five.

[haole_cop]

"Oh, you mean that," with a not entirely complimentary gesture towards Steve's head, "isn't just all full of sand and too many ways to kill a person using your bare hands and a pen cap?"

Aggravated, all too aware that Steve is leaving him hanging on purpose and probably will continue to do so, just to piss him off further, while Danny tries to count to ten and makes it as far as three before just shoving the cue onto the table itself. It rolls a little dejectedly against the bumpers, comes to a gentle halt somewhere near Steve's hip.

Who looks like he is enjoying himself a whole lot more, suddenly, and Danny guesses that attention from two pretty women in a row, less than ten minutes from each other, would have that effect. Which is fine. Totally fine. Understandable, even. Who doesn't like to feel wanted, right?

But it is seriously like standing on a pit of coals, searing steam up into his head and blotting out everything but his own bad mood.

Which he should let go of. It's not the point of tonight, letting things get to him, totally normal things, like barflies hitting on Steve the way they always do and that he has just maybe not really noticed as much, before. It feels like the planes of muscle on his back have soldered into a solid plate, though, and he flexes it, a little, testing, butt of his cue on the ground, leaning on it as he watches Steve rack the balls, all deliberate efficiency, now that he's had his own way.

Seriously, he's worse than Grace.

"Is your gambit for me to die of old age before you finish setting up? Because I have to say, that might work."

[thebesteverseen]

He wouldn't actually disagree. With what Danny is blatantly implying -- though, really? A pen cap? Not that even that would be impossible, but so last resort compared to all the other options -- but it's not like he ever chooses to agrees either. Well. not often, and never in circumstances such as these, when it's all barbs and quips flashing across a space.

He just gives Danny a withering look, as he's bringing up the last two balls. "Physics and geometry, Danny."
Beat. Severely unruffled and obviously pressing him. "And the pleasure of watching you get your ass handed to you."

Along with far too many hours and limited resources for entertainment that were spent in his twenties on a boat or submarine in communal berthing compartments. Gyroscopically controlled tables would always been more fascinating than an ordinary table. Also, far mor challenging. When there's a smug firm fold in at the creases of his mouth, because the ground isn't going to move. Hasn't in years.

Find the five, drop it in the opposite corner. Find the eight, drop it one back from the tip.

Shift around the center so the stripes and solids are evenly mixed inside them.

Looking up for the combine toss of his cue and the words that Danny throws out next. Aggravation lining the edges, when neither of them are in any harm of actually cutting him, as he lifts the triangle from the balls and tosses it toward Danny, saying, "Just for that, I get to break, too."

Which he probably would have claimed anyway. Most likely. Letting Danny continue to be covered and exploding with prickling annoyance and impossible, jealousy, that he kept nearly trying to slide from being true until each new sharp shard fell from Danny's mouth, is not the reason to let him have the advantage. If anything, just acknowledging it, feeling it skitter under his skin, wild and white hot and god he wants to touch it, feel it, see it, again, already, and that feels like Danny has too much of the advantage already.

Steve walks across to the right spot, looking at the balls, and only glancing up once more at Danny, before he's leaning down.

Eyes focusing in on the balls, coasting the pool cue over the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger and, yeah, he does hate pool cues that are designed for people at least half a foot to a foot shorter than he is, but he barely takes more than a second and half's pause, reconfiguring for those variances, too, before it snaps forward. Definitive and sends the cue ball on a fast, hard collision with the set above, landing a loud crack that sends them sliding in every direction.