Two Weeks

[haole_cop]

 Danny hates this.

He hates picking up the role of 'head of Five-0,' he hates meeting with Denning, he hates that he's been so short with the team that Kono has probably only been restrained from outright murder by the fact that Chin really would rather not book and imprison his own cousin. 

At least he was acceptably apologetic, after the last time, because he's not sure Chin would have actually bothered holding Kono back, and, fine, maybe he's been riding them a little hard, maybe his temper has been on the short side, maybe the only bright spot in this miserable world was his time with Grace last weekend. He catches the glances Kono and Chin shoot to each other, and he hasn't been totally unaware that they've both tried to get him to come out to bars or home for dinners or to the beach or to Kukui High's football games a lot more often, okay. He knows what they're doing, and why.

Just like he knows exactly how long, to the hour, to the minute, Steve's been gone.

It isn't Japan all over again. It won't be six weeks, only two, and he knows exactly where Steve is, even knows, mostly, when he'll be home. Not that he's been counting down the days, but it could be as early as tomorrow. Maybe. Probably. 

And they've kept busy. The two weeks, they haven't dragged -- there was that drug bust that kept them hopping for most of the first, and a number of smaller cases with more relaxed timeframes during the second, and he's been plenty busy, all right, he's barely had time to notice the days turning over, and he's even almost gotten used to sleeping alone in his own bed again.

But he hates it. He hates that Steve is gone. He hates that Steve is gone, and out of his sight, and nowhere where Danny can have his back if Steve needs it, and he's sure the Navy's got great people working there, he is, but none of them are him and he is Steve's partner, should always be there in case things get hot, and they always get hot, it's Steve. He runs at a perpetual fever grade.

He's fine. Danny knows he's fine. And he'll be back tomorrow, or the next day, and he'll have that same stupid moon of a smile and his cheeks might be slightly thinner and his hair will be shorter but he'll look exactly the same as ever, and Danny will stop being able to sleep for an extra half hour in the mornings because he'll probably be going back to needing to drive to his house for new clothes.

Not that he's actually taken advantage of that half hour. He's been in early and stayed late almost every day, and today was no exception, but there's only so long the human body can tolerate that kind of nonsense, because unlike Steve, Danny does not stay in a perpetual cycle of denying himself things under the misguided notion of calling it training, so when he blinks and realizes he'd nodded off on the couch and missed an hour of the DVR'd Jets game, he gives up the ghost, shuts off the TV, and shuffles, yawning, back through the house to brush his teeth, head to the bedroom, hitting lights along the way.

And maybe tomorrow he'll sleep better, back at Steve's, but he's so wiped that for once, for now, it doesn't matter, and it only sort of matters that the sheets and pillow don't smell anything like Steve, and he's out like a light, clutching one pillow and buried in another, before five minutes have clocked out.

Comments

[haole_cop]

"I want to not burn through this."

He doesn't want to. And does. Wants to shove it all onto the fire, toss on a lit match and a few hundred gallons of propane, and just let the sucker burn, and just collapse back into sleep with Steve laid out flat next to him.

And he wants to dial it down to a dull roar, to slow down and enjoy it, even if his body is screaming at him to just shove it all into fifth gear and gun it straight off this mountaintop and into a spitting pit of lava, and, really, waht would be the point of catching his breath, slowing down? Why not just give it up, let it go, hit hard and fast and drop into incoherent afterglow in less than five minutes, be back asleep not even half an hour after Steve woke him up?

He wants so much it's driving him crazy, a blender whirring in his head and tossing out stray thoughts here and there, contradictory impulses, disconnected sentences. But it doesn't matter. None of it does, it's all just details, white noise, falls out in the wash, because there will, somehow, impossibly, be a next time for anything that doesn't happen right now. Next time, they could go slow. Next time, he could have Steve right up against the wall, until they both collapse to the floor. Next time, next time, and when did that start happening, when did he stop worrying that each time would be the last? So it doesn't matter. There's only one important piece of information here, about what he wants, about how he wants it. "I want you."

Just Steve. Any way Steve wants to give himself. However he could possibly imagine.

And he wants there to be a next time, and time after that, and a time after that. Wants to be so sure that next time (next time) Steve goes away, Danny's head won't so clogged up with all the possibilities of having him once he's back that he can't sort through them all long enough to pick one.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve doesn't believe him. Nor do the points on his shoulder that he can't feel anymore.

He's certain one or two of will end up with dark smudges staining his skin like someone dipped their fingers in ashes and brushed him in passing. Things he could have easily gotten anywhere. Especially while out on drills. But he'll know. The way he knows now, even when he can't feel them, that one or two of them will end up staying. But that's point. Even in the dark, even when he says it, Steve doesn't believe that. Doesn't have to see it to know.

But he does believe the nearly breathless, nearly a complaint, nearly an insult, nearly a cover, nearly a confession that falls out next. The way it races out of Danny's mouth like it should be able to straddle the divide of every single thing Danny has done and said, up to and including the last one. He's never ready for it when it happens. The way he can be down to his skivvies already, and Danny says three words, and it feels like Danny pushes through everything like there was an everything left to be pulled off still.

His skin and his muscles and his bones, to whatever it is that's left in the middle and just shoves his hands into that.

Maybe Steve's smile smooths out in a completely different way, and his hand slides to something close to slow, maybe even close to if not quite to stopping, when he shakes his head. Asking himself for the fifty million time, how he got here, with Danny, of all people. Danny, with his heart on his shoulder. Danny, with that face that couldn't hide a damn thing if he got it surgically frozen in place, and his tone that gives everything away.

His heart bleeding on his shoulder. For Steve. Because of Steve. Somehow. Tripping up Steve's feet at the same time flooding his chest with this wash of warmth that is getting the hell of everywhere. When he's moving, again, pushing up from the balls of his feet, with something like a laugh, but it's softer than usual. Free hand coming up to find the nape of Danny's neck and drag Danny closer, like he wasn't just fighting Danny doing the same thing.

Maybe it wasn't the same thing, when he's leaning in, and tipping his face up, brushing Danny's mouth with his, all precarious balance nowhere that he doesn't give a damn about because he has to be saying, "I'm right here. You've got me." Like maybe everything he's already done today -- with the planes, and the house, and the shower -- isn't enough to show that. Somehow. He's here. He's here, when he shouldn't be but had to be.

But he can say it, too. With trill of humor like it can lay a mask over how bare it really is. What it all means.

[haole_cop]

It won't ever not land like a kick to the stomach, Steve saying those words, however he says them, whenever he says them. Low against Danny's mouth, finally giving into the hand that's been trying to drag him up and bowling Danny gently back into the mattress, the pillow, while a bomb goes off in a muted explosion in Danny's chest and paints the inside of his ribs with a warm splatter, sets him awash and drowning, and Steve shakes his head like he's the one who can't believe this is happening, like it's still insane, even to him.

Like Steve isn't continually rearranging Danny's world into a pattern that's both easier to understand and incomprehensibly complex, terrifyingly fragile behind a solid rock facade. Like this, this house, this life, would have been possible without Steve, like there might possibly be anyone else Danny could be saying those words to, right now.

There isn't. Because, somehow, magically, impossibly, he's got Steve. Steve is telling him so. Has told him so. Keeps saying it, with that strange, half-smug, half-disbelieving smile. Steve came back, Steve's his, his, Steve loves him.

He wonders if Steve has any idea what it's like to be loved by someone like him. It's like being loved by the ocean, something vast and terrifying, prone to acts of breathtaking, pitiless violence, before being laid out and lazy under a softer sun. His heart is tripping all over itself, dissolving into something embarrassingly gooey and soft, and he feels like he can't breathe, hands finding their way back up Steve's body, moving slow, full palms and fingers, the soft part skin of his forearms brushing over Steve's skin. Leaning up into his mouth, pulling him down, deeper into the bed, because two weeks is too long and Steve traveled for a day to get here. With him. Because Danny's got him, and he's not letting go.

"Good. That's good." Stolen from the air his body is trying to tell him he needs to live, but he doesn't, can't, it's a ridiculous thought. He doesn't need to breathe. He only needs this. "There's no such thing as getting enough of you."

[thebesteverseen]

Then they are going down, again, toward the mattress. Danny's shoulders and Steve needs to actually find the bed for the first time, for more than pushing Danny into it. Even if that is what's happening for a second time, and is what he used it for a first time, but he's being pulled down with it this time. Like Danny's an undertow that he can't resist. Which might as well be true after today.

He could, some tiny voice in him fights back, reminds him doggedly, but he doesn't want to. Or have to.

He can just let his knees find the bed, crawling up, straddling Danny lap, and fall under Danny Williams lack of anything like passive restraint even when he's at a loss. When Danny is kissing him, and there are hands running up and down his skin everywhere. Not stopping, like Danny needs to find all of it to be sure it's there. Like he wasn't just on a base, and could have somehow lost some of it without telling Danny over the phone.

There's a sore ache, like Danny shoved something sharp and hot, right behind his breast bone at those words. Words he's not even sure if are for him, or just falling out of Danny's mouth about him while he just happens to be there, too. Because it could be one or the other or both. It's Danny and Danny's mouth, the tangle and muddle of all the words that come of it and get tangled up in Steve's head, because he's never not listening.

When his only defense to not letting the sore spot grow like someone placed the muzzle of a barrel to his skin and pulled the trigger, is laugh, again. Low, heavy and derisive, instead of kissing Danny, when he should be kissing Danny. Even that spot under his bones is saying so. But instead he's talking. Danny Williams is more than just under his skin, he's poisoning Steve's sense of humor and his dedication to his game, and Steve couldn't care in the slightest.

He's finding the side of Danny's jaw, while it happens, that laugh and the word. "I'm going to remind you that you said that tomorrow." At work, in the car, in evening when the day has been too long without touching him like this even once more, and pushing him into a closed door is because it's the closest surface after the world is shut out and it's all he can take. Steve's lips passing over a briar of stubble working toward the lower part of his jaw, the crook at the top of his next. "And next day."

Right where it turns smooth and Steve can't even tell which he wants more. "And the next."

Because there is no such thing as enough of Danny, everything Danny is, either.

[haole_cop]

They're a tangle of movement, arms and legs that are too long for the space they're trying to fit in, which is apparently beneath each other's skin, but Steve's letting him pull them both down, down, chasing the line of Danny's jaw to skin that feels tissue-thin and on fire, before laughing right into it, and, God, fuck, fine, that's fine, Steve can remind him of this as often as he wants tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, because that means Danny gets to have him for at least three more days. It's three more days he'll have this, and it's not enough, not nearly enough, but it's so much more than he ever thought he'd get that he would take it in a heartbeat, even if he knew Steve would change his mind once the three days were up, like it's a fairy tale and three is the magic number.

It might be. It could. Danny's still not wholly sure how this happened at all, even months in, even after Steve stuck with him through them both nearly being blown up, or how he's managed to hold onto it. By all rights Steve should have come to what few senses he has by now, now that they're well past anything even remotely resembling casual and in the middle of a one hundred percent real and happening affair, one that keeps blowing in like a hurricane and leveling everything in sight, scattering any attempt at a fence or wall he might try to put up.

It would never stand. Not against this. Not when he wants it so badly, can feel it shrilling through his system like someone plugged him into the Times Square power grid, not when he's dazedly thinking back on the last two weeks and wondering what he did with them, who he was with, how he slept, while Steve works his mouth down Danny's neck until he groans. Rolls his head to the opposite side, to give Steve more space, more room, anything, anything he wants at all. Hands roaming down Steve's back, to the curve of his ass, down along his thighs, tracking strong muscle that was trained for so much more than anything Danny's ever seen thrown at it, legs and hips and sides and ribcage, all these parts that somehow make up this insane, unstable, perfect man Danny can't stop loving.

Who is making him laugh, even as his eyes squeeze shut against the exquisite, sore perfection of Steve's mouth on his skin, of Danny's fingers sliding along Steve's, until one hand slips between his legs. "Promises, promises. You go ahead, all it'll mean is -- ah, ah, Christ -- that you're thinking of this --"

Fingers curling around smooth, hot, hard, soft skin, possessive and firm. "And you'll know I'll be -- I'll know it, right in the car, at work, when you're doing something idiotic that'll probably get us both killed --"

[thebesteverseen]

There are endless lists Steve could make of what he can do with his hands. Most of them classified and redacted. Most of them deadly, trained deeper than thought, faster than choice, and all of them a hairsbreadth from accessible at a seconds need. Things he can only imply to the outside world, and that inside world regards him with a healthy modicum of respect and distance both.

He can list them all, and none of them surprise him like the simplicity of the one he has right now.

His fingers curled around Danny's side. Unlike weapons, and mission specs, and debriefings, this is always new, always potentially going to not be there when his hands searches for it. Like it might vanish under his fingertips, under his lips, even when Danny is arching into his body and groaning like there was nowhere else on the planet or even in his house that wasn't this muddle of them. Making room for him. Making him want to mark all over it, again.

Like somehow Danny will have forgotten, or the world might have. When the thoughts are insane, because Danny is right here, hands dragging heat and goosebumps along Steve's skin, that hasn't been touched by anything but uniforms and well starched sheets in two weeks, and the world is out there, where they always leave it until the sun demands this give this up for another day.

Steve is somewhere in the loop toward a dark smirk, at Danny's reference, because this keeps happening, more and more, as the weeks pass, the hooked references, or looks, and touches the linger just this side of too long. Especially if they are left alone. And he's got a crass, smug remark about it heading, like a bowling ball for a strike, right out of his mouth, before the whole world slams sideways into a fierce crackle of white and an explosion of heat eating the air in his throat.

Driving his hips to pump into Danny's hand and his forehead into Danny's shoulder, when his knees are shifting out like close to his hand and his body isn't close enough, to the inferno licking flames on his skin, and making him smother, "Fuck," and "Danny," hard on Danny's skin. Because it's like getting smacked full in the face with a brick wall at high speed. Or like standing still and having the brick wall slam straight into him at break neck speed.

His bones going rigid while his muscles snapped straight to movement.

Even with the world submitting to something like smoke and fire curling all the edges, there is nothing like surrender or retreat in the book of Steve's head. Hips still shifting when he makes himself lift enough to give Danny a sharp, half annoyed expression, that isn't entirely either, snapping out fast and flippant, "You don't think you're hard enough to work with already?"

Like, maybe, he means like normal. Like every single day of the last three to four years and the way they've gone from not getting along and possibly general hate, to more and more it being this play act of constant yelling and supposed hate, that neither of them would deny doesn't except if the smallest pressure was placed on it. Or, maybe he means, now. Now, these weeks, these months.

Madness when he can't reach out and Danny. Madness when everything goes even more haywire than it always did whenever they're in a tight spot, guns are blazing and some goes down or gets hit. Madness when he can look up, randomly, middle of crime scene or the office, and just the way Danny is twisting his wrist or swallowing his coffee or toying with a pen can hit Steve's body like an searing hot wrecking ball lodging in his gut, turning him on like a teenager emulating light switch, and demolishing every ounce of sense and focus in its path.

[haole_cop]

It's perfect, the way Steve's whole body goes haywire and for a second, he's not thinking, isn't talking or leading or in control; he's just reacting, hips pushing into Danny's hand, knees spreading, his whole body going tense, trying to get closer, wanting more. Those words burned into Danny's skin, and the side of his throat, that he's sure are going to smoke there for the rest of the night, falling like a reflex out of Steve's mouth, and maybe it's not as incoherent as Danny wants, yet, maybe it's not only his name, over and over, in a helpless litany, but it still lands a solid punch to the stomach, cuts off whatever supply of oxygen was still going to his head and keeping him from giddy intoxication.

It's followed swiftly by Steve insulting him, like always, like they always do, that's three-quarters of everything they ever say to each other, and he's honestly relieved beyond imagining that it's no holds barred in the bedroom, too. He loves the way Steve argues back, the way he takes Danny's words and twists them, like he wouldn't be lonely without Danny here, like he hadn't missed Danny just as much as Danny missed him, so Danny can just laugh, tattered with lack of breath, at the very idea. "Hard to work with, who, which of us is hard to work with, I ask you, is it me, the one who always fills out paperwork on time and never goes jumping off buildings or dangling suspects down elevator shafts, huh? Or is it someone else?"

All while his hand never stops moving, sliding up and down, not fast, but deliberate. Memorizing all over again the way Steve feels, hot and heavy and silky under his fingers, the way his body seizes up, how he shakes like he's just run a marathon, how his voice goes rough and pitches low, and Danny can't ever hear enough of it, get enough of it. He wants Steve to never stop talking; he wants to make Steve forget how to string even two words together that aren't Danny or more. Wants to take him apart, this homeward bound soldier, and put him back together into the Steve he'll hit the rounds with tomorrow; wants to erase every mark the Navy left on him and replace them with one of his own.

"Besides, that's a lie, too, you love working with me."

[thebesteverseen]

Danny keeps talking, straight through the flames. Not that that is anything new, but Steve can feeling it like the words are braiding themselves straight through the fibers of his muscles gone taut even in piston movement. The same way he can feel himself gouging holes in the wall and cobbling his fingers over that stack of bricks Danny smacked him with. Because he's talking, and not speeding up. Settled into this low grade, consistent pattern.

A pattern that is still peeling Steve's skin off his muscles, but it's doing it in slow incremental slides. Dragging his gut to and fro like a anchor that's connected to Danny's hand, while Steve's eyes are nearly dazed in the darkness, and still following the movement of Danny's mouth at least as much as the movement of the hand on him that he couldn't ignore unless he was deeply trying to.

"I do not love working with you, you're --" Presently, pulling the nerves off Steve's spine, one by one, with the loop of his fingers. "Loud." Is too sudden, too sharp, and not focused in the slightest, holding on to words my fingertips he's gaining one at time. "And overcareful." If that's even a word in the world. He's just grabbing them from anywhere. "You worry about everything." Which might all be good and fine, if his hips weren't still shoving him into Danny's fingers.

Like everything was the curve of that hand. Like he didn't absolutely love Danny's hands, and Danny's mouth, and every inch of Danny's body. Like he hadn't been half mad with imagining things. Danny's hands on him, or his mouth, or sliding so deep into Danny's skin his sanity peeled off like a sticker on a piece of fruit. He's slipping from sure footing through, on those fingers, and his mouth grasps for "I don't love--"

But even flippant and half on fire, even if those words are a joke, a normal one, they catch like cotton covered in chloroform in his throat. A joke he should be able to make without blinking. I don't love you. But they aren't entirely a joke, and they're so much further from the truth than they used to be. When it's madness, just the slam of denial and confusion from everything in his chest, smacked full speed into everything else, ratcheting it all up, while Danny's fingers are working him over, and all he can do is clench his eyes for a second, and push in to it.

"God." Because even giving the ground of one round is easier than forcing those words into a joke. He can just give that second to Danny, and his damned fingers, and his messy heart that somehow moved itself into Steve's chest, and the tar in Steve's own voice. "Don't stop."

[haole_cop]

"Yes, you do."

Comes out warm and confident, a statement of fact, and of something fiercely protected. It's something he's so much more certain of, in moments like these, when his hand is driving Steve crazy and Steve came to him instead of going home and no matter what Steve's saying, that's not true. He does.

He said it, like carefully inking it into a tattoo just above Danny's heart. He said it straight-faced, looking right at him after a day when he stayed, put Danny before his run, his swim, work, the world.

Danny's not always sure. Doesn't always quite know how to look at it, when it's not side-eyed and distrustful, cautious, like if it looks at it head-on, it'll just blink away, disappear, but he's sure now. Right now, in this exact second, he's never been more sure of anything than that that is a lie, that sentence Steve can't finish, that he chokes on an doesn't end. He can't even pin that last word onto it, nail into Danny's chest with any degree of absolution. It's a lie. The way Steve's moving against, under, into his hand; the way he dragged Danny against him when they were both against the wall, how he hasn't let go of him for a single second since, how his hand curled around the curve of Danny's ribs, how he's saying don't stop, as if Danny ever would, that, that is the truth. "I'm not stopping, are you crazy? You just got back, there's no way I'm stopping."

Not any of it. Not saying things Steve will throw back at his head and call lies, not his fingers on Steve's skin, not the way he's continually shifting, trying to get closer, fit more perfectly, to hear that again, Steve calling on God and telling him not to stop.

Two weeks. Two weeks. It's beating in his head like blood, repeating itself over and over. Two weeks without him, without this, without that voice. Without feeling wanted, like Steve wants him. Without wanting anyone like he wants Steve. "Come on, babe, I just want to touch you."

Like Steve is telling him to stop, or trying to pull away, instead of trying to slide under Danny's skin and live there. Like there's any part, of any of this, that isn't asking for all the more Danny can give.

[thebesteverseen]

Christ. That. That goes to his head, too. But not like just to his head. It's like being knocked off your board and turned around and having the the next run smash through into your face. When you feel your head jar and your teeth knock and the world turn upside from inside of you at the same time as it's running straight through you, like you aren't the smallest bit of flotsam to even stop it from rolling on after making a mess of you.

That's what it's like just hearing Danny retort back, all sun-warmed doubtlessness, that Steve loves him.

Owning that knowledge like it's something he can shove his hands into Steve's chest and just yank out of him.

It's an unfair tactical advantage Steve doesn't approve of and can't help being entirely swept over and under by all at once. Danny's hand running up and down his cock like it was born to. Like Steve's been using his skin wrong the whole time. Danny's words dancing circles into his ear, and sending itself down to latch into his heart, like a snake with fangs, and drag it out of him from the closest available space while Steve is caught in the damn tide of all of it. Because he doesn't want it to stop. Doesn't want that hand to stop.

Doesn't have the faintest clue what to do with that limping, circle running, jumping still stumbling along thing in his chest that calls itself his heart, but it doesn't want to stop either. Doesn't want to stop racing. Doesn't want to stop banging and battered against his ribs, like Danny is still too far away from his even now. Laughing and saying that he's nowhere near stopping. That all he wants is to touch Steve, and how is that not supposed to go to his head, okay? How?

That Danny hasn't changed his mind. That Danny shoved him into a shower, a wall, and his bed. Wants him. Has him. Has had him. Enough times and in in enough ways he could just be done with experiment and walk away already. Take whatever shreds are left of Steve's heart and toss them into the sand and the wind and go, like everyone always has. Had. But he doesn't. His hands are everywhere. He's everywhere. Still here. On Steve, and Steve's skin.

It's insane and it's perfect. It's too many words, when Danny is muttering those last ones, and just enough to finally start cutting through that off, eerie, prattle-free, silence that's been following him around for two weeks. It makes laughter bubble up, boiling, through his blood and out of his own skin, because that can't just be his mouth, and Danny's skin under it. It's not possible. "Because you aren't now?"

[haole_cop]

He never wants his skin to be free of Steve's laughter smudged into it. He feels it, a puff of warmth, and then it glows, shines, some of Steve's light rubbing off on him, living under his skin, running like quicksilver through his veins, and how, how did he feel anything at all, anything but Grace, when he didn't have this? No wonder he couldn't sleep at night, no wonder he's been short and snippy with the team.

Not now. Right now, he doesn't think there's a damn thing that could keep him from laughing, that will allow him to catch his breath, because Steve is everywhere, Danny can't breathe without catching the scent of his warm skin and clean hair, can't move without feeling him somewhere. "Not enough."

Not nearly enough. Not ever enough. Not to make up for all the time they missed, all the nights they didn't have, before Danny figured it out, the weekends and weeks Steve was gone. "You can do better than that, Christ, think a little bigger, huh? I want to touch you everywhere, I want you everywhere --"

While he's pushing up against Steve's weight, aiming to roll them over and settle along Steve's side so his hand and arm can move faster, harder, because this has never been anything but a continuation of every fight they've ever had, and neither of them will ever give up any ground or stop trying for the upper hand. Steve can push him and he can push right back, and he loves it. Memories of Rachel and Gabby feel too fragile now, and he can't imagine not having this solid wall of muscle under his hands, of sleeping next to someone who doesn't sprawl across the entire mattress, turn into a furnace in the middle of the night. "Two weeks, you're telling me you weren't thinking about every single thing you were going to do to me when you got back, huh?"

That anything but everything could possibly be enough. That even this whole night, only one night, could even begin to be enough.

[thebesteverseen]

He does. Love this. It's insane, but it's true. It's the only thought when Danny's hesitationless response comes back seconds later, saying Danny isn't touching him enough. Not nearly enough. Makes him want to laugh more because Danny is stripping his skin from his body, and the sharp edges of all his focus from his head, with the smooth glide of fingers moving up and down Steve's skin, and It's not enough. He still wants more. Of this. Of Steve. Of everything.

"No," and somehow this time it's a laugh, caught in the blender of those words and not by itself, when he's pushing his weight into his knees and not going anywhere it seems like Danny is pushing and pulling him to, and how's that new. Fighting back, finding it exhilarating. When the friction in his gut it winding like a top, pulling down parts of his spine, and he's sliding fingers into Danny's hair to drag his head back. To find the skin on his shoulder, and his neck with his mouth.

Everything splintering a little more, but he's catching the wave over the rest of it finally. Patterns that come even with fire and melting skin. Insanely true words for pain and even this, even when he knows they only last so long in either direction, and that it costs him his mouth off Danny's skin to be talking, and that just seems wrong, too. He should be able to have both. To have everything. Especially tonight, when Danny is under his hands and his body and here again.

"I did." He did. More often than he should admit, more often than he thought he would or could. He thought he knew. He remembered what it was like. But those were before. Before when this was just a fantasm of insanity, a deformity of his mind and all those hours they spent too close blurring what Steve wanted. Before it was everything under his hands and before his eyes, and Danny wanted him to. Before it was this. "Was."

Before the gaping hole of it missing was greater than the gaping hole of the terror of the haphazard fantasy of it.

The words are made of the corrosive fire of Danny's fingers, and his skin under Steve's mouth, when he's sliding up the collumb of his neck again, while holding his head back by those fingers and that hair. "This. God. Danny. I thought about you, and this. The taste of your skin--" The way his muscles bunch under Steve's fingers, and how he can hold on, doesn't have to worry about being gentle and half-aware. Half-involved.

"--and the way your voice cracks right when you've lost it." Danny's voice in his ear, and his name mangled. When he's demanding and heavy and Steve wants to die on the perfect, perfect tension that feels like it's going to make the world burst. "Your fingers." Comes with a hum, and deliberate thrust of his hips, when that other hand of his caught Danny's hip for it. So he was thrusting as much into Danny's hand just as Danny's stomach, and Danny. Fuck. He shouldn't do that, if he wants this night to go on, but he wants to, wants it, wants Danny. The warmth of his fingers, his skin and more. More.

The way just thinking of that drops his voice, sticky and black and hot as just pour tar. "How hot and tight it is sinking into you." How nothing else exist. Because it doesn't. Because nothing in the world but Danny's skin under his hands and the race to beat the world shoving him over, that he knows he's going to lose, exists. Nothing. Even now its tugging at his
edges, fraying them with fire and want.

Making him feels the muscles tightening and the sweat droplets mixing with the shower water on his back.

"And this," has a hot, barely warning, mostly smugly malicious note, before he's turning his head and dropping a few inches, toward the skin right along Danny's shoulder, right where he knows the skirts always cover, sucking harder on the skin that is perfectly unmarred because he wasn't here to end up realizing he'd left marks on Danny in the morning. Wasn't here to want to put them everywhere, like a name tag with his last name and rank everywhere. Everywhere. Saying this was his property. Tell him, or Danny, or the whole world, this wasn't available. It was claimed. It was his.

But that didn't mean -- like Danny said -- that he hadn't been thinking about the whole damn time.

[haole_cop]

Steve doesn't give in, and, Christ, Danny loves that as much as if he had. Maybe more. When Steve shifts his weight and stays stubbornly still, fights back dirty by running long fingers up into Danny's hair and tugging his head back until his neck is exposed and there's a feral instinct to protect his jugular clotting somewhere behind the ringing in his ears, the red haze floating through his head. It spikes, dull and flashing, with each word that punches out of Steve's mouth and straight into his gut, while they're half-wrestling, and the hand Danny's got moving from Steve's arm to his shoulder, where it dips five white dents in the muscle there, to the back of his head, is half pushing him away and half pulling him closer. Heels digging into the mattress, looking for purchase, but Steve's taller and heavier and if he wants Danny down, chances are good Danny will stay down.

It doesn't mean he can't fight back, but it's hard to remember why he would when Steve's burning those words into his skull. Saying Danny's right. Saying. All these things.

That Danny knew, or hoped, or wondered about, but somehow never expects to hear, even when he asks outright, even when it's more than half a joke trying to cover the deep-sliced raw thing in his chest. That Steve wants him. Enough to admit to it, enough to tell him so, enough to detail exactly the things he's been imagining, wanting, surrounded by rules and other men and the trappings of his old life. It makes a confused knot in Danny's stomach, snarls in his chest along with the dull-bright pain of a bruise being pulled into his shoulder. "Jesus Christ, shoulda let you go off with a bunch of these if you like them so much."

Grumbled and gasped in the same breath, while his fingers curl around the back of Steve's neck and squeeze in reflex around his cock, arm still moving, up and down, a little faster now, and fuck, it shouldn't be so good just having Steve push into his hand, his stomach, they're barely even talking about anything else and it'll be a miracle if either of them makes it another two minutes.

Marking him up. Carried on his skin, something that can't be taken off as easily as dogtags or a uniform, or grown out like a hair cut. He wants it painted deep in Steve's skin, permanent as any of his ink or scars, wants it right there, under his shirts, there when he looks in the mirror, a low-level ache to match the one he gets in his chest when he looks up to see Steve across the office, and it feels like he forgot to breathe.

Like now. Except now it feels like every breath is fire, and the flames are licking away any tattered remnants of his sanity, will he tugs his head against Steve's hand, pushes up against him even while his eyes squeeze shut and his mouth falls open, trying for air that won't come. His fingers are slick and sliding in the sweat on Steve's back, running over muscles contracting and relaxing, a government weapon that has so much more than any singular purpose, who can do this as well as fight and kill, whose name is always just waiting to fall off Danny's tongue again, be yelled, shouted, called, spat, groaned. "Steve, come on, come on, you're here now, just -- fuck, I'm gonna get my mouth on every inch of you."

[thebesteverseen]

It's an momentary slip in his control. Not of his hands, but nearly of everything else, when the image smashes into him. It'd be hell, and whole lot of ragging, sun up to sun down, from people who don't need to have a say in his life, or a hint about what goes on behind closed doors when he's not on drills, on a mission, standing at attention waiting for his next set of orders. He knows that.

Knows it all the way into his bones, with a truth that is unshakable, down the memories or rub others over it and everything else.
Because service men take whatever inch they can get from each other and they go to fucking town on every kink in any chain.

But it hits his gut, already on a steady boil and continually being pushed harder and faster, by Danny's fingers, like Danny dropped a grenade there. Dangerous and deadly and so hot it feels like all the air in his lungs vanishes for a second. Just at the idea of it. Of Danny leaving marks all over his skin, hidden under his uniform and his top notch, correct uniforms. The way he is already. Under Steve's skin, clogging up his chest, fingers messy and ghosting on Steve's skin always. Undeniable and apparent as the undeniable and invisible.

He doesn't really have the time or space to stutter though, even when it smacks him hard, with this spiked confusion between duty and desperate want. Not when Danny is still fighting back. Writhing and squirming under him, like a child, but nothing, nothing, at all like a child. God. Nothing at all in the world makes Steve actually think of him like that. Unless it's that they both bring it out of each other, when Danny's fingers are digging into his shoulder and then his head.

Which can't even stay. Nothing, nothing is stay except Danny skins under his hands, finally, and Danny's hands on his skin, finally, and the way the world is breaking apart entirely on it. Flying in every opposite direction at the same time. When it's gone to Steve's head like more than he's ever drunk, and Danny's trying to fight the first of Steve's fingers in his hair, spitting out words that are licking flames at the back of Steve's head and the pump of his hips, making him laugh.

Hot and sharp and delighted, mind a firework of flames flushing through his while body, when he's finally pulling away from that semi-dark spot on Danny's shoulder that he can see even in the dark. "Yeah? That so?" Steve taunted, all wide brilliance, while he tugged back on Danny's head all blistered mocking and burning breath instead of air, because this is it. He'd rather have this than air. "Doesn't look to me like you're moving at all right now."

But Steve would love to see it. It scalds straight down his throat and sears his mind. The thought of how he wants him to be.
The way he wants to lose everything in Danny, and watch, feel, Danny lose all cohesion. Shaking, gasping, tumbling apart.

[haole_cop]

"You don't think so?"

Just to prove his point, he stops moving his hand, the only part of him moving with purpose. Keeps his fingers wrapped warm and tight around Steve, and squeezes them in a firm fist, but doesn't keep up the up and down, fast, slick, glide.

But he can't keep still. Not ever, and not for long, and never when Steve is tossing challenges at him like they're ping-pong balls, uncaring and rapid, bouncing harmlessly all around both their heads, and Steve deserves it when he finally lets go, unwraps his fingers to curl them around Steve's hip instead. He can't push up while Steve's got fingers in his hair, while Steve's dragging his head back and whispering madness into a boil in under his skin, but he can drag Steve down, fingers on the nape of his neck and at the cut of his hip, and wind one leg around the back of Steve's knee.

It doesn't matter. None of it matters, not Danny getting to move or proving his point or Steve's bravado and all the threats he'll make damn sure come true -- none of it matters at all like it matters to keep hearing that laugh, tar-thick and hitting a hard, fast, violent boil in in Danny's head, filling it with steam and a high pitched whine that's trying to slide its way up his throat.

It matters that Steve's back, but it matters how he's back, too; it matters that there's nothing but fierce happiness welling rapidly in Danny's chest and that Steve is all over him, matters that Steve broke into his fucking house because he couldn't wait even a few more hours, it matters that Steve traveled for a day in the back of a cargo plane to get here, right here with him. It matters that these pillows and sheets didn't smell like him before but will in the morning, and it matters that Steve is smiling, that Steve is laughing, that he's here in one piece and still wanting Danny, still Danny's own personal miracle, one of just two he can call his.

It matters that he's got a stupid schoolboy grin on his face from marking up Danny's shoulder, and Danny turns his head against Steve's hand to try and look at it, making a face. "I got a Sharpie in the desk; it would be a lot faster, if you're trying to write your name on me, Steve."

[thebesteverseen]

Steve's whole world feels like it crawls down to a three inch space, the span of Danny's hand, when it suddenly goes still. Only to tense firm, and solid around him. When he can feel the skin on his shoulders prickling against the inability to tell if the skin inside Danny's hand or right outside of it feels like it's throbbing more against the madness of sudden utter stillness, with only harder pressure in certain places. Stopping his lungs like they were gears with a switch thrown.

But, of course, Danny is playing for keeps. Because they always are. For shoving it into fourth gear on whatever new round of shutting each other up or shoving each other forward was. Because a few seconds later Danny's hand lets go entirely, causing Steve to shiver and shift, while his mouth is trying to do something other than hold air that isn't moving either way, but can't get there because Danny is grafting himself around Steve.

A hand pulling down on his neck, and his spine, rapidly setting his teeth too quickly on edge like someone shoved a knife or a gun to it, while Danny's hand grabs his hip and a leg wraps around his, shoving them together. Shoving him from nothing to sudden friction, tension and fire. All slamming together, all at once, the only way Danny does. Moving almost faster than Steve or any human person can keep up. Want and warning shoving themselves together, and it's Danny's fault.

The hand on his neck making him tense, pushing him into Danny's shoulder and his neck -- Steve bites him, hard but whipcrack fast, saying savagely the next second, in a tone that barely feels like its get near English, no less coherent, "Bastard."

Which is not saying that he's beaten, but he can at least call Danny names while he's not being beaten and his body is still refusing to comply with anything that isn't shifting closer inside the curve of that leg and in a better position. Lined up against Danny's skin, and his hip, and the hard length of his cock, so much that bumping and shifting drags fire light down Steve's spine and prickles of sweat beading on his back, when he moves.

Fingers not letting go of Danny's hair but using it to turn his head, when he's pushing hard against the Danny's hand. To find Danny's mouth, and to kiss him like Steve might be able to peel the wallpaper off the walls of Danny's new bedroom with that alone. Just kissing him with the fire Danny is shoving under his skin, down his skin and up from his gut. Before he even gets to the small, sharp drag of air in his nose, and a word falling out of his mouth, impossibly escaping him.

"Christ." Just escaping, like all of his will power, from the second he see, touches, tastes Danny, falls into him.

There are not even words for how sunk he is, for how long ago Danny probably won this entire goddamn war against Steve's will.

When if it's anything it feels like his body beats him before Danny even can. There's never enough. "Do you even have stuff here?"

Throwing the words out, harsh and made of smoke, trying for antagonizing, for disbelieving or insultingly expecting nothing, in Danny's newest nothing house, and recognizing the whine of bareness shining through there, too. Like it's impossible for Steve to even have any idea, or to cover why it actually mattered. It's not like they were here all that often. They were almost always at his house, and Danny wasn't, he was here, so Steve had to be here. And all he wants now is to forget that anything and everything exists except Danny's skin.

[haole_cop]

Steve curses him out, and then swears blasphemy into his skin, and Danny shouldn't love it, it shouldn't go to his head like a hard burst of champagne bubbles, but he does, and it does. Shatters with glee against the dome of his skull and goes careening through his veins, leaves him laughing into Steve's mouth, while still wrestling him down, closer, there. Hard between Danny's legs, until he's flush against him, and it's all white heat and pressure that feels too good to be called good, is almost painful. "Are you kidding me?"

He would lean over to his bedside table, pull open the little drawer there, but that would require taking his hands off Steve, and he's not ready to do that, isn't willing, would be ready to snap the fingers of the first person to suggest it. "You think those of us who didn't grow up as Eagle Scouts aren't ever prepared? Give me a little credit, c'mon."

So, fine. Maybe most of his supplies are anything but new. Maybe they've been sitting in one forgotten drawer or another through his moves, and maybe they're never at his place, because Steve's house is just -- it's easier.

But he's not totally left-footed when it comes to this stuff, okay, and as different as all this was at the beginning, the equipment is pretty much the same. There's a little bottle of lube in the drawer that's still mostly full, and condoms that he somehow doubts are going to get used, no matter who puts what where.

If they make it that far. Steve's sliding against him, and it's bursting stars behind his eyes, grabbing the thermostat in the room and twisting it hard up to what feels like three hundred degrees, fire and lightning spiking a fever in his skin while his hands hold on, hard. Fingers dipping white marks into skin that's barely lost any tan in two weeks, keeping him hauled down, close, to kiss him hard and ready, like it's just the next part of the conversation and not something that leaves him with lungs boiled free of air and a head spinning and rattling like a coin on a table.

He's really not sure either of them are going to last anywhere near long enough to need the stuff in that drawer; not when Steve breathes in sharp and sudden and Danny feels it lurch in his stomach, wind loose warm fingers around watery and trembling muscles, already tensed and keyed up as a racehorse. Steve's heaping hot coals on his head, shoveling them under his skin, dragging him and pushing and pulling him and how the hell, how in God's name did he make two weeks without this?

Like he hadn't already known what a pale facsimile of the real thing fantasies were. Are. How they burn up like tissue paper next to the real thing.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny is laughing and still fighting him. If you can call it fighting, when those hands are holding him down now, digging into skin and muscle, like Steve might have decided anytime in the last ten seconds that he was going to start pulling away. Like there's any part of his body left that doesn't want to be grafted to Danny's body, to Danny's skin. Like there's any world beyond the bed, or any bed beyond the part right under Danny's back and his own legs.

It's the best laughter though, even if it's at his expense. Especially at his expense, maybe, even. Because Danny should sound like this all the time. A guttering candle, ribs and chest bouncing under Steve's, making them knock jaws and teeth, when kissing shifts to words, made of fire and that deep, clear pleased gold, while someone else is still doing anything else. Danny should always sound like that. He should never be away from Steve and not sounding like that.

Which dissolves nearly to a hiss when Danny is hitching his hips and dragging Steve down, lighting fireworks and a marine corp band in the bottom of his spine, that is trying to melt itself into a pool of boiling silver and corrosive acid there, too. It's ludicrous. All of it. It was only days over and it feels like ages. Eons. Lifetimes. Steve's fingers sliding from Danny's hair, because he actually needs purchase on the bed.

Tossing out words like skipping coins, made of burning tar, "I haven't seen anything worth giving you credit for yet."

Taking it and twisting it with hard, crooked curve to his mouth, and the bite of an insult that this is all nothing so far.
Not that Steve takes any of it one step at time. He's tossing out words, while his body is turning into steel and smoke.

Pushing weight to his knees and using the length of his body to his advantage. Pulling at Danny's hip with one hand, up across his own thigh, so they aren't pulled apart. So he can push his hand between them, curve it up, possessive and heavy, across the round muscle of Danny's ass, and drag his middle finger back down the center. Pushing with the tip of that finger without any warning in the slightest. Because all of this should be. Because Danny drives him crazy.

Because he wants all of this, all of him, all of Danny. Wants the whole world to know it's his. For the take, and the keeping. Wants it and nothing else, but gasped crackling sentences shattering on his skin, begging and laughing in one non-existent breath, wants to get lost and found and burn down every matchstick left in his own skin, because this is worth it, and it's still here.

[haole_cop]

"I think you're lying."

He knows Steve is lying, because Steve is here, instead of with someone better, and because Steve does give him credit, even if it's not out loud, even if it's just the tacit approval of playing by Danny's rules.

Which he does. He'd never admit it, and Danny wouldn't suggest it, because this isn't a power play, okay, no matter how often they push each other around, wrestle for the upper hand, but it's true. Even when Steve's running a hard hand over his hip and shifting him around for a better angle, even though they've done this enough times now he's got a pretty good handle on what's happening and what comes next and who does what and how it all works, it still hasn't been that long since Steve wouldn't. Didn't. Never pushed past the lines Danny drew, let him make the calls, and that's credit; maybe the only really needed kind because Danny couldn't give less of a shit about Steve's opinion on literally anything else he decides to do or how he decides to do it. Despite what Steve thinks, Danny does not need to live a McGarrett-approved life, okay, he got along just fine for thirty-four years without the Navy SEAL stamp of approval.

But this?

Steve doesn't treat him like he's going to break. Doesn't give him that wary, desperate look anymore, the one where even Danny, okay, Captain Oblivious, could tell his restraint was hanging by a single rapidly fraying thread, that he kept hauling himself back by the scruff of his own neck, so sure he was going to ruin everything by asking for what he wanted that he just didn't.

If Danny never has to see that hollow, hungry look, that sheer white-knuckled discipline and willpower again, it'll be too fucking soon.

Not anymore. Not like this. Not when Steve's fingers are gripping his sheet, and Steve's other hand is pulling him up, running over his skin like he owns it, and maybe he does, because God knows he's moved easily enough into Danny's heart and head and lungs, a continual slow burn under his skin all day, every day, taking up space normally reserved for air, or thought.

But Steve just bulldozes through, just like now, sliding that fingertip in and making Danny arch up against him in a sudden hard curve, hips angling up, which rubs a burst of white fire up through his gut, liquefies his lungs, filters his thoughts into nonsensical white noise, and his voice is tight as a wire about to snap.

"Is that supposed to be some kind of challenge?"

Tossed out like he's not having trouble breathing, like he isn't already pushing for more, wanting it past rationale and reason, like he's waiting for Steve to get around to showing Danny just what, exactly, he's missing. Even if his fingers are tightening hard on Steve's hip and his other hand is running down the long perfect slope of Steve's back to curve possessively on the firm round muscle of his ass.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny's full of crap. They both are. They always are. Every time they open their mouths. Throwing words at each other like it's some mask for all of this. Like they need it to keep everything else at bay, to keep pushing and not be rolled under. Which is nearly the entire first reaction when Danny's body snaps to attention, shoving at his hands, his hips, his stomach. Hot and tight around his finger, while Danny's voice strains toward a breaking point.

Like somehow, in any universe, they aren't always pushing each other for this, for even more than this. For everything that can be taken from each other and given to each other. There are fingers digging into his hip and his ass, and something about all of it, like helium injected through his skin, just goes through him, boiling, bubbling, making him let out a sharp, low sort of laugh. Because, god, it's all perfect. It's insane. And perfect.

He wants to burn alive, as much as he wants to take Danny apart. Which is insane. But somehow also not impossible.

"And if it is?" Steve manages to drag out from somewhere, to throw it like a ball, hard and fast, caustic and so pleased with himself it's amazing the words don't glow in the dark with the warmth of victory in them. When he's pushing for deeper, pretending some part of him can pretend it's not much and not enough and not going to his head along with everything else. The way everything in Danny keys toward him like a live wire.

The suffocating feeling of tightness around his finger that makes his hips rock against Danny on instinct when he's pulling his finger back and pushing it in, again, further, faster, without any preamble either. Because he doesn't need any. He doesn't. Not when Danny is shoving himself at him, at his hand, at Steve, shivering already and holding on to him like they already took a running head start toward just plummeting off a cliff.

Maybe they did. Weeks ago. Months ago. Maybe they never stop. Running for the edge and jumping for it, or falling. Just exist in the space where both are always a blinding, necessary drive, that can't be breathed without. When waiting and pausing, asking and going slow, all feel like they are worse than having skin peeled off. Because Steve doesn't want to meet the person who wouldn't just go here. If they were touching Danny. If they could even think once Danny was under them.

Who had any restraint other than to just starting pushing in and out, without stopping, aimed for taking everything.

[haole_cop]

Isn't it always?

Isn't it, every time, a challenge? They never stop, couldn't, won't. It's always the two of them, shoving at each other, knocking heads, even when it's them against the world, even when they've been working together since day one, even when Five-0's on the job or when Danny's reluctantly to himself that he's never had a better partner. They can't stop. It's who they are: thrown punches and wrestling for dominance -- Steve shoving Danny face-first into an erupting volcano and Danny dragging Steve down with him.

It's why he's dragging his legs up, feet planting on the mattress on either side of Steve's thighs, heels digging in, gaining leverage, gaining the better angle to push, until stars burst behind his eyes and he feels gutted, the strange invasive weight of Steve's finger too much and not enough all at once. "Then you'd better stop tiptoeing around, princess."

His voice has gone all tight and spare, strangely strung, like it could snap any second, but he fights for it, hauls words into his head by their wispy tails and crams them together into something almost resembling sense. He wants two fingers. He wants three.He wants no fingers at all, unless they're hard on his hips or wrapped around him while Steve's rocking deeper and faster. He wants to fuck and he wants to be fucked, and he wants it all now, wants everything and anything Steve might possibly want to give or take, won't let it go without a fight, wants the fight to start.

So he tosses insults at Steve's head, while he's bracing himself on the bed and pushing down on Steve's finger, until his mouth opens and his head wants to push back again, lancing white hot too-sharp something that's not quite pleasure and not quite pain stabbing into his stomach, dissolving through his bloodstream and making it boil. "Looks like I've gotta do all the work."

Like fucking himself on Steve's hand is some kind of chore, or like Steve's doing nothing at all, instead of swarming him with the kind of single-minded dedication Danny should only expect from the Navy's best and brightest, even if he's definitely not sure they ever expected Steve to put it to use in exactly this way.

It's a benefit, for sure. Steve's willpower, his discipline that kept him on such a tight and fraying leash for so long; of course it translates to this, of course Steve would overwhelm here just like he does anywhere else, hitting Danny with a flying tackle and dropping them both without a single damn for where they might land, as long as it's together. And who the hell could anyone give that up, once they had it?

Not Danny. Steve's the one with the discipline, and the self-sacrificial attitude, not him. Danny can't even stop himself from pouring gasoline on the fire, just to make Steve sparkle and shine, just to make that self-satisfied smile flash unchallenged. "Hey, it's fine, anybody would be tired after all that traveling."

[thebesteverseen]

It's an outlandish sort of insult, plastering itself across Steve's face, less comic in the dark than it would be in the light, but it's still there for Danny chunking cement blocks at his head. Claiming he's doing absolutely nothing. Claiming he's not on his feet. Like there's any part of his training anywhere that allows him to rest his head or to even pretend he's human enough to be exhausted until the mission is done, and this mission isn't done.

Mouthy bastard shoving himself hard and further on to Steve's hand, being fucked, fucking himself, like he isn't, they aren't, or not. Making Steve shove back harder. Words, exploding out rich and hard, like hissing oil, "You get bitchy when you have to make friends with your hand again," even with the mocking and laughter and shining smugness married right in to.

Because the rest of it is there, too. Still going to his head. Danny, in this bed, because he couldn't stay in Steve's bed while it smelled like Steve. Danny, here, with his hands on himself, fist pumping and body strung tight, wanting this, wanting Steve back. Wanting Steve while Steve wasn't here to batter his door and push himself in, to make it so Danny couldn't think, couldn't reconsider, couldn't do anything but fight back and fall in a tumble of pushing, shoving, hands and lips.

Danny, wanting him even when there was nothing here to fight for Steve's place. This place. This one right here.

Steve, breaking into his house. Steve, naked and shoved into walls under him. Steve, shoving him down on the bed.

Both refusing to move, refusing to give or surrender or accept less than everything they've had nothing of for too long and too short for it not to be insane that even that was too long. All of it going to his head like explosives with Danny's baiting, and the way everything has been for this, everything. Danny. Days on end, unable to peel his voice and the feel of skin out of Steve's head, and every plane and favor, to get here, to get to this place where Danny's being a jackass and Steve feels it like twelve shots and a dare phrased as a you'd never.

There's no way but up. There never is. But especially then. Because god forgive him, he doesn't even want to be forgiven or care that there might have been another way. All the tomorrows and yesterday burning down in the rearview mirrors, movements become mission fast and smooth, when he pulls his hand out, only for the rough length of pulling his hand to his face and licking hard straight across the palm of his hand, even when he knows it won't be anything. Can't care now.

When one hand is holding Danny by his hip and white clenched knuckles, while he's grabbing his own cock and lining them up. A manic, burning crackle to his hard, black, so far beyond a warning its slid into a jack-knifed promise tone. "Fine, fuck being nice about it."

Because he doesn't care. He doesn't. When he shoves forward, taking all his weight with him, aside from his knees into the bed, pushing into Danny. He'll never be diners and wine, and maybe he won't ever be properly knocking on doors, and maybe he doesn't have any fucks to give in his head about it even. Because Danny yells, but Danny is also digging bruises into his hips, and his back, Danny has been wanting him, wanting this, and Steve is nothing short of the best at delivering.

[haole_cop]

"Jesus fucking --"

He yells. It hurts. There's nothing slow or slick about any of this, no lead-up, and the low-level burn of earlier sears into splitting pain, like he's being torn open, impaled on a red hot spit. It's too much, too big, muscles spasming hard and the first instinct to pull away, before his teeth clench and he pushes back. "You're never nice, you're --"

But his voice is already whip-tight and it unravels into a low sound that's half growl and half something deep and guttural like he's just been kicked in the stomach. He's sure skin and muscle are tearing, sure it's not possible to fit, and it burns with a vicious razor-edged blade of pain, spiking out from the sudden intrusive weight and solidity of Steve buried so deep it feels like his whole inner system has been totally and catastrophically rearranged. "Jackass."

Hissed, like water spattering on a hot skillet, while his fingers scrabble at Steve's hips and he tries to breathe around him, around this sudden heat and leaden heaviness. Moving seems unadvisable, but not moving is worse, is maddening, is impossible, and he's shifting his hips, eyes wide and probably blown into all pupil, no blue at all, or only the thinnest of lines, to match his paper-thin and ripping skin, his frayed and snapping nerves, how it feels like if he breathes in too deeply, he'll come splitting apart at the seams.

Except it's perfect, too, isn't it: the only possible next step, because it's been too long and that's insane, but they're insane, and Steve, Steve is certifiable, which Danny's has known for far too long already, and Danny can't say that he would have wanted to wait. It's already seems like they waited too long, that between the shower and the teeth-brushing and the taunting back and forth, they were just wasting time, that even shoving Steve into the wall and being pushed back here was an irresponsible lack of speed, that their priorities were all mixed up, because they weren't this.

Skin to skin, close as breathing, so close he can feel Steve's pulse, isn't sure whether it's his own heart beating frantic time through the sharp burn, or Steve's. Can't tell where he ends and Steve starts, and he's going to pay for it, this is going to be hell tomorrow, is already hell right now, and he won't keep quiet when Steve starts moving, either, but if he tried to pull away right now, Danny might just haul off and punch him in the jaw. "You think you're funny, huh?"

[thebesteverseen]

Steve can hear Danny shout, both like it's magnified and like it's diluted.

Both drowned out by and more kindling to the sensation of the world turning into white fire licking itself up his cock.

His own skin shoved into a suffocating void that is pushing hard and angry at him from every direction, when everything turns into tension through his back and his legs, and his body and Danny's is shouting there isn't a way. So tight, and so hard, movement ripping the world from its axis, from existing outside of blistering waves ramming up through his body and that hard, sharp thing too something like a smile, dug deep and nearly feral against his teeth.

Because he knows it will. Work. Knows. Too much experience melted dust from cliff faces ground and blowing around him, because, god it feels so good. So good something in the world has to be exploding, and people have to be dying somewhere, for there ever to be a balance. Somehow it has to be wrong. Because it feels so right, and it just wants to keep shoving. Because it will. Work. It always does. Eventually.

The human body, amazing beyond any other weapon, adapts to almost everything. But, especially, to this.

Give the body something else to distract itself, to ride the razor edge and overwhelm even the pain. Because the pain will lose.

Steve's having to peel his sanity out of Danny's hands on him, getting everywhere, black and blue hard, frantically uncertain about shoving him off or holding on to him like he's all the foothold left in the world, and the spots in his own vision, but he doesn't need to see for this. He doesn't even need his goddamn eyes open. Everything in him is pounding against the door screaming more and now.

Every inch of Danny's skin around him, pulsing, squeezing, shifting, trying to escape in shock and pain as much as pushing back in experimental shoves already, knocking down any seconds of clarity Steve gains. But who needs clarity, sanity, or anything else in the whole world. Steve doesn't. He'd trade them all for Danny and this. Had, would, was, again and again and again.

For the blistered, sharp, shredded sound that is laughter crawling up his throat, black as tar and still burning with the merciless brilliance of a forest fire or an exploding building when the foundation beams go. When he's pulling back, ripping pain and white-red spots of blinding light at the edges of his vision, only to thrust back in hard, faster, right after saying, "I'm hilarious."

Hilarious. Here. Home. Danny's. It doesn't matter what the word is. Doesn't matter than he doesn't have any idea which way is up, because there is only one direction. There is only one objective and one goal, and there is only taking out Danny and Danny's mouth, straight through his spine.

"And-" Steve locked his jaw, muscles stiffening in his back and legs and his death grip on Danny's hips, pulling and pushing them each time. Aiming for a white dot in his vision, to be able to keep shoving through what is about to burn off his skin and his focus. Pulling out and pushing in "-I'm-" harder and "-not-" faster with "-tired." each word.

[haole_cop]

"Not," Danny says, thin and grasping, before Steve slams forward again and his eyes squeeze shut against a burst of exquisite, slicing pain.

Not hilarious. Not funny. None of it is, was. Not now, and definitely not tomorrow, when walking will leave him bow-legged and wincing and sitting down will be an exercise in extreme discomfort, but he laughs anyway, a dried out bark of a laugh, that's more than half groan while he's getting pounded and nothing seems to be loosening or relaxing at all. "No? You seem --"

The sentence gets squeezed off when he's pressed between Steve's belly and his own, while Steve's slamming home deep and hard and without preamble. "-- practically asleep to me. They really wore you out, huh?"

Every word fought for, wire-tight and thready. Every stab of pain one he's hoarding, grimacing and groaning through until it's replaced by another. And another. It won't stop being sandpapered and brutal; with lube there's no chance of any kind of welcome slickness. It's almost indistinguishable from the kind of hate sex he remembers near the end of his marriage, when he and Rachel still wanted each other, but wanted to make each other hurt, more. Hard. Fast. Violent. The kind he'd expect after a fight, more than after two weeks without each other.

But he's damned if he's going to give in. He drew a line here just to taunt Steve across it, like some kind of insane matador waving a red flag down a blocked alley, with nowhere to run and the bull charging.

And as bad as it is, it's good, too, in a way he doesn't have words for, can't explain. Just that he needs this, Steve under his skin, getting under Steve's: needed the push and shove and the searing, tearing burn. Wants to catch that laugh breaking Steve's voice and trap it, cage it under his ribs and let it feed the fantasies for the next two week drill, or sudden mission, or court-required move.

Just thinking it makes him miss Steve with a sudden, fierce hatred of the space left between them, sends one hand groping up into Steve's hair to drag him down find his mouth, crush them together and smother the few shallow breaths he can manage, in protest.