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

[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.

[thebesteverseen]

He isn't expecting fingers knotting in his hair. Isn't expecting Danny's hand, or Danny jerking him forward suddenly. Rocking his center of balance on to pivot of his knees instead of his shins and the flat of his feet. But there isn't any more asking in Danny's hands than in his continued insults and refusal to fold back down from his insinuation. It throws everything out of whack for a long, faltering second.

Steve having to free up a hand from one of Danny's hips to catch himself somewhere near Danny's shoulder, focus slipping like boots on ice, the middle of thrust to suddenly having to process that he's falling, not falling, caught himself on his hand. Danny's chest under his, hairy and solid and fever hot. Danny's mouth against his and hasn't waited for him to catch up anymore than he's been waiting for Danny. Hard, and claiming. Like Steve forgot something somewhere, needed to be punished for whatever it was.

Like somehow Danny's name wasn't written on every inch of his skin already. The trademark under each thought.

Wasn't the pump and catch of every movement of his bones, his muscles, his name the thing holding them together.

But it sends something else skittering sideways, too. Because every example in his head, every certainty, isn't based on anything like this either. It's too many encounters to count, that are the proof it will work, but none of them mattered like Danny. Some of them not even for all of the minutes while it was happening, and Danny's mouth just sears a completely different kind of fire into him, sows a kind of a hunger into an inferno it should be impossible is just waking up when he's already buried in Danny.

Everything that he knows, that Danny takes and turns on his head. Because he wants this and he wants every insignificant thing he never gave a damn about wanting or thinking he needed before. Stupid things, things that only matter once they were gone and that wouldn't make sense aloud, like being insulted all day long, or rolling over in the morning and seeing that hair gone insanely fluffed in every direction. When he's kissing Danny back, at the same time as working out how to move again.

How to keep moving, because slowing down will be a worse hell. Harder to restart, than continuing to press the attack.

"Keep talking, Danny." Steve rolled his eyes, mouth skewed crooked and wide against the darkness and the skin of Danny's mouth, close enough now that he could see Danny's eyes. See them, feel like they were filling up every other space in him not being slammed by heat and tightness every few seconds. See them, and toss back the same crap being thrown at him. "If it's anything like normal, you'll be out cold and incapable of anything in, what? Two more minutes?"

Freeing up his other hand to drive it between their bellies, and find Danny pressed tight between them, digging into Steve's stomach insistent as every other demanding, grabbing, part of Danny burning him from every edge. Hard and heavy into Steve's searching fingers and warm palm, against the rapid rise and fall of Danny's stomach and chest, the jostle of Steve continuing to thrust, when he wraps his fingers and aims for something that matches even within a ballpark of the rest of him.

[haole_cop]

He'd be lucky to make it even one.

It's the only thought that makes any kind of sense, once Steve's hand is wrapped around him and there's sudden good mixed in with the fire licking its way up through his body, that's slicing him open with a raw salt-edged knife. Their legs are bent into some kind of strange pretzel, Steve's knees jutting out under Danny's thighs, and his hands drop to find them, to find some part of Steve to hold onto, because the world is teetering and crashing and he can barely breathe, it's so good.

It's all collapsing into an incoherent jumble, pure chaos and unrelated images and sensations, surrounded and surrounding, heat and sharp pain and confused nerves shrieking alarms the ring inside his skull, while he seems to have forgotten every word he ever knew, except one. Just "Steve," short and hard and less like pleading than it is like he's angry, like he's furious, except there's that clip at the end that cuts him off, because he doesn't have a single insult left to try and toss like rocks at Steve's thick skull.

There's nothing at all, nothing except Steve in him and around him and on top of him, breathing hard, every muscle standing out in stark relief, back curving, hips thrusting, skin all caught in a glow of sweat and the flush of exertion, smelling like Danny's soap and Danny's shampoo and like fresh shower water and like everything he's missed for the last two weeks. It's all there is to the whole world, boiled down to just this, the little sounds Steve makes deep in his chest, the way the light catches on a dogtag-free chest, and this feeling of fullness to the point of being torn apart, all through his body, settling in his chest with a familiar, fierce ache, like Steve's shoving his whole body behind Danny's ribs, trying to fit under his breastbone, is squeezing his heart until it's about to break, or tear in two.

Wanting Steve so badly it's like breathing in fire, holding his breath until there's nothing left but a hollow shell of himself.

The poets are wrong. Love isn't sweet, and it isn't simple. It's like a battleground, violent, fiery, fierce. A creature with claws and steel-tipped teeth, worrying at the all too fragile, clumsy thing he calls a heart. His love has always walked a thin and shattering line with hatred, both all-consuming, both impossible to ignore, both selfish and childishly confused, full of longing and bewildered need. Loving Steve was inevitable, the flipped coin, tossed and reversed so quickly he had no idea it was even happening.

And now this. Careening towards an edge, out of control and starting to fall apart, while he tries to find something, anything, that might prove, that might explain, that might clarify, to make Steve understand, because Steve can't feel what Danny's feeling right now, doesn't live in Danny's chest or his head or his heart, and he needs to know. But words are broken, not enough, never enough, no matter how many times he tries to say missed you or how often Steve's name comes choked and inept, or starts with Jesus, I-- and can't finish it. It's all building up now, swift and inexorable; one kicked out stone and the whole dam will go, and take him with it.

[thebesteverseen]

There's a giddy buoy of success, like hitting the first mountain rise in a run, when Danny suddenly trips on his own word. This growl of Steve's name that promises sharp teeth and loud barking, promises there's more fight and fire coming, that Danny will keep fighting back, with every shard of vitriol in him and shatters on Danny's teeth, in the back of his throat, on the air between them, on his hands, and Danny's body.

There isn't a way in the world not to feel the smile starting, or to even stop for letting it happen.

Because he wants that. God. Just as much. It's not even a scale. There aren't things he likes better or worse. It's not that he'd take five minutes from now over five minutes earlier. He wants all of it. He wants every ounce of being shoved into things and drug down, fought for words, for hands, for control, as much as he wants this, too. The way Danny's hands scrabble on his skin, trying to find hand holds suddenly, digging in like Steve is the only solid thing left in the world.

He can dig his knees in, and his fingers on the bed by Danny's side and take it like a sprint.

Like every second has felt counting down to getting here. One short, one closer.

Drag his fingers faster, and let his hips demand their own pace. Something only determined by the tempo being made between his hand and Danny's body. The push and pull of every movement of Danny's body slamming through him like an insane ride, fingers fisted into his intestines and still punching it harder every time. Every single one like a wave of higher, hotter flames rushing through him, shoving him forward, snapping all of his muscles, sliding sweat down his spine while lightning is striking through every single nerve. Again. And again. And again.

Whether at his hold, or while Danny pulls at it, too. With every half word, and bitten frantic, demanding piece of speech he manages to even get out. Pouring boiling heat into his ears and down into his chest, like there's any room left in it anymore. Anything but the need to keep going. To keep dragging these words out. To keep pushing, pushing, pushing, thrusting, jerking his wrist, past pattern, past heat, past pain, forward and forward until Danny is spiraling into oblivion, and dragging Steve down with him.

The center of him coiling and uncoiling like a band being snapped and tattered, flaring brighter, like the unfocused sun, on every contact, whether he was the one pushing in or Danny was the one sliding back before shoving up into his moving hand again. Each frantic word lodging in his lungs more than any even partial breath of air. Filling up the jagged holes in him, or shoving its fingers in and making more. More holes in him, shaking the walls, and leaking the heat and light flooding everywhere.

Shoving him forward, faster, throat swallowing swollen and dry, every inch of his skin chasing the madness of Danny's, while he refused to close his eyes, refused to miss another second of this, of Danny, here, next to him, under him, his, again, finally. Every bit of him, that Steve wants to tattoo his name over like no minute or day or week or time way could ever change that, touch it, tempt it. Ever let Danny, or the world, forget.

[haole_cop]

He wants to set his teeth in Steve's shoulder. Wants to never ride out this incoherent chaos in his head, that's beating down every wall and ripping out the floorboards he's barely standing on, with vicious, rabid glee, chasing him through lava tunnels and along shattering, splintering panes of glass that are crumbling beneath his feet. It's overwhelming; it's too much and not enough all at the same time, a low burn starting in a knot at the small of his back, muscles that have finally relented already feeling bruised and tender. It'll be like the first time, but worse, except it's better, except it's shredding his sanity, except it's Steve, and Danny feels the need to touch Steve like a fever under his skin.

Always there. Spiking now, after so long, after two weeks that feel like eternity, when Steve was off being shouted at by stern men in uniforms just like his, and he was here catching criminals and trying to be a good enough father that the courts at least won't have his behavior to hold against him, just everything else. Two weeks back in his own bed, that barely feels like his bed anymore, because it isn't half Steve's, and that's a dangerous thought, something to be realized and curtailed, but not tonight.

Not when they're about to go up in flames, because he's felt this quiver in Steve's muscles before, the loss of pace, the total abandonment of anything like restraint, giving in to choppy, sloppy, instinctive motion. Not when Steve will, probably only seconds from now, collapse on or next to him, drag him close, wrap around him like an octopus, and let Danny finally get a decent night's sleep.

Not yet. Not yet. Now is still Steve slamming deep, hipbones knocking against the back of Danny's thighs, and light bursting in Danny's head, and both of them hurtling towards certain, uncaring destruction, while all Danny can do is keep holding on, pushing down on Steve, muscles tightening hard and sudden around him, as the first dominoes start to tip, get doused in gasoline, go up in unstoppable flames.

[thebesteverseen]

The world is peeling away from every corner and beam. The floors and the wall so his skin, and his head, and every piece of him, shaking apart. Heat humming up his spine and through his teeth, making him clench them and do the only thing he was ever trained to do. Push through. Give up the world, and the sky, and air, and push. Even if there is a mangled groan when Danny bears down on him suddenly, hot and tight, causing him to shake.

And he's pretty sure, in some very tiny part of his head left that has any rational thought left, that he very likely just ripped part of the sheet, when he fisted the material under his fingers, trying to hold on, trying to hold out, hold through that. Like there was any way to convince himself for even half a second that wasn't his skin, wasn't Danny clenching around him, wasn't something he'd go up in flames for without caring.

Except. He feels it. The way a rubber band and the links in a chain do.

When the smallest links ends pull apart finally, stretched too hard, too far, for too long.

It's almost a relief, the way it spirals out like taking a brick to his brain. The sudden explosion of white.

Fingers digging in fiercer against the bed and bedding and Danny's hip, pushing himself, to move harder, faster, like there is any chance of outrunning anything, but he's the best. He's the best. The Best. And he made it here. Earlier than he was supposed to, because he willed it so. And he can make another minute, or two, or however long he has to, if he has to, because he can, because there is no other thought.

Nothing but the blistering heat slamming through his body, causing a tremor to race through his skin like it's alive. But he's not going anywhere without Danny. Not again. Not this week. Not tonight. Not for even a minute. Because Danny is his. His. His.. He got here. His. He made it. His. Danny said so. His. It's the only word left, fierce and full, screaming through his veins and across his head, his skin is thinking it with every mad drag of of his fingers and pump of his hips.

Though both are slipping, sliding, beyond his control, dragging him by his lungs with the drastic force like a crashing wave.

Caught between the piston machine of his body, and the way the world is already collapsing under his feet now.

But he has that one small thing. Danny is His. His. His. His. His. His. His.

[haole_cop]

There's nothing. No bed under him. No air around him, that isn't turning to fire in his lungs, against his skin. Nothing but heat, waves upon waves of it, crawling up his spine, shivering his skin, coating his throat in burning ash, and Steve. Moving, moving. Push, hard, fast, harder, more.

Something tearing. Hoping distantly it's nothing important, and prying his eyes open from where they'd been glued shut, to stare up at Steve. That face.

The one. Like they're in a firefight. Like he's at the bitter end of a mission. Like he's about to throw himself off a building. Strung tight and ready, perfect, coiled and shaking under it. Holding it all in, but he's riding the edge and it's the hottest fucking thing Danny's ever seen, okay, Steve hauling back on the threads of his control and his snapping sanity, to push further, to knock them off this cliff together, and Danny's breathing, yeah, go, go, just as Steve's fingers squeeze and he shouts, groans. Muscles spasming. Hips jerking. The sudden hard rolling boil in his stomach shrinking to a hard hot knot before it's suddenly expanding, flooding everywhere, and his whole body is one curved line, the swift and sure stroke of ink on paper, an arcing brushstroke.

Steve's fingers suddenly slick and hot around him, making him jerk hard into that perfect circle, tighten hard around Steve, shake, so good, hot wet slick perfect Steve before it's too much, short-circuiting nerves like dropping a cup of coffee on a motherboard. Shuddering hard and hands gripping tight, dragging Steve off the cliff with him, they're so close, they're together, they're always together, him and Steve, toppling off into the fire and down and down and down.

Every inch of skin alive, and then cut off like a breaker got thrown. To where he can barely feel his lips, his legs, even Steve's weight, Steve's pressure, the impossible fullness, Steve's hand. Murky depths of darkness, and the sticky-paper weight of his tongue in a dry mouth. Heart racing, some small prey animal skittering panicked in his chest, chased by a wolf, a tornado, a wall of flame.

Weight dropping to the pillow. Eyes already gone stunned and half-lidded, hands looking for Steve, shoulders or arms, to drag with him, on top of him, and stay unmoving for what will hopefully be the next three months, at minimum.

[thebesteverseen]

There's a too long moment, seared in boiling, blistering white and snapping angry at his heels, when Danny is speaking and Steve's not even positive language exists outside of his own word, one goal, one meaning to all of life. And somehow something still slinks, slimy and slick and amused around his ankles, and the back of his brain, that Danny would find a way. Even then. He'd find away.

He still. He has his mouth, and that face. Eyes bright as the stars even in the dark, right when Danny goes rigid under him.

Tightening again, like he's trying to murder the last cent of Steve's control, but Steve doesn't even get that though, because Danny is jerking, his voice loud and dark, while his body tumbles over itself, collides in Steve's body, Steve's hand, slingshots beyond both of them, and rolls straight into everything left in Steve like a perfect strike. A bowling ball. A single perfectly aimed bullet. Barely giving Steve the second to savor anything before the ceiling was collapsing in on him.

Pushing him to bury himself deep into Danny, like he could slip all the way under his skin somehow.

The world going so fast and so hard, that he can't stop it, or himself. The catch of his hips or the way he tips toward his hand and Danny's grabbing him, pulling him even more off balance, his other hand soaked through fingers and refusing relinquish, the way gravity refuses to give him a pass just this one time. Maybe because he can't remember. Can't remember his name, or where he left his boots. Or anything but the screaming in his ears, as everything goes like a tapped bomb.

The perfect heat, dizzying pleasure that burns him on every edge of itself. The fierce rebelling, losing, part of himself still stuck five paces back with it's last orders, growling, a mutter out his lips of, "Mine," like an order or a warning. That might have worked better any other second than while every part of him was being slammed by waves of light, shuddering him like a rag doll or a leaf, and that word was getting lost between Danny's shoulder and pillow suddenly come up to catch him.

[haole_cop]

There's a laugh. Somewhere in the wreckage of his chest, that hollow burned-out cage, barely able to shake or press up because Steve is collapsed on him, the last shudders pulsing through his body, through muscles under Danny's fingers and absorbed by Danny's skin. It's exhausted, befuddled, like someone just slammed a brass candlestick into his temple and then gave him a couple deep breaths of nitrous.

Mine.

Steve's. Owned, like those boots, that uniform. As much Steve's as those dogtags are. More than the Camaro is Danny's. More than anything is Danny's, because Steve owns things the way children do, jealously, complete. Adopting them fully, seamlessly, until they're no longer something separate from himself that he likes or loves, but are another patch in the patchworked life he's painstakingly sewed together for himself.

His. With that stamp of a bruise forming on Danny's shoulder, as much Steve's signature as anything done with pen and paper. As accurate as permanent marker would be. It might as well be tattooed. His. A dead weight of a thousand bricks on top of Danny, keeping him here, as if Danny could ever want to be anywhere else, as if he could even feel his legs or his feet or force his stomach muscles to curl and pull him up. "Possessive, much?"

He can't even summon the energy to fake disapproval, feels too good, is floating too lightly along this warm and calming river to give a damn about something he can't argue, because he's said it before. Plenty of times. That he's Steve's. However Steve wants. For as long as he wants. "Two weeks back in the Army and you come back all alpha male dominance, Jesus."

Eyes closing, while one hand finds the flat of Steve's back between his shoulderblades and the other circles Steve's wrist, and he huffs out a sigh of deep contentment, sinking further and further into his mattress, the sheets, Steve's warmth, the darkness, this river on which he bobs so blissfully.

But he won't argue it. Even when he's mocking Steve, or suggesting the two weeks away left Steve even more deranged than usual, he doesn't say nope, wrong, doesn't pause or hesitate or stiffen.

Just lets it ride. Allows it. He's good at that. Being someone's. He's always been that kind of person, to love one or two people with everything he's got, to put the entire stock of his world and heart and soul in their hands. Steve's never been owned by anything but the US Navy and his own too-strict, too-stern ideals, but that's okay. Danny's got this. Enough for both of them.

Just as long as Steve doesn't go anywhere.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny's talking. Still. Somehow.

It's washing up soft, laughing, warm in his ear. Or his shoulder. His hair?

He can't tell if it registers like an itch or something tickling first. He can't really decide if it's registering that he has skin and bones and muscles of any kind. But still it's there. Danny's voice. Soft. Laughing. Poking at him. He'd nip Danny's shoulder for being awake, for being annoying, for having words, but Steve would have to figure out how to turn his head and he needs to find his chest and his lungs and his vocal cords first.

All of them somewhere buried under the rubble. Being lured and tempted by that voice. The way he can feel it rumbling up through whatever is left of his chest. That found the fast way down on to Danny. Apparently. Everything feelings like its made of quick dry cement, and he could push, he could bounce back, but there are fingers, wobbly, thick, pressing close fingers, making their way along his spine and against the muscle under his shoulder blade.

He doesn't want to leave them, and huffs out a breath first about that, more than anything else. Because he doesn't need to. Bounce back. Shake it off. Turn it into drive. The way he can anything. He doesn't need drive right now. He got here. No, he is here. He doesn't want to be anywhere else. He doesn't even want to lie and say he wants to be one or one and half feet to the left or right and not right where he is now. He wants to be here. He never wants to leave here.

His mouth feels like it's been tarred, when he turns his head, pulling in a sharp breath of air through his nose first, before making his jaw work. The first words, get stamped with the rumble of his chest and his mouth moving for the first time, but the rest finds a better footing getting to, warm and low and slung together almost like one long, low, hum. "You didn't seem to mind that a few seconds ago."

[haole_cop]

"I'll mind tomorrow."

And for all he'd just been insulting Steve for being barely more civilized than a jealous dog with a bone, he's nearly growling, too. Voice hitting that low, lower, lowest register reserved for just-awake and afterglow, where his vocal cords seem to be coated in ground glass and tar.

Fingers spreading as possessively over Steve's skin, wrapping as jealously around Steve's wrist, as anything Steve's saying. Like Danny could say mine, and make it true. Like he could ever, actually, own Steve.

It'd be like saying he owns a hurricane. Or loyalty. Or the dysfunctional relationship of two tectonic plates vying for the same space, knocking together until one sinks and the other shoves it down.

Like Steve would allow it.

He's not sure it would be allowed. That Steve wouldn't go all silent and stony like he sometimes does, instead of how he currently is, boneless and useless and maybe Danny's favorite way to have him, all his defenses down, a pile of too-warm Hawaiian-made Navy SEAL doing his best to smother Danny completely, so Danny opts for a different tack, breathes deeply in, long and relaxed out, turning his face towards Steve's head, runs his thumb back and forth in a slow, languid sweep just over the slowing pulse under the thin skin of Steve's wrist.

"Shh, shhh," he shushes, drowsy. "I love you and I'm happy you're back, even if you found it necessary to break into my house, but please, shut up. No one is impressed. I'm not impressed."

More lies, handed over with all the care and caution of absentmindedly tossing a crumpled piece of paper that may as well hit the floor as the trash can. He is impressed. A little.

And he is Steve's. Still no argument there.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve's smiling before he even knows he's smiling. Because Danny never stops talking and Danny never stops moving.

There are words circling his head like small planes, making the arduous journey from Danny's mouth maybe five or six inches over there, to his ears, circling the air in death defying leaps and spins around his head, fuzzy and fading and not. Accenting by the warm, possessive spread of fingers on his back, and around his wrist. And Danny calls him possessive. Though he is. He knows he is.

Knows it's the untempered, crushing, left hand to the right hands worth of thinking Danny could find someone else. Could. Steve's halfway to through the battle of letting the second word there be should, when Danny keeps talking. Keeps talking and shuts his head up entirely. Pin drop. Like the world exploded again. Except it didn't. Danny just. Danny just said it, again, like it was normal. Like it was common. Dropping those words like they don't freeze everything in him.

Just a detail, just one step on the way to the rest of the words rolling out of his mouth. Making Steve's heart, that mangled, blood soaked, exhaustedly put through it's paces thing, already flopped over in it's cage of bones, just laying there like a fish out of water, wheezing air instead of water, breathless and boneless and gap mouthed and utterly at a loss for the right words or even any idea what it is that suddenly shoved which what feelings into his chest. A wash in something so big said so small, and tramped on from.

Enough that Steve blinks, shifts, pushes it back, too. Like it should be easy. Like Danny just did. A detail. One in the many. Focuses on shifting instead. Not so much away, as finds his shoulders and shifts to something a little more comfortable than prone where fallen on Danny. But he gets distracted even amid moving, because Danny is like that. Talking. Moving. Existing. In the world, in his head, under him -- especially the last one while moving.

Making him rub his nose against Danny's shoulder and brush his mouth against the skin there in a very disorganized kiss even while he's making a soft snorting noise. "Right. I'll just get my pants and let you go back to sleeping, then?"

[haole_cop]

He wonders how long it'll be before Steve stops freezing like a teenager caught sneaking out in the middle of the night every time Danny says I love you.

(He wonders if they'll get the chance to get that far in, that far away.)

"Nope."

Shoulders shifting, digging a little further into the mattress, stretching under Steve's limp weight. "You're not going anywhere."

Not now. "You just got back, you in such a hurry to leave?"

Like Steve could even walk right now, which is a totally separate point from the fact that Danny wouldn't let him, anyhow. Wouldn't let go, wouldn't allow him to leave, will need some serious convincing to even let him go to the Palace tomorrow, be anywhere but right here, under Danny's hands, in Danny's arms, taking up Danny's bed. "I don't even have the pullout for you to run from anymore."

Which Steve didn't even do that one night, even if he was bitching the whole time, while Danny kept waking them both up and made them both have to try to fall back asleep with steel bars gnawing straight through the thin pad until it felt like trying to sleep on a jungle gym.

He stayed. He's not going anywhere now, so Danny can say this shit with the supreme confidence of a man who just got laid and is comfortably certain it'll happen again in the near future. "But maybe not right on top of me."

Or maybe yes. Because. He's not quite ready to let go and get even a few inches of space yet, okay.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve stretches out. Because he's a bastard, and because Danny expects him to do just that, too. Steve can hear it in his tone. The way he's poking at whatever's closest by, that he can, see, reach, choose for the next thing to goad Steve about, now that the flames aren't consuming anything. But he's not twisting and shifting or pushing at Steve, and he's by no means suffocating under Steve, so Steve's taking it all like he owns it.

Like Danny hadn't actually argued him saying that word. That one that broke free of the barbed wire and his focus, as everything snapped. Like Danny hadn't just said he loved him, loved Steve, like it was somehow as easy as that, and didn't care if he'd broken in. Because Danny didn't want him to move any more than he wanted to move. Oh, he'd move. Eventually he would. In another minute, or five, or half an hour when Danny was annoyed because he'd fallen asleep on top of him.

Or he'll move now. At least as far as getting his legs to stop being a bent, akimbo, pretzel, half-under Danny's legs still. Even if moving them is like moving sludge. A wash of warmth and only some soreness when they unbend finally. Straight out, sloppy, and space hogging, like a blanket shifting to make sure he's covering almost all over Danny, even tossing a leg over one of his. While saying, low and amused with himself, with them, with being here, finally, just letting his mouth run, against Danny's skin, "Suffer. This is the best spot on your miserable bed."

And it is his. The bed that doesn't suck doesn't, even if it isn't his, and Danny between him and it. The most important thing anywhere.

"Best plan for protecting it from attack is to not do anything that would rouse enemy attention." Beat. "Like move."

[haole_cop]

"You mean you didn't snipe any possible enemy targets when you broke in?"

Snide, hoarsely groaned at the tail end of the question when Steve shifts and momentarily presses all the air out of Danny's chest. "And this bed isn't miserable, it's fine, it's better than fine, it's actually extremely comfortable, which is why I bought it in the first place and which you would know if you actually lay down on the mattress like you're supposed to, and not on me."

Not that he's in any particular rush for Steve to move, exactly. They can lie like this for a while before it actually gets uncomfortable, and it's been so long since they've been here that Danny can't say he minds, or even wants Steve to move. He spreads out a little, puts more weight on Danny's stomach, stretches long legs down the mattress and shoved-aside sheets, while Danny yawns, jaw-cracking and huge, and settles down, suddenly bone-meltingly exhausted and only just beginning to feel sensation returning to his extremities, like they're being slowly flooded with warm water. "So how was it? With the shouting and the orders and the men in uniform and the tiny bunks. I bet you missed chasing crooks."

He bets Steve missed him, too. And Chin, and Kono, and Cath, and Hawaii. Bets he missed getting led around by Grace on their last trip to the aquarium, being told exactly how a fresh-to-saltwater ecosystem works, because that's what Grace is studying right now.

And he already knows, doesn't he, that Steve couldn't wait to get back, because Steve said so, when Steve said he took a cargo plane to get here, traveled straight, didn't stop.

Leaving Danny with this nearly painful pressing warmth in his chest and a smug smile starting to pull numbed lips back into life.

"Did you have fun pulling rank again, huh? Was it like the good old days when you could order people around and they'd actually listen to you?"

[thebesteverseen]

This is the best. Steve almost wants to roll his head, just so he can burry his face somewhere near Danny's jaw and the side of his head. So the words will actually just vibrate through his skin, the way they feel like they are traveling in a rumble under his chest and out, only to sink into his sink from the edges then. Along with the sweat cooling on his skin. But that settles on his skin, wicking away in the air, and Danny's words sink under it.

They slide through his skin and his muscles, running through his veins and lodging in his bones, so that they are still popping up out of nowhere, Danny Williams, still tucked under her skin and refusing to budge, even When Steve is a million miles away. The thought of which makes half inches feel too far. Especially this late. Especially now. Making Steve tuck his fingers under one of Danny's hips. That's one thing this position isn't great for. Getting his arms back around Danny.

He'll get there. Not yet. Maybe soon, but still not yet. While Danny is sounding, rumbly and tired, full of the quiet fuss and fire Steve has missed more than Hawaii, more than air. He can go without breathing. He can do a lot of things without breathing. He was trained for those. Trained for putting everything to one side. Except Danny. With is a marginally hilarious, and dangerous, thought. No one taught him anything about this. Or how to leave it behind.

And he doesn't want to learn.

Doesn't want to test fool-proof methods for it.

When his skin is cooling, and Danny is asking questions he doesn't entirely know how to answer correctly, he doesn't want to learn. Doesn't care about the planes and the cabs and the breaking and entering. Here, one Danny, under the press of his fingers, lost in the endless noise he makes, is the only thing that even feels important. He knows there'll be more in the morning, and was more behind him. But it's not here, right at this second, when he's breathing in Danny's skin.

"Just because you don't listen," Steve starts with a shake of his head against Danny. "Doesn't mean everyone else doesn't do what I say." That Danny doesn't drop into suit when he has to, when it comes down to the wire and all their jokes drop out like someone kicked the trap door beneath them, whether that's in line behind Steve, or step-in-step at his side, or shoving himself between Steve and someone else.

"It was good." Even if that world curls funny on his lips, because Danny is good, this is good, and it was fine. But maybe not in the same realm, the same kind of good as good. "Worked on a project." One high enough up it's probably as lightly as he can even touch it. "Had at it with people who didn't need kid gloves." There something like a faint poke of fingers, or just a tense of them at that taunt.

Went to bed and woke up every morning either confused in the last and first second why Danny wasn't there, or not confused and too utterly aware of it like a missing piece of himself. Like he'd always been aware of the gaping gouges in his 'self,' in things he didn't have or need behind him every soldier and seal and sailor had, because he knew himself. From stem to stern. It was a necessity, like an invulnerability.

And then suddenly there it was. New, and overarching, and everywhere Danny wasn't.

"No one bitching about paperwork once." Was supposed to come out more of a taunt, but it's sleepily closer to fond.

[haole_cop]

"You love it."

Confident, turning his head and muttering it close to Steve's cheekbone, breath puffing gently on fresh-shaved skin. "People butting heads with you. Just because you don't get to be Sergeant Slaughter anymore doesn't mean you don't love it."

He can hear it, in Steve's voice, and, fine, maybe it's not the paperwork, or giving orders, or projects, or going toe-to-toe with someone just as vicious as him, maybe it's not all those things Steve misses or loves, but it's there, in the way Steve's mumbling into his shoulder, in the way his hand curves around Danny's hip as if Danny might possibly try to make a run for it, as if he doesn't see the way Steve lights up when he's in the Palace and the whole team is working together, seamlessly, a unit as perfect as anything the Navy could drum up, even without uniforms or cold water training, loyal to each other through bullets and bombs, even without harassment and conditioning.

Maybe they can't withstand torture, or kneel in freezing waves for hours on end, or storm an insurgent's hideout, but they're a team, Steve's team, the one he picked and the best at what they do.

And Steve sounds outright affectionate head smashed in with a fuzzy brick, tongue clumsy and hands possessive, making Danny chuckle, low in his chest. "The bitching, it's your life's blood, you wouldn't know what to do without it, would you."

Smug and certain. Supremely sure of himself, what he's saying, what he knows. That Steve stays with Five-0, even though he doesn't have to. It's not about solving the murder of John McGarrett anymore, Steve could've gone back for more than just two week drills, dissolved Five-0 or left it in the charge of someone else, but he didn't.

And now he's come back. Again. Snuck into Danny's house and barged into his bed, and he'll be back at work tomorrow and it'll take about thirty seconds before Danny's yelling at him for something.

He's honestly almost looking forward to it.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve is rolling his eyes. Or meaning to. It might be more in the movement of his head, than the actual circuit of his eyes, themselves, more than half closed, and gummy with the grit of travel and the well-earned exhaustion of his muscles slowly unwinding him like a top. The shiver that slices through him, like a small wave brushing over him more than rolling through him, when Danny's lips barely brush his cheek.

Warm air sending Steve listing toward him, like a building with only half of it's weights holding. The other, knocking gently against Danny's face. Tilting up, to catch Danny's mouth with his own, tipping his nose up into Danny's, that distracts him into sounding not put upon enough either. Maybe because he's sushing Danny, and all his noise. Before. "Navy." Which is important. He's never going to say it right, but Steve's apparently a glutton for punishment and taking Danny's shit, because he missed that, too.

"And, sure, I do," Steve said back, disregarding the actual truth there. That these weekends and weeks did exactly that. Showed him, once more, what he could be doing, maybe even should be doing. Puts him on the front lines for a constant haggled conversation, every single time or other time, depending on who can catch him where, about when he was looking at coming back and how was his civilian sector pet project just outside of Pearl and Hickam.

But that's not in his words, or in this room really. It's not at all in his head much, and not at all in his mouth, when he's pushing out mocking crap instead of anything that looks like the briefly scatter of thoughts. "I'd get a whole lot more done not wasting my time on delegating something a desk jockey could do."