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]

"Well, sure."

It doesn't bug him, that Steve rarely says it back, or at all. Steve saves those three words up like he's scraping together spare change to buy enough food for a day at a time, hoards them, drops them like carefully placed bombs when he does actually, finally, say them. He doesn't breathe them like Danny does, and that's fine, that's absolutely fine. He doesn't need to, and Danny doesn't question it.

It doesn't matter, in the end, whether Steve loves him back or not. It wouldn't stop this feeling, snowballing in his chest until it's everywhere, spilling onto everything, marking it up like a kid smacking painted handprints along the walls of his heart. Like holding Grace the first time, or his first kiss with Rachel. So it doesn't matter, but Danny knows he does -- at least, at moments like this. Right now, it's not so impossible to believe that it could be true, that he can have this, can have Steve, to keep, for a little while. "But that's tomorrow."

Tomorrow's another day. Everything will go back to being muddled and uncertain then, and he'll start second-guessing again, and they'll be back at work and everything will be normal, bitching at each other like all they want to do is shove the other into a headlock or barred room or very small barrel.

Tomorrow. Tonight, he shifts when Steve does, pulls out his arm and slides it under the pillow, lets go of Steve just long enough to find the sheet, muscles protesting as he bends, making him grunt and groan until he's pulled it up over their legs and hips, found Steve's side with his hand again. Easy, comfortable. Close enough to brush the tip of his nose against Steve's lips, the bridge of Steve's, settle into the pillow with a huffing sigh. "We've got at least eight hours before I start hating you again."

[thebesteverseen]

Steve would shake his head at the insanity, the hilarity in the exhausted sleep thick warmth, of Danny's voice, but it's true. Which is just another one of those things. About them. About this. Because it is. Tomorrow, at some point, Danny will go back thinking every choice he made could be better, smarter, saner, and Steve will go back to thinking Danny could live a little, especially if he pushed him out the passenger door while still going eighty.

It's all there, even now. Like nested layers of skin. When his thumb strokes against the skin on Danny's back twice, while they settle in tight and close, and his body is finally dipping into the mattress all on its own, under his own weight and volition. The bed really doesn't suck. Even if it it in this house. It still has the only thing he wanted, and he'd bear so much worse distraction and uncomfortableness just to have it. Have Danny. Making light out of everything, like it all fits into words.

Like Steve fits here, somehow, even when he couldn't make words work, or sense of himself, or everything in him, to save himself.

There's a snort, for the words pouring out of Danny, more than his heavy sleep-soaking thoughts, fuzzy and impossible to catch or hang on to even with his own hands. When he can curl in, and little down at Danny bumping his nose, and lean in to kiss Danny again, like there's no other imperative left in his skin. Sleep-heavy and utterly certain about the words he's about to say, and how they mean nothing, nothing at all, next to the warm pulse fluttering through his body even now, against Danny's mouth.

When he doesn't even pull back to say, "You be sure to tell me when that starts."

Like it's a challenge, laced in the deep, sure arrogance there's no way Danny could actually, absolutely go from loving Steve like this, messy and everywhere and confusing and somehow still his, to hating him absolutely by morning. That even when it rides his coat tails and the backs of his boots and the tail of the plane, that Danny out of his sight could find someone, anyone, there thousands of people on this little ebbing away rock in the middle of the ocean, and they still end up here.

Hands, warm and wide, holding on, even after. Voice rumbling into the darkness like they can't quite let go even then.

[haole_cop]

"Oh, I will. I'll add it to the list."

Complaints to be made. Insults to hurl. Back to their daily ritual of barely being able to stand each other, while Danny tells Steve he should be put in a kennel and Steve tunes the radio to easy listening just to watch the barometer of Danny's blood pressure shatter while he gets redder and redder in the face.

Nothing like, and everything like, this. Steve curling in around him, tipping his head to the side to find his mouth, press a lazy kiss there, that Danny responds to, drowsy and half a beat too late. Already tired before, being woken up in the middle of the night and suddenly shoved into emotionally desperate and physically exhausting sex -- he's tired. Sleepy. Wants to nudge his forehead into the curve of Steve's shoulder and fall soundly asleep, right here, too warm and too close and this tangle of confused limbs. "You'll know. When it starts."

Said, eyes closed, rubbing his cheek against the pillow and slinging an arm familiarly over Steve's side, fingertips just brushing the mattress beneath. "In fact, I hate you right now, you asshole. Insulting my bed. My bed is fine. It's great. It is a fantastic bed, and I am extremely attached to it."

It's perfect, right now, because the only thing it was lacking has suddenly appeared.

All he could want now is for tomorrow to magically be Saturday, so he could sleep in and Steve could try to sleep in and fail miserably, and then wake Danny up by watching him while he sleeps, like some kind of serial killer, or stalker. Not that he wants to keep Steve from Chin or Kono, but...

He's selfish. Danny. Always has been, always will be, and he's selfish about this, about the few hours they can snatch away from the world being more important, always coming first, because it always will. It's the job, it's who they both are, and he only resents it a little, only sometimes, with an air of resignation, because it's never going to change.

That doesn't mean he wouldn't like to keep this for himself a little longer.

[thebesteverseen]

They pile haphazardly, messy, hands and arms and knees, wherever they can fit. Need to. Want to. Nerve endings sizzling to a soft tingle at the hand that brushes his back before finding the bed under him, while Danny is squeezing all but right into his chest. It might bug him in a few hours, but right now, Steve can't think of anywhere else he'd rather have Danny be than everywhere, all over him, pressed in, too close and too warm, too present, full of so much life and noise, filling every second and space that had been empty.

Even when that energy, and even the focus of Danny's voice, is fading. Even Danny's grip getting generally looser.

"Can't hear you," Steve says, yawning into the pillow and away from it happening directly into Danny's hair or his face. A wide wobbly sounds, making him stretch his shoulders and pull Danny in closer when he curls back in, around, while he's shaking his head. "I still have several hours to go. Your complaints about your knock-off crap have to wait until dawn."

Knock-off crap is fuzzy term, but the only thought Steve can think of as the darkness collects on the back of his eyelids, fuzzily, is that it's the perfect term for them, too. It's not like the biting, scathing insults from drills and platoons, from training of any kind. It's just them. Knock-off crap. Nowhere near as real, or biting, or scathing most of the time now. But still there. Still pushing at each other, shoving back and forth. Perfect.

All of this was. Messy and heavy and hot and noisy, and perfect. All of it what he came all these hours for. Not a single minute, or favor, or action he'd take back. No. No, not when he can turn his head and brushing his chin and his cheek against Danny's hair and let out a breath, against the soft, sleep and sex-addled, strands of Danny's hair and just breathe in, as something in his chest lets go. He would do it all again, right now, this second, two or three times as long and costly, just to get back to this.

[haole_cop]

"For Christ's sake."

Like Steve's being impossible, aggravating, anything other than shifting so Danny fits into the empty space where Steve used to be, where the sheets are still warm and the mattress still dipped from his body. "Go to sleep, aren't you tired? What kind of freaky stuff are your Army doctors giving you, huh? Twenty hours, Jesus."

Of course Steve can go without sleep. Steve could probably still go without sleep, because it's not that he doesn't get tired, it's that he barely notices it anymore, except as a slight annoyance to push through until he can't stand up straight and the world rushes up at him three days later.

But just because Steve an do something doesn't mean he should do it, has to do it, which is something Danny thinks Steve must forget all the time, or just never think about. No one's going to expect him to leap out of bed at the crack of dawn for PT; they don't have to be anywhere until work, and 8am seems like an unheard-of luxury right now, barely past midnight, with Steve slipping slowly towards sleep next to him, warm and solid and content. Cheek and jaw against his hair, soft breath fluttering a few strands.

He takes a deep breath, lets it seep back out, easy, comfortable, eyes closing against the dark and the pillow and the shadowed curve of Steve's neck. "Sleep," he says, only it comes out as a mumble, less a word than a yawn. "Gotta be well-rested for the criminals tomorrow."

Back to work. Back to the Palace. A visit to Dennings, to let him know Steve's back, and a debrief on the last two weeks, and then Steve will pick up where he left off and Danny will spend the next month in the passenger seat, until Steve heads off for his first weekend drill.

There's gotta be something wrong with the fact that that thought makes him happy, right?

[thebesteverseen]

Danny bitches. It's like breathing, but involves lots of words and insults instead.

Mostly thrown at Steve's head. Or, right now, his skin, Gusts of warm breath pushing out over Steve's cooling skin. Up across his neck and down in the delves of his shoulder and collar, almost tickling his skin. Making him want to push in closer more than pull away or rub at it. Even if the only thing he really does at first is half-roll his eyes, even if they are mostly closed, and having to open them for the words, because Danny is awake, at least if one can call it awake, and talking.

Because Steve's missed this, everything about this, and that is a rare feeling.

It's not that he never missed Five-0 or his team or Danny while he was gone before. But never like this. Tucked under his breast bone and digging itself a deeper hole each day, gnawing on his ribs a little more with each passing morning and night, in case he somehow forgot there was something missing. Something massive. Something substantial. And loud. Full of a thousand words, in every shade possible, missing.

Making him not want to miss anything. Need to slit his eyes barely, and there's a jerky almost shake of his head, when he's raising his hand from Danny's back to hook it somewhere around the sturdy base of his neck. Fingers covered in more of that soft, messy hair, and palm wide on his shoulders, while he's grousing. "Maybe I would be if someone, who couldn't recognize what the Navy was even if it might get them a raise, would shut up."

Not that it would, of course, but he still strung it up in there. Money. Like it was a thing. Like Steve cared. Like Steve could hand one out for that. Like Steve really needed all that much to justify. Well he hadn't before Dennings. Dennings was a different story. And one he didn't want to think about while his partner was naked and pressed against this much of him. Because that was a divide that didn't get easier, and didn't want to give a damn about that yet. Dennings. Partner. Rules.

At dawn, tomorrow, not now. Right it's just Danny, and it's just him, and it's just right, everything is.

Steve's thumb rubbed lazy, back and forth, across the crook of Danny's neck, as he let his eyes close, again, slowly.

[haole_cop]

"Hmmm."

Half consideration, half a breath out that forgot, halfway through, what is was doing and turned into a sigh instead, a sleepy rumble deep in his chest. "Not worth it."

If the dark weren't catching gentle hooks in his eyelids and tugging them down, down, down, heavier than lead, heavier than gold, heavier than his feet after a hike with Steve up Mount Why-The-Fuck-Are-We-Doing-This, he'd chastise Steve for thinking his ability to remember the differences between the Army and Navy is so mercenary. There's no money that's as enjoyable as the way Steve huffs up, insulted and annoyed, even if he's come to expect it, as he should, as he almost definitely has.

Instead, he just slides one leg between Steve's, and deflates under the thumb rubbing across his skin. Everything's sifting in and out of focus, further and further, with longer and longer bouts of fuzzy half-awareness. Breathe in, scent of warm Steve and warm cotton; breathe out, sound of Steve rustling against the sheets and the breeze rustling the trees outside.

It won't be enough. It never is, and tomorrow will come too soon, remind them both that they have other priorities, other people who need to come first: a job, a court case, a mystery to solve, but behind it all, there's this.

Still, somehow, secret. Still just theirs, the only thing that is, because the rest of their lives and bodies and souls belong to the world, the larger thing than themselves, and that makes it even more, what. Precious?

Is this precious? The way their bodies fit together, in ways he never even thought about a year ago; the goofy smile he sometimes catches on Steve's face when Steve's barely aware of it at all; the way that he'll catch a glimpse of Steve's expression through the windows at work and it'll sit like a burning coal under his ribs until they're alone and he can find a wall and Steve's mouth.

Desperate when the job goes wrong and things are cut closer than usual. Embarrassed when Kono teases him for his newfound domestic bliss. Impossible, if Rachel wins, and he leaves.

Too many words. Too many definitions, and what's the point, anyway, when this is what it is, just this, the feel of Steve pressed against him, the fact that Danny doesn't want to let go, even to sleep.

Isn't that enough?

[thebesteverseen]

There's a soft chuckle, trapped in his chest and half-crawled up his throat, barely making it out his lips into Danny's hair while his thumb is dragging slower and slower each time. Because that, this, all of it. It's in the perfect things Steve has missed, too. The fierce, crazy brilliance that Danny lives at the world, at him, full of words and sound and movement, suddenly coming to a fast cut end.

Like someone forgot to tell him the power was going out. A light switch flicking the opposite way while Danny breathes into him, and curves just the slightest bit more. Like he doesn't have to hold on to anything anymore. Not even to the world. He can just breath out, let it sink those shoulders spread under Steve's palm, and just hold on to Steve now. Who really doesn't mind that at all. Which is a miracle in its own right. He doesn't usually like this. Didn't. Once. But now.

Steve shifted his shoulder, rubbing his chin in the pillow and Danny's hair, letting night steal toward him for the first time since it was dark when he was getting into planes on the other side of today. When sleep didn't matter either. Nothing matter but getting here. No, that's a lie. The getting here, the words and the favors, and the belts and boxes, and the planes. None of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was getting to this. To Danny.

When it's crazy, and even less likely him, but he knows Danny could have told him to shut up and dragged him down into bed, straight into this, without the sex before it, even if it was great and he's not discounting that was different and new and something he would not hate revisiting. But still. Even without it. Even if Danny have barely woken up, and drug him down, curled up into him like a child with an over stuffed bear, it would have been it. The right thing. Everything.

The way it is right now. When he can breathe out, and close his eyes, letting his thumb come to an easy stop. Everything in the world coming to a slow, quite standstill, letting his shoulders and his ribs relax. Breathing in Danny's shampoo, and his pillow cases, breathing in sex and the salt in the air that's been missing for weeks, too. Letting all of it drift in and out on each breath, like the waves in distance. Letting it work itself into his skin, his chest where Danny is pressed, close as a second heart, a lost piece of his own skin, that he's home.

[haole_cop]

"Go to sleep."

He's not sure if it's to Steve or to himself, couldn't even say for sure that it came out at all, that it made it past his fuzz-filled brain and to his tongue and lips, formed into actual words that could be heard and discerned, or if it's a mumble, smudged into the skin of Steve's throat, or if it's nothing at all but the slight movements of his lips, muscle memory, a dream of words he's too tired to put into practice.

And he is. God. He's tired. It's been hellish, trying to sleep without Steve, and even on the nights when he was tired enough to sleep without Steve, he kept himself up worrying about what it mean, that he finds it hellish to try and sleep without Steve, and frankly the whole carousel ride is exhausting.

So this is a relief. Even if he'll wake up in an hour or two and need to move, because Steve is too hot and he sprawls just everywhere and takes up the whole damn mattress with those octopus arms and legs, it doesn't matter. He'll be able to drop right back off.

Honestly, he's sort of looking forward to it. The remembering, body being surprised by someone else in bed with him, thing. Waking up, checking to see if Steve's there, finding him there, going back to sleep. Wound around each other. Requisitioning separate pillows. Stealing the other's. Finding Steve there. Checking and double checking, the clock.

There's no pool here. The ocean is far away, even is salt tinges the air, and he wonders, idly, if Steve's going to get up early to find someplace to swim, right before he decides he doesn't care, and then stops thinking entirely.

Deep. Low. Warm, and dark. He doesn't know what time it is when he blinks muzzy eyes open, only that it's pitch black, and Steve's rolled onto his other side, shoulders and back moving gently under the sheet, soft sounds of breathing, soft sounds of nighttime.

Danny shifts, runs a palm over Steve's side and slings his arm there following, fingertips brushing Steve's belly, and falls promptly, bone-meltedly asleep, straight back under, like he's being dunked. It's quiet, and they have all night, and he can sleep again, because Steve's here, he can sleep.

So he does.

[thebesteverseen]

The last mumble of words is barely coherent, barely loud enough for the wind to catch it, no less Steve, but he's gotten good at that. The last syllables of Danny's, following him down the drain, once he's close falling into sleep. Unable to go without more words, because what would Danny be without words in every part of himself. Steve can't even tell if he actually makes it to a smile, but he doesn't say anything.

Lets Danny have the last word. Because he can have it so long as Steve can have him. Solid and warm under his hand, his chin, against his body. Ebbing away like the sand on the beach under the presence and pressure of it. The calmed, but solidly steady thud of Danny's heart against his skin like a small anchor as the world ships out from under and around and over him, as he drifts into the darkness framed by the slow, deep, even breaths into his neck.

The world blurring down to the size and depth of an inkblot, that he only raises from in the odd second when something steals his attention enough to slip it back into his hands and his own head. Danny wrestling with making a sheet come up over his shoulder in the dark. Steve rubbing his own chin against the pillow case while he was moving the pillow. Stretching out his legs, and being momentarily confused about where he is and how there is room to right now, until he realizes he's not in the cramped bunk he was expecting.

None of them important for more than a momentary raise, like a crocodile peering over the water with only its eyes, before he's sinking, sinking, sunk back down in the warm, black. Waking up, again, unexpectedly with a sudden tightening of all his abdominal muscles at something is scaling across them. A something that is still moving, when his fingers catch up with it fast, even weighing a ton and sleep laden, at the same time while something is bumping up warm and solid to his back.

There's a quiet sort of hmmm as he realizes it's Danny. Fingers relaxing around the wrist in his grasp, and sliding down to curl over his hand, then tug it toward his middle, with Danny's forearm layered under his. Warmth rippling out in the all directions where he can't feel his skin or his bones or anything where he's floating, only vaguely part of his body, but he can feel Danny, and Danny is there, still there. Heavy as bricks on his skin, but the way it should be, together.

He just curls over, taking the blanket of Danny with him, into the dark, into the spaces where everything falls apart and holds.

[haole_cop]

There's a faint, petulant sound made at the way Steve's hand suddenly grips his wrist, but those fingers relax almost instantly and Danny doesn't so much as tense up, just shifts a little further into Steve's back, nose pushing up against the nape of his neck, arm heavy over his side. Snuffles a sigh, sinking back into the black warmth and dissolution of all his bones, arms, legs, head, skin.

It's not his alarm that finally wakes him up, blinking sleep-gummed eyes into a room muddied by pre-dawn light. It's not even that Steve moved, or a dream drop-kicked him out of his REM cycle and into the land of the confused and half-asleep.

It's probably nothing at all, just some internal buzzer going off too damn early, and he's blinking at the ceiling trying to figure it out, before glancing at the bedside clock.

Could be Steve's swim time. Early, but sometimes Steve goes early, disappears to swim laps and comes back before the sun is up, or just at dawn, to shake water over Danny like a dog and mock him for still being in bed at the eye-watering hour of five-thirty am.

Or maybe a car backfired outside. He doesn't care, because he's still got some time before the alarm goes off and he needs to get up, before showers and coffee and finding clothes for the day, so he can stretch --

And wince, because Holy God, he's sore.

Not just sore. Hurts. It's not like over-working a few muscles at the gym, this is like having a sunburn painting his insides, it's like he swallowed some molten lead, just for kicks.

"Ow."

[thebesteverseen]

He wakes, barely, more times than he likes. Rising and falling, like the catch of a parachute when it's pulled, briefly upward, and then sinking back and back and back down. Reminding himself he has nowhere to go or be, specifically. No one's expecting him back for a day. And Danny's place seems almost purposefully too far from the nearest pool or an area with a running track.

Besides it's not like he's even slept this well in the last few weeks. Solid blocks of black when exhaustion finally overwhelmed newness, where instead he has the longest protracted, constantly being reminded, and remembering, he's here, and not there. The smell of Danny's hair stuff in his nose from the pillowcase, and the movements he makes just shifting in his sleep, shifting Steve when he's touching him and the bed under Steve even once he rolls away each time.

It's better than what feels like the new established habit of forever. Pulls him down, like a weight that's been steadily growing for all of those weeks, warm and lulled, half a seductive siren song of a request and half the undeniable pull of everything he is swirling down a drain right into a sucking black hole that is demanding sleep. Exhausted and spent and with nothing else he needs to put his energy to. Except closing his eyes and letting the night countdown each minutes without him or his knowledge of it.

It's somewhere in the inky black that something moves again. Or maybe sparks. Something does something. Snags him. A vague awareness creeping along his spine, with thin metal legs that are needle pricks as they wind up. Enough to tug some part of his mind, but not enough to really do more than cause an indistinct sort of mutter of unpleased noise to register somewhere in back of his throat. Because it's not time yet, and that's one of the few annoyance of there being someone else over there left.

[haole_cop]

He half rolls over to shoot a muzzily exasperated glance at Steve, still more than ninety percent asleep, a heavy weight of bone and muscle and warmth sprawled across more than half of his bed. Winces again, at the motion, because Steve could have waited thirty goddamn seconds last night, leaned over to pull open the drawer and get the lube? Of course not, because Steve McGarrett does things his way, barges through and damns the consequences, lets someone else pay them.

This is going to suck all day.

"You wouldn't know how to be nice if it punched you in the face and kissed your cheek, you mongrel," he says, but it's low and still mostly dozy and probably not loud enough to register in Steve's sleep-soaked brain as anything other than a wordless complaint. "This is putting a cramp in my style."

He's awake, and Steve's in his bed, and they still have hours before work, plenty of time to sleep in a little, take a shower, make some coffee.

Or.

Rolling onto his side, he slides a hand up over Steve's stomach, and down to palm the jut of his hipbone, thumb running gently along the groove of muscle there. Chest pressing up against Steve's arm, while he ducks his head to brush his mouth over the round of Steve's bare shoulder. "Come on, come on, what happened to up at the crack of dawn, huh, soldier boy? Reserves softening you up, letting you sleep in?"

[thebesteverseen]

That sound is more constant that the waves or the wind. Distinct patterns his mind latches on to faster than his consciousness does even. Making his arch an eyebrow, lazy and heavy, like it's got bricks over it, to slip one eyelid and get a bleary look at Danny Williams getting close and friendly with killing all the space between them suddenly. Rumbling onward, those hoorom noises of some kind of displeasure. Which was Danny all over. Complaints.

Complaints and complaining, that have nothing on the way Steve's body shivers, a river of sleepy heavy muscles, stretching into the thumb rubbing it. Rising before the bones are even real again to push into that thumb, that hand, like a plant arching toward the sunshine. While a warm, thick, fuzzy sound gathered loose in his chest and pushed up his throat while there was a mouth kissing his shoulder, making him reach out a heavy hand, and it's arm, with it, since it didn't move alone, to find Danny's side.

To tug him close. All heat and complaints, never close enough, never enough words, and always gone for too long. Never understanding that Steve all but counted every single second of it. When he's nosing into Danny's shoulder, temple still on the pillow, so warm and full of endless water and warmth still, even as the light was filtering in turning the backs of his eyelids red, and filling his ears with clearer and clearer sounds of the wind, the waves, and Danny's voice.

"Nowhere to go, nothing to do," was mumbled, loose and low and cobbled letter by letter, from the dark, and the smell of Danny's skin so close. "Your place is in a crap location." Except it seemed perfect right now. The most perfect location ever. The one that had him this close to Danny and tugging him closer yet. "You should do something about that."

[haole_cop]

"Nothing, huh?"

Smiled into Steve's forehead, where his lips ended up now that Steve's turned towards him, before he's lifting his head and leveraging himself up off the mattress enough to brush his mouth over Steve's temple, the curve of his ear, the side of his head not blocked by the pillow, down towards the angle of his jaw and the relaxed column of his neck. "Nothing at all? I'm insulted, Steve, I am, really."

His hand is still moving slow, and so is the rest of him; he doesn't actually want to dropkick Steve into awareness, just wants to coax him along the fuzzy line between awake and dead to the world, where everything is warm and comfortable and relaxed, like floating in a hot bath, getting a massage. His thumb rubs a little harder, a long slow run of gentle pressure, before he slides his hand lower, along the side of Steve's thigh, back up again, down, and in. Fingers on the outside of his thigh, thumb running along the inner line.

"So, just to be clear, you're saying you do or do not want morning sex? Because I could leave you alone, if you want to go back to back to your beauty sleep. God knows you need it."

[thebesteverseen]

He's shifting, muscles tensing and relaxing down his sides, and his back, his ass and down into the backs of his thighs.

Uncertain if he's pushing into the slow, lazy, constant pressure on rubbing itself on his thigh. Or the brush of lips across his face, and then his ear, setting off ripples of warm water rubbing themselves inside his skin down his shoulders, and fast across his back, prickling up goosebumps and tightening his chest as he couldn't help but tilt his head to follow that mouth. Dragging puff of air from his nose as Danny's lips found his neck, spinning his head into colors and a small series of shallow breaths.

The words being spilled on his skin, like a bucket of ink, creeping into his chest and his gut, and twisting, so that he actually swallowed at the words. Because there's a ribbon of fire, not that hits him, but that cuts like a swift current through his head. Reminding him. Of last night. Of Danny, and him. Danny's complaints slotting a little into place, even as they fly away just about as fast, because of that hand dragging madness up the sensitive inside of his thigh.

"Lies," Muddled still, soft, but a little firmer, but caught between his mouth and into Danny's chest. The part of a shoulder and arm left on the bed, while Danny is leaning over him to the part of his face exposed upward. Talking out of his ass, even as other parts of him took a decided interest in the idea of being slightly more awake very quickly. "I always look good. You're lucky to have anything this good."

Soft, hoarse words, feathery with sleep, fingers tensing briefly on Danny's side when his hips rocked upward, inward, and almost in a confused little circle of his hips, like he was unable to even decide between getting close enough to find some spot of friction on Danny's skin or chasing the madness of those fingers that were so close and logistically impossible to slip right under.

[haole_cop]

"That's just pathetic, it really is."

Rustle of sheets and the rush of warmth from pushing into Steve's body heat, while he slides his hand back up to Steve's hip and pushes at it, wanting him over, on his back. "Everyone knows I'm the handsome one, you, you are not even domesticated."

Except it's such a lie. Steve is handsome, anyone would say so, anyone with eyes and even just the most academic of understandings about human attractiveness. Sure. Handsome is definitely a word people would use, when he's in his uniform, or slouched against a wall like he needs it to hold him up, or poring over some file, eyes keen and expression honed and focused.

But not now. He's not handsome now, he's beautiful, so beautiful it hurts, clutching in Danny's chest until Danny has to lift his head just to look at him, shoving a little more firmly so he can get that gorgeous goofy smile when Steve's head goes rolling back onto the pillow, prodding with words for it, because he suddenly needs it like he needs air, even though he knows it'll wreak havoc with his ability to breathe.

Because he is lucky. He is, he's so, so, goddamn lucky, he's the luckiest guy there ever was, because he's got a beautiful and kind, sweet, intelligent daughter, a good job, and because Steve's here, spooled out across his bed, blinking sleepy, heavy-lidded eyes and trying to complain even when Danny's trying to welcome him home the way any red-blooded man would want. Leaning over to run his mouth over Steve's collarbone, and slide his hand into the groove of Steve's groin, teasing, but not letting him push back up.

"You look like hell. How is that possible, huh, when I know you showered right before bed? It boggles the mind, Steven, it does. You are just perpetually --"

A graze of his teeth against the curve of Steve's throat, and a warm puff of nearly silent laughter to follow. "-- unfortunate-looking. We all have our cross to bear."

[thebesteverseen]

Steve loves that. That tone in Danny's voice. The one that goes warm and gravely, even when he's shoving at Steve's body like it's just a small wall that will never bounce back, especially then. When he's shoving at Steve like there's no part of Steve that's dangerous, deadly, well known for the truly terrible things he can do, both to himself and, especially, to others who deserve it. And using that tone.

That one Steve would describe like the water in the top ten feet when he comes up from the deep, dark, black-blue. When it's all refracted blue and golds, and the warmth is something the permeates every bit of your skin. Sinks deep and spreads fast through all of you. Like Danny is doing as his shoulders are hitting the bed, the pillow, and he's giving Danny one long, slow look, but Danny is already leaning over him, bright smile, and terrible insults.

How did he live through fourteen days without this? As much as a tiny part of his whispers it's not as necessary as breathing, nothing is, the way his chest shivers the next breathe when Danny's mouth catches his collarbone, has him shoving that thought a far away as the other side of the world. Fingers, coming up to find Danny's shoulder, so warm, like he just said. Because this is necessary the way waking up, and water, and being alive is.

Something warm spreading deep in his chest, like the ocean was pouring in from Danny's mouth.
Finding the bowl of his insides, at his spine and his shoulders and filing upward toward itself once again.

"Unfortunate," Steve snorted, "And yet you're still--"

Snapped on the sharp cut of teeth finding thing, skin, punching through his air and the warmth like a bolt of lightening, demanding his nerves and everything else with it. Turning his words into a sharp, surprised, hiss in, while his body pushed upward, into that hand and that mouth, that body not close enough, and his fingers found their way into Danny's hair, up the back of his head.

[haole_cop]

"Oh, look at that."

Smug and amused, smudged into the skin of Steve's throat, before he begins working his way back towards the collarbone, the smooth plane and rise of muscle below it, towards the center of Steve's chest. The sheets and blankets get caught against his back, tug down as he moves, slow and deliberate, leaving Steve bare in the warm dark of his bedroom, without any sunshine or overhead light to spill over him.

Just this pale dim barely there morning, while Danny's reaching the edge where his ribcage slopes down to his stomach, muscles contracting and relaxing under his mouth. "I'm still, what, I'm still what, Steven? Having a little trouble? Still sleepy?"

Not that he's trying to help. His hand has moved to Steve's hip, to brace against it and push it down as he shifts more on top of him, weight settling comfortably between Steve's legs, free hand now able to go to his side, track down it as Danny meanders his way down past Steve's belly button, towards the hazy line between sun-gold skin and the creamy, pale section that's always hidden under pants and boxers, uniforms and board shorts.

He doesn't care if Steve can talk. Hell, his aim might just be to make sure that's in no danger of happening, at all.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve is reasonable sure Danny was bitching about this when he was waking Steve up. Which is just another point in the tin that says Danny Williams is full of shit. But in the best way, because Steve can't even think for a few seconds of anything terrible to call him, because Danny's mouth is making a decided journey away from his, right while swallowing and wanting to kiss the crap off of it, and making this dedicated journey down his body.

He might be an idiot a lot of the time, but even Steve wasn't that dense. Not even half asleep. Not when he's only been back for hours still, and they fell into each other, with reckless impatience last night, and for all his bitching and Steve cursory consideration of why or how or what, Danny is headed right back down the rabbit hole. Across his body. Hands holding down his hip like a weight, making him shift and bump up, fighting against that hold.

Uncertain if it's more the thought of what's coming and the coil of heat trailing that mouth, or the fact Steve's as just damned unhelpful to the last as Danny can be. Because he can be, and because Danny expects no better of him, and wants him anyway, wants him with it, even know. Badgering him with words, like his mouth doesn't have better things to do.

Which is what comes out flippant and thick, "Talking too much. Still."

God, looking down his body, at Danny between his legs, not even there, but face alive and awake in the dim, smiling self-satisfied, is enough to make Steve's cock stiffen more and twitch just at that alone. He's pretty sure there's been a lot of complaining. About the house and the Navy and his head and everything else since he broke in, but he'd take it all for seconds like this. Unplanned, unexpected.

That smile and the dark look in Danny's eyes while his mouth is crossing his belly next, causing everything to tense for a second. Flutter muscles into tight relief, and then release. The way Steve is starting to swear he loves everything after it, but even that would be enough. Because it's real, and edged in fire, and promise, and a picture of it even would do him in. Leave him useless for everything but blowing smoke at the world and burning away inside.

The way he is, making himself toss out, "Do you need pointers on how this goes? I know how you get rusty without practice."

[haole_cop]

"Oh, I don't think that's what I'm doing at all."

Talking too much. Or maybe he is, but he's multi-tasking, really, because he's tracing the line of Steve's stomach out towards his side, to sensitive skin that barely gets touched, except briefly by him in passing, fingers trailing over Steve's shirt, or in a fight.

Re-learning the path down Steve's body. Or. Maybe just taking his time walking it, because he'd memorized it all weeks ago, would be able to play back in perfect high-definition detail, could, did, too many times over the last two weeks.

Which were all too close to not having Steve at all. To knowing what it would be like if Steve didn't come back, or if he was the one who left, even with the promise of it only being a drill, only being two weeks, only being a blip. Except it's not a blip. His court date is rushing towards him, even if it's still months away, and two weeks is a pretty goddamn sizable chunk of time out of a finite amount left.

So maybe he's not re-learning. Maybe he's just enjoying. Savoring. Burning each detail into his brain so that every memory is crisp and perfect, at least for a little while, before they all start blurring into each other, before he starts forgetting things, like the way Steve's muscles tighten, how his voice goes low and rusted-out when he's trying to pretend he's still holding it together.

Moving his mouth down the rise of his obliques, to chase that tan line down towards crisp curls and musky scent, and Steve's already getting hard, even without being touched once yet, making Danny laugh, warm breath on flushed and darkening skin. "I don't think you'd care." If he was rusty. He didn't seem to care when Danny was doing this for the first time ever, even, when it was probably awful and sloppy and he's still not entirely used to it or all that adept, but that doesn't stop him from running closed lips up the length of Steve's cock and flicking the ridge at his head with the tip of his tongue.

[thebesteverseen]

There's a tremor tipping his hips, when Danny's runs his mouth down across to almost his side. When his hands are, and his mouth is, and he's slept with a lot of people, okay. The kinds of numbers he doesn't want to sit down and think out much ever, especially not in comparison to this, because he's not sure anyone can. He's not sure anyone ever used their hands, the way Danny uses his hands. Thinks, breathes, skims, everything, with his hands.

Like he needs everything to be under them. Like there are part of how he hears, sees, reads, remembers. Needs to run them over every inch of skin. Like some part of any part of Steve might have changed in the last six hours, or the two weeks before that, that never changed in his entire life without a large enough weapon and some crazy luck on the part of an enemy. But those words don't even crowd up toward his mouth to be insulted at.

Because he loves Danny's hands, loves being touched by Danny, getting lost in it, in a way he'd never let anyone for a second lose him entirely. The way his entire body strains at the suddenly exhale of warmth when Danny laughs into his skin, making Steve look up, at the fact Danny is looking down at him, from so close, and hell if he's even going to defend being toward full mast, when Danny is sliding across his body, naked, touching him. Looking at him, like this, brushing his mouth, madly, across the base of him.

That look, dark and focused, on his skin, chancing the smallest glances between Steve's face and Steve's cock, while he's dolling out those few words that Steve totally has a response for. And he'd even opened his mouth for, but Danny's mouth is. The muscles in his stomach went taught, and his finger pressed the tips into the sheets, at the madness of the sudden ripple of heat. From both Danny running his lips up, and from watching him do, like Steve needed to play chicken with how much fire he could handle.

"That's crap." When it's like trying to breathe exhaust to push out words, hoarse and insulting, when Danny's tongue is trying to take every one from him. "The only man who means it when he says any blowjoy is better than none is far too desperate."

Which Steve wasn't. Not matter what the tremor in his body and the tip of his hips said. But then Danny wasn't bad either.
That was not down in the ledger of the written problems that came with this relationship, grand and small as they were.

[haole_cop]

Oh, he loves this. Being able to run his hands all across the wide expanse of Steve's skin, because Steve is laid out in front of him in a way Steve so rarely is, because Steve is a control freak everywhere, and definitely here, too.

But not now. Now, he can spread his fingers, and run both hands up over Steve's hips, and towards the cut of his ribcage, now moving erratically with his breath and the twist of his body that's trying for more; can weigh down the tops of Steve's legs and the hip joint with his arms, can slide one hand all the way down Steve's thigh, fingers curling between skin and sheet, and slip it under his knee to palm the underside of his leg.

He can get his fill of just touching him, like he hasn't been able to in weeks, and he does, has never been shy with touches but he's feeling especially generous this morning, touch-drunk and skin-hungry, parting his lips to run them down over hard, hot, thin, soft skin, licking a stripe back up, pausing at the tip to arch his eyebrows at Steve and the bluffing he's tossing out. "You saying you don't want one?"

Not that he gives him much of a chance to answer, before he's taking one hand away from where it was sliding up Steve's chest, wrapping his fingers at the base and sliding his mouth down over the head, hollowing out his cheeks and closing lips around him as he goes.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny keeps moving. Trills of fireworks fritzing under Steve's skin, like a warning and a promise, and a plea. Because every other touch is only ramping up the anticipation. Hands shooting up up across his hips, and his stomach, making him shudder as even more sensitive skin goes up like a light, under constant attention, tensing his back and pushing into the bed even if everything in him is screaming for the other direction.

For Danny's mouth not even half an inch from him. Danny's mouth that is then setting off a searing explosion of white when he's running his tongue back up, hot and wet and fast, before throwing those words out, giving Steve just enough seconds to be headed toward a smirk before his head all but explodes and his mouth forgets words for a groan, and his fingers digging into the mattress this time.

Forgets words because the only urge is to arch up into the heat, while Danny is coming down on him suddenly. An image that's burning his eyes, before his body is arching up and his head is digging in, and rolling up against the pillow, while that sound rips itself from his lungs. More important than words, more important than breathing. Cutting more of the strings of sleep and replacing them with veins of lava, erupting toward and from Danny's mouth all at once.

[haole_cop]

Part of him wishes Steve would keep talking, just so he could keep making that gorgeous, incredible noise, the one that curls, satisfied, behind Danny's breastbone and expands to fill his chest and smother any attempt at breathing he might be able to make right now.

Not that he cares. He cares, of course, but air isn't as important as the way Steve's whole body tenses and arcs like a perfect, strung bow, every muscle suddenly pulled tight, cording under tan skin, fingers gripping at Danny's mattress, and he better not have torn the sheet.

(Again? Maybe it would be again, maybe they're already ruined, in which case, Danny's not going to worry about it right now.)

Holding Steve's hips down as they try to push up, to keep from sudden choking and the sick immediate rise of his gag reflex, while his fingers hold Steve's hips so hard they're leaving marks just to buffer that thrust.

And it's all he wants. Steve, hot and heavy on his tongue, filling his mouth, scent in his nose and in every breath, the faint burn at the back of his throat, the muscles already starting to complain in his neck and back. He doesn't give a shit. It's morning, and Steve's back, and he's wanted to do this basically since Steve left, wanted to wake up with him and be awake with him, keep him in bed, steal away all his words and sardonic humor and leave only this, those raw sounds, the helpless push and thrust of hips and body. Wanted Steve to want this, him, to make sure Steve still wants this. Him.

Two weeks is more than enough time to reconsider.

More than enough time to remember all the things he loved before he said he loved Danny, before this was a thing, before Five-0 was a thing, and Danny won't pretend it's not a relief that Steve hasn't. Changed his mind, reconsidered. Is still right here, writhing under his hands and his mouth, while he holds his hips down and goes deeper, lifts back up, deep again. Maddeningly slow at first, and then picking up the pace, tongue licking up skin and finding the sensitive spots that he knows make Steve's brain melt and his words shatter. Which is exactly what he wants.