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]

It's probably not going to stop being strange and a little unpleasant, sharp taste and liquid warmth hitting the back of his throat, but he's getting used to it, and it's well worth the result of Steve bucking against his hand, up into his mouth, shaking, wrecking himself on Danny's tongue and fingers and going up in a blaze of glory that Danny wants to record and be able to see over and over again. That he never tires of, or wants to stop trying to push Steve into. It's beautiful like a bonfire, destructive, violent, every muscle taut under sleek skin, clumsy fingers threading into his hair, hot against his neck.

Maybe never wants to hear his name said any other way that this, like a desperate prayer with no hope of redemption, ragged and thin out of the back of Steve's throat. God. It's been months, and it still hits like a depth charge, gently blows everything in his chest to splinters, melts it all down to a liquid molten pool that floods down his spine. Flashes tendrils of heat that follow the swift beat of blood racing under his skin, while Steve's crashing through and he's riding it out, low sound at the back of his throat, shoving Steve straight through that glass wall as hard as he can, until those hips stop shaking and tilting, and Steve's going lax like someone pressed a chloroform rag to his face.

Months. It's been months, and Steve is still here, still came here, and that thought sends something knocking around his chest, all wobbly on hopeful newborn colt legs, as he carefully takes back his hands, shifts against the ache in his neck and shoulders and jaw, and slides back up along the length of Steve's body. He's pausing now and again, to check in with a hipbone, his stomach, the curve of his ribcage, pressing soft kisses against sweat-soaked skin, before he finds the pillow again, drags it close to Steve, close enough to lie curled towards him, one hand possessive on his belly, thumb stroking back and forth, while he watches that face.

The one all socked senseless in the dark. The gives him a pang, an urge to lean in, kiss Steve's forehead, his cheek. Be the kind of sensitive Steve's always making fun of him for.

He could. Wants to. Because Steve is still here, and he was never supposed to be here, right? This isn't how Steve does things. He doesn't do months in, and saying I love you, and sleeping in the same bed six nights out of seven. It was supposed to be impossible. Danny was supposed to get his heart broken.

He didn't, but it's definitely done something, because the thing is limping around so pathetically right now and aching so deeply he thinks maybe it's gotten confused, broken itself on how good this is. And how's he supposed to ever recover from that?

[thebesteverseen]

His body is a torrent of low grade shivers. Not even shivers. Pulsating waves from his center, that ruffle through him like his bones and muscles are all marked as optional now. Maybe not even real. Maybe nothing more than a dream he once had because he ate something bad before sleeping. Except nothing feels bad. Everything is this humming, white static of warmth. Dotted with faint pressure, soft and nearly ticklish. Causing him to twitch.

His mouth. His shoulder. His stomach pulled in. Before his eyes roll and he realizes, groggily, somehow in someway, that doesn't feel focused in the slightest, that it is Danny. Somehow. Still. When every impulse is let the heavy, bricks on his eyelids drop back down with the thundering crash that has to happen when they close, and slip away. Which is blending, blurring, into the one that's sensitive and nearly shifting away, and the one that's puddling more warmth, wanting to push in.

But by the time anything get to that. To moving. There's only air, and it makes him frown and have to open his eyes again. Because the bed is moving and Danny isn't there anymore. Isn't touching him. Okay. There's a hand on him. But it's not enough. Nothing is. The whole world in front of his eyes it too much, but it's not enough, too. And it means Steve needs to focus, which makes him nearly frown, but he finds his hand, and can still lift it. It's not even all that hard, even through molasses.

Focus. Lift. Reaching out and find the forearm of the hand on his stomach, and follow it up like path. Fluid and boneless, until his fingers can find the round of Danny's shoulder and he can drag Danny into him. Closer. The closer that is never close enough, and the only enough Steve may even have the idea of existing. Like falling asleep last night, like waking up this morning. Finally able to breathe.

Like now, with Danny's hair finding his face, and the smell of sex and sweat, sharp and clear and closer, his fingers finding their way down Danny's back, while a knee is laying siege to his leg. And he's mumbling, through thick lips, only half real as it is and not nearly as coolly as he thinks he's managing, "This your new plan for making me stay in bed?"

[haole_cop]

He goes, because he always goes when Steve tugs at him, and because he doesn't want there to be any more distance between them for the gray dawn dimness to filter through, and because there's really almost nothing in the world quite as appealing as Steve, laid out and dopey, like he just took a blow to the head, or like a brick building just collapsed on top of him. His hand wavers clumsily in the air before finding Danny's arm and laying claim to it, sleepy and possessive, and Danny watches, amused, as it clambers up towards his shoulder, before curling there and pulling.

"There's nothing new about this plan."

It's tried and true, even if it probably wouldn't actually keep Steve in bed, if they were at his house and the ocean were right there. It definitely won't on a work morning, when Steve's eager to get back in the bullpen and out on the street, but they still have time. Plenty of time; the sun isn't even up yet. "Go back to sleep if you want."

He doesn't think it would take much. Steve's breathing is deep and even, every muscle lax, his whole body a study in complete collapse, arm heavy over Danny's side and back. His shoulder is sticky with sweat when Danny nudges his nose against it, before kissing the round of muscle. "We've got time."

And, yeah. Fine. So sue him, he wants Steve to stay in bed. It's nice and warm and comfortable, and he likes lying like this, in a tangle of limbs, while Steve melts into a puddle beneath him, likes being the one who put him there, who unwound all those knots and slackened Steve's too-tight hold on himself. It's just about perfect.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny curls over into him, all solid and warm, and Danny.

From the faint smell of somehow still not rubbed out drugstore cologne, and hair product that somehow never fades, but annoyingly enough it's more that it smells like Danny's and less like Steve's whatever was cheap this week at the Px tropical assortment. Making it so, even though he barely has the will to do anything more than smooth his hand possessively over that back, he wants to drag Danny back home.

Well. To his house. To his home. To being covered in signs of being his that never stop amazing him.

Like somehow Danny's amused voice sinking into his skin with a kiss isn't the absolute proof of something like that. When his brain feels like swiss cheese. He'd barely woken up before Danny decided his world needed rocking. And hell, maybe it's fair play, given Steve woke him up last night and it happened, or maybe Steve doesn't care at all. Because it already did. And his head's already half gone. And Danny is still plastered warm, solid, and right against him.

He likes it. Everything. All of this. He has nowhere to go from Danny's house. But, also, it's like cheating for the world. It's almost like those R&R's with Cath. The world really isn't expecting him back for a day, maybe two. And nowhere to go. Nothing to do but lay here, blissed, and aware that somehow everything feels right. With that mouth smudging words into his skin, deeper than his ink will ever go. Marking him as forever Danny's.

No matter what happens, or where Danny might have to go next. He'll have left all of these marks all over Steve. Things that will always have Danny's stamped on them clear as day. Which would be more daunting if the world wasn't still coming is dozy black and white waves, between half closed eye lids, mumbling quiet words, "Says the guy who wouldn't usually be up this early without shooting someone." There was a faint hum of noise. "This is definitely a better option."

Than shooting someone. Maybe even better than swimming or running.

He's had a week with both. And none of Danny. And he could just not move anywhere, move at all, might never get enough.

[haole_cop]

"I had something to be up for, today."

He leans further into Steve, nuzzling at the join of his shoulder and neck, presses a kiss there against flushed, damp skin, voice low and amused and so fond, the way his heart is knocking around his chest, the way his ribs hurt, expanding against this goofy, flooding warmth. "I've got two weeks of not touching you to make up for, babe. I'm not wasting a second, okay, you're too gorgeous."

Always. Steve's always good looking, and Danny's pretty sure that the mental image of Steve in uniform has probably accompanied half the island to sleep, okay, but they've never seen this. They don't get to see this. Steve's not half-asleep in their beds, sprawled in tangled sheets, a relaxed landslide of limbs while his too-short hair is getting cowlicks from the pillow. They don't get to wake up in the middle of the night, and roll over to put their palm on his belly, feel it lift and fall with the gentle rhythm of his breath. They don't get any of this. "Like this. When I get you all to myself."

He talks too much -- always has, probably always will, and it gets him in trouble, okay, he talks himself into pits that take years to climb out of, only to shove himself right back in again as soon as he clears the edge, but he can't stop. He wants to press kisses all along Steve's body, again, convince himself it's real, that he can have this, have Steve. It's been months, and he's still not convinced of it; even with those words, the ones fluttering frantically in his chest right now like a trapped gull under a basket, threatening to choke him if they don't get said again. And again. And again. As many times as he can, okay, because this is what Steve's gotten himself into, that he brushed off so many weeks ago, that there's no escaping. Nudging his forehead against Steve's temple, and breathing out a deep breath, ribs expanding and deflating, while his arm rests heavy over Steve's stomach, fingers tucking between him and the mattress, and his eyes are closed, because he's still a coward, really, about all of this, and it's easier that way. "When you're all mine."

Like that last word isn't a yawning abyss, filled with poisonous spike and venomous snakes, like it's not a rickety, wobbly, single plank pretending to be a bridge over a hole dug infinitely deep that Danny could go toppling into at any second. Nobody owns Steve, except the Navy, and Danny has to share, with the Navy, with the world, with the job. Any daydream that this might be his is only an illusion.

But, Christ. He wants it to be true so badly he can't help but give in, every now and again. In the small hours of the morning. In the pitch black of night. Months ago, ambushed by it whenever he paused work to take a breath, to dial Steve's number, just to hear him not pick up.

All he's got to offer in return is himself, and he knows, he knows that's not enough, that guys like him are a dime a dozen, and guys like Steve don't exist at all, except for Steve, but that doesn't stop him from wanting. And, maybe, every now and again, thinking it might be just possible.

[thebesteverseen]

There's a low, quiet rumble of noise, somewhere in Steve's chest, that he can feel the vibration of more than hear the sound, when he's following that mouth, shifting drunkly between into it and stretching to give it more room. The trail of it from his shoulder, spotted, to his neck suddenly. Warm and mobile, so much faster than him.

With all that dizzying noises it always has, that he wants to hard on so tight to, so he can't miss anything, because everyone always misses Danny, and they are all idiots, because it's Danny, and none of it is to be missed. Not even the endless sound and fury.

Definitely not the way his lips trace for purchase, against sweat and Steve's skin. Dropping bombs into his skin between kisses. All of them rolling in to his head like waves, coming in with the rocking tide, buffets of steel. It's not like he's never heard the first part. The part about being away, or the part about how what he looks like effects everything about how people remember him, why they miss him when he's gone

But the rest. I'm not wasting a second and when I get you to myself and when you are all mine like Danny doesn't understand. Doesn't understand even now. After he's knows about how long all of this has been dragging him around, and how he did whatever he could just to get here, last night, middle of the night, not even long enough to stop for a single phone call, a single minute, before he could be here. Here.

Wrapped up in the mess of Danny Williams, mouth that never stops moving, always surprising him.

With waking him, and with those words, that are wrong. So wrong. Because the idea under them the idea he ever isn't. Even for minutes. Seconds. Like he can choose it. Or outrun it. Or set it aside. It's laughable. The idea he isn't Danny's, hasn't been Danny's the last few weeks while he wasn't here. That he didn't stare at the wrong cold ocean, and the problem wasn't being landlocked, it was that the blue reminded him of a different blue in Danny's eyes. Or the unk was too small, and Danny wasn't there when he rolled over. Or when he'd turn to say something, smart assed an off, and no one was there to say it to.

Because he's never not. Never not Danny's. It'd be like saying there were weeks he figured out how to go without breathing. He's a SEAL. But he's not entirely superhuman. It's ludicrous. Makes him snort, even as he's shifting his head while tipping his head up, into the head against his, like a magnet, a satellite, adjusting, seeking out his cheek, and where his mouth is, saying, cloudy, foggy, full of sleep and a certainty so steel true its gone to for granted, "I'm always yours."

[haole_cop]

"Shut up and go to sleep, you big goof."

Murmured with a smile he can't stop, that's stupid and relieved and helpless against Steve's mouth, this clumsy kiss that's so straightforward, like this is, what. Something he should just know. Something he can take for granted. That Steve is his. Always.

It has to be impossible, because Danny doesn't get people, Danny gets the short end of the stick, Danny gets to shout into the howling madness of the world and be ignored. He's the one who holds on, with the heart that's never been content to just stay put in his own chest, has to go off and tack itself to someone else. No one has ever wanted to be his.

But Steve is saying it's true, and not just saying, but scoffing at the idea it might not be, that there are times when he's anything but Danny's, as if there might ever be times when water might be dry as sand and the moon might burst into flames and become a new sun. He just rolls right over it without even glancing at the concept, trailing lips across Danny's cheek until they find his mouth and he can press dozy, impossible words there, like it's the next best thing to getting Danny to say them. They're there now, on his lips, just as if he'd said them, himself.

It's absurd, right? What could a guy like him possibly have to offer anyone, let alone someone like Steve, who already has just about everything, aside from the ability to remember how to act like a normal human being, from time to time? He's got a nice house that's filled to the brim with the issues and baggage Steve's always harping on at him about, has zero filter and no ability to stop himself from digging his own grave, over and over and over again, and yet, Steve wants him. More than that, Steve wants this. Is, already, Danny's. "Hey."

His hand lifts from Steve's side, comes up to palm the side of his face, fingertips sliding gently into short brown hair, so Danny can tip his face, and kiss him, slow and specific and certain. "I love you."

He's helpless in the face of it, can't stop saying it, won't stop, needs to prove it with these moments that are still stolen, no matter how many they get. Each one is rescued, saved, cherished, and he's got to remember them all. "Go back to sleep, huh, someone woke me up in the middle of the night last night, and it's too damn early to be awake."

[thebesteverseen]

Danny is mumbling words, but it's half blotted out, even this close, even when he's not aiming to miss anything, but his mouth is getting in the way. His, or Danny's. Or that warm, fuzzy kiss, of a night's stubble and older rubber, and it should be horrible, disgusting, sour and sharp, but he wants to bury himself forward and kiss Danny more because of the warmth it spider webs under his ribs.

Even when Danny doesn't sound in the slightest like he's believing. Rumbling words, and a tone, like when Steve talks about being a boy scout, or something the SEALs, taught him. They way it's all suspect and hilarious all at once. Amusing the way, things that kids tell you are. But lacking in weight. And Steve would have more words, but Danny's lips are moving against his. Clumsy and stuttered, and maybe not entirely rejecting, nearly peeling Steve's eyes back open.

Especially when Danny stops and is addressing him. Fingers on his face, tipping his face and causing his eyes to open again and focus on Danny's face in the quiet, low dim of barely morning. At least for the second before Danny is kissing him again. And there's nothing about his second kiss that is sleepy or clumsy or uncertain. It's slow and dark and dim as the morning, slipping into all of the cracks of the last week, making Steve scoot closer into Danny's body, push up into his mouth, fingers spread wider over Danny's skin, calf curling over Danny's calves.

And then those words. Those words that always make Steve feel flat footed and made of only left feet, like something too big and too precious was shoved in his hands, like no one told Danny all he does is break things. His dad, his men -- his friends. And he wants it so bad. Thrives like a plant thats so far back from the sun that even the sun is a myth. He wants to kiss Danny again and just suck those words in, pull them down in the void in the center.

That empty missing ache that was Danny's replacement while Danny was gone. Because Danny was gone.

"Good," isn't the right response. But he's selfish. He always has been. He wants this to be his, regardless of everything else. He wants to hoard all of it. Danny's love. The kind of feeling Danny feels for anyone in this world he just meets multiplied times a thousand for those he loves. Unwaveringly. Cosmically. Somehow focused on him. Wants to take it from all of the rest of them -- except Grace. He's fine knowing Grace's sharing Danny with him and not the other way.

Even if she doesn't know, Steve knows the truth of that. Another unquestionable, enviable thing of Danny;s love.

But he wants everything else. Every part of Danny you wouldn't give your child. Every part that Danny wants for himself. In the dim, with his rough callused fingers spread wide over the spine of Danny's lower back, he can almost believe all his malformed, mission-only and nothing else, pieces might fit somewhere else. With someone else. That he might be able to steal from the world hearing those words another time still. Steal Danny and his impossibly real, impossibly unbroken, love from it.

"I would be, but someone is talking," Steve said, all rough mouth, swallowing at his dry throat. "I wonder who that could be."

[haole_cop]

It is good. Even if they'll be in oh god a universe's worth of trouble if Denning finds out, not to mention the horror that would ensue if Kono ever catches wind of it all, it's so good, loving Steve. He loves that goofy, cracked wide-open smile on his face, that's just a slight curve of his mouth in the dark; loves that Steve doesn't pull away from Danny's hand, just leans into it. He even kind of loves that Steve says that, that one word, good, because if they were actually trying to keep this from snowballing and rolling them both under, they'd have to admit it's not a good thing, that it's a damn stupid thing, dangerous and impossible to keep up. There are so many reasons why this exact scenarios should never take place, why people in their positions aren't allowed to be together like this, because all those feelings of love and loyalty and friendship and partnership are convoluted enough already, okay?

It would already have been impossible, if something happened to Steve out in the field, but now Danny sometimes thinks about it happening, and can't breathe until his head's gone spinny and standing makes him dizzy with the spots he sees.

It's stupid. It's impossible. It's only going to hurt them both more in the long run, so there's no reason at all why either of them should think it's good, right? Potentially career-ending. Reputation-destroying.

But, God. It's so good. Lying here, wound up together, with Steve relaxed and slipping back towards sleep, and knowing he'll wake up with Steve still here, go to work with Steve at his side. Like always. Exactly where he should always be, grousing at him just like he's doing now, while Danny grins, and nudges his forehead against Steve's, closes his eyes with a deep, bone-weary sigh. "Shush," he says, moving his hand, index finger laying over Steve's lips, before it slides down to his side, drapes over so his fingers can splay across Steve's back. "No one's listening anymore."

[thebesteverseen]

He's rough and solid and pushy, and a space hog as much as a space heater, and Steve would bitch, but his eyes are heavier than the ocean gone black and tight around him with too much pressure, and it's hard to remember why he'd want to imply anything other than that he would carve out everything in his chest, with the half broken bits of a dull plastic spoon even, without hesitating, to make more room for Danny to shove into.

When a head is shoving into his, and a sigh, is breathing heavy and loose across his skin.

Because he doesn't want anything more than this.

Even if some part of him could argue he always wants more, the rest of him would argue that he's never been able to keep even a quarter of this in his life for long, and his muscles are too heavy for that fight. Because it's true. All of it. Both of those, and the other thing. That he doesn't want anything more than this. To collapse like a pile of bricks against Danny, collapsing like a pile of bricks on him. Hand getting everywhere, still.

But that's Danny. If Danny's hands weren't moving Steve would have to check for signs of a heart attack or a brain embolism.

Or something. He doesn't know. The whole world is rushing in and out, on the warm breath coasting against his skin, tickling it, cold and warm in turns, making him think of the ocean he swears he can hear, even now. And. Thinking is overrated. It can wait for when they wake up, again. For now he mumbles a sound, like a muffled chuckle, even he doesn't remember where started or ended, except that it is -- was? -- always will be, at Danny, and rub his face against the blonde strands catching in the stubble on his own cheek, and just lean into the warmth of the sun. His own personal one.

Like he always does. Like always wants to be doing. And drift away, without letting go at all.

[haole_cop]

His alarm goes off too damn soon.

It's always true, but it's especially true when his phone is chirping a scale up and down, and the quiet of the morning is shattered by the sudden tiny square of light on his bedside table, the incessant, slowly getting louder chime that he desperately wants to believe is just part of his dream.

It must be, right? It can't be morning, not yet. His eyelids feel glued together, and he feels more tired now than when he went to bed the night before, and the bed is that perfect temperature, sheets soft and warm while the air is cool against his cheek and throat. It can't possibly be time to get up, and he can't possibly be expected to leave this perfect little cocoon, right?

One hand reaches sleepily for the phone, hits the button and shuts off the alarm, plunging the room back into silence, broken only by the slight shuffle of sheets as he rolls back into that spot, the perfect one, where the mattress dips under his weight and Steve's chest is firm against his back, Steve's arm heavy over his side. He half-drags the pillow with him, enough to bury his face in the cotton and refuse to acknowledge the morning light now streaming through the window.

He's throwing it back. The morning. The upcoming day. All of it. He doesn't want any of it, wants to stay right here, in his nice comfy bed where absolutely no one has ever tried to kill him, and he wants Steve to stay right where he is, too, just for good measure.

None of which comes out as words, just a long, drawn-out groan into the pillow, that feels ripped from the very marrow of his being, and a stubborn ignorance of the rising sun by keeping his eyes shut and his face pressed into the pillow cover, hair sticking up wildly in every other direction.

"No."

[thebesteverseen]

It happens in a snap, and even when he's used to it, there are times he hates it.

Like this second. With that clunky, clumsy feeling of warmth wrapped around his ankles and his feet like he was just somewhere else, doing something else, and it'd been important, or meant something, or had to have all of his focus, but a wave or a cloud passed -- you know, the kind with a glaringly, jarring electric ringtone meant to be "soothing" -- and suddenly it was just gone.

But really before Steve had anytime to do anything more than be alert, there were growling noises of annoyance coming from the pile of warmth he was still curled right tight up next to. Like Steve might have been surprised it wasn't just the bunk room lights suddenly flashing on at dawn, but Danny, who owned the phone, was suddenly plotting the death of the device for disturbing him. Like he hadn't programed it to go off, to do just this -- wake him up from a sound sleep. Which was tugging at Steve's cheek before he was even aware he was at smile.

It was hilarious and perfect. Feeling Danny curl in toward his chest, like an utter rejection of hearing it, a snake or a bear coiling down to deeper and darker, only to have to send an arm out to attack the noise and light and make it stop. Like it took a second to realize that had to happen. It makes him move, nearly lift from touching Steve's body, but it's only gone long enough to realizing it's almost completely, before Danny is falling right back down into him.

Dragging the blanket and his pillow, and Steve's arm, like Steve is just another blank that Danny owns, and Steve can't help the way something gets confused and splashes the inside of his chest with brilliant light and flooding warmth at the thought, while he's curving back around Danny. Steve counts it for maybe three seconds, that awareness of Danny being too rebelliously still, prepared to attack the world if it dared one second more, to actually be back asleep. Especially when that word cracks the newly achieved morning quiet.

It's not a laugh in any sense of the word. There isn't a sound, but Steve chest shakes regardless of that mattering. A soundless laugh, shivering the barrel of his chest into Danny's back, at Danny's vehement refusal to acknowledge the morning, or the next day. It's not even the first time, but he's not usually in bed for this. Not really. And not on work mornings. He's gone long before this.

Long before Danny could be curled into him, indignant and hair a mess, caught in stray low morning light.

Which maybe makes him prize it a little higher on this morning. His first morning back. Stretch his shoulders, even when he's nuzzling his nose down through that utterly terrible, and wonderful, mess of Danny's hair, searching for the skin at the top of his neck to rub his lips against, while saying all rough and quiet with morning, like he's not being a belligerent ass and stating the utter obvious, "It's morning."

[haole_cop]

"No, it's not."

Mumbled, sullen, into the pillow he's got his face pressed into, while he huddles away from the light but not away from Steve, hand finding Steve's wrist and pulling it down across his stomach. All he wants to do is go back to sleep, just let this weight of arm and sheet and blanket pull him back down, back rounding into Steve's chest, stealing Steve's ankle under his. It's not morning, because it can't be morning yet, they haven't had enough time and that was definitely not enough sleep, okay? He needs his solid seven, eight, hours, if he's going to be chasing hopped-up meth-heads all day.

And he doesn't appreciate that tone, either, the one like Steve thinks morning is just the best joke ever, like it's actually, somehow, a good thing, instead of something that ought to be dragged out back and shot, put mercifully out of its misery. It's not morning. He didn't say it could be morning, so it isn't.

He just wants to stay right here, maybe forever, with Steve's lips ghosting down the back of his neck and Steve's nose nuzzling into his hair and Steve's arm over him and Steve wrapped around him, breathing deep and easy and Steve's voice, all rusted out like he'd used it up while he was gone and he's got nothing left but the tar-thick stuff scraped off the very bottom. He wishes it were Saturday, or Sunday.

It's selfish, but he's selfish. Is okay with keeping Steve from Chin and Kono, or keeping them from him, because he just wants this all to himself, all right? Wants to believe those words, the ones he's not sure weren't dreamed somewhere in the middle of the night: I'm always yours. Wants it to be true, to be fact.

And he just wants to stay in bed, okay, it's comfy and warm and Steve is here and he likes it like this.

[thebesteverseen]

This is what he missed. Danny's skin, dry and warm against his lips when he can slide a little down the skin of his neck before there's going to be no way to get any further down without moving entirely. Which is almost tempting, tugging back on Danny when Danny steals his hand, like its any other part of his bed and curls in around it, Drags Steve closer, tighter in, like a rejection of Steve having any vote about his own appendages still. Or being awake.

"Sun's up." Steve kissed the nape of Danny's hair. "Alarm going off." The inch below it. "You're arguing with the dawn, like its awake and listening to you." He placed a kiss maybe half an inch below that, straining against having to tilt his head and stretch down. "Sounds like morning to me."

A perfect morning. The best kind of morning. The kind where fifteen or fifty other guys weren't pulling on clothes, or rolling out of the same bunks, headed for brushing their teeth and getting to the mess hall before everything looked like an unidentifiable mush. This -- Danny steal his hand and him, and angry at morning -- this was perfect. It was everything yesterday wasn't. Everything worth remembering in a flash of seconds as annoying it wasn't there.

Worth the sacrifice of a few days, but it was better. Right now. When he didn't have to remind himself of that.

It's to easy, and it's perfect, itself, too, when his voice goes long and prodding. "You need a shower before you're allowed in my building."

[haole_cop]

Steve's not good at saying I love you. That's fine, Danny gets it, it's not like Steve's experience with love hasn't been spectacularly fucked up ever since he was old enough to understand the concept, and Steve's not exactly an express your feelings kind of guy, so Danny gets it. He doesn't need it said back, the way he says it, like he needs to remind everyone he loves as often as he can about it, just in case each time is the last time, just in case they, who knows. Whack their head and forget.

Besides, he's pretty sure he wouldn't be able to focus on absolutely anything else if Steve did say it more often, just based on the way he sticks on the words that do come out of Steve's mouth: I'm always all yours.

I want you. Only you.

When as far as he could tell Steve's never wanted only one person, ever. Wasn't like Danny, who let the sun and moon set on one single other human being, and put all his weaknesses and vulnerabilities in one spot. Steve hadn't seemed like that. There were girls. There was his friend, Catherine. There were years of history Danny could only guess at, but he's pretty sure his assumptions are shrewd enough, if not entirely correct.

Nowhere in any of that would he ever have thought Steve might want this.

Okay? This is so much more than falling into bed with someone he'd had thoughts about for over a year. It's more than a very not-casual thing. It's more than anything Danny's had since -- in such a long time, he'd almost forgotten what it was like, how the signs went. That just waking up with someone could be as good or better than going to bed with them in the first place. That even waking up exhausted and -- he shifts, makes a face -- still sore as hell is good, because there's a low amused voice pressing words into the back of his neck and a solid warm body wrapped around him and Steve is happy to be here.

That's what that sound is. The low rumble in Steve's chest. The noiseless laugh. The fond warmth in his voice that's painting the walls of Danny's chest with light. It's happiness. Steve is happy. Here. With him. Because there wasn't anywhere else he wanted to be. Because he wanted to be here so bad he made it happen by sheer force of will, almost a day earlier than anyone expected.

And he's expected to have to get up and leave all this?

"You don't own that building. No one in their right mind would give you a lease to an entire building full of government offices."

He makes a complaining noise, draws the pillow tighter against his face. "Getting up right now is a crime. I hate this. I hate it so much."

[thebesteverseen]

"Semantics," Steve shot back, mouth moving back up the side of his neck, toward his ear, in no rush.

Spreading the fingers of the hand Danny had stolen and tucked under himself. Fingers stretching out over the heavy curl of Danny ribs supporting his weight, worming their way under, to drag him back and shift up. Thumb rubbing along other ribs. Danny's skin. The soft mat of hair and hard muscle, still so warm from being deep asleep only a breath ago, while his lips found Danny's ear.

A soft warm touch, for an irreverently insulting tone, "They're still my offices, and you aren't stepping foot into them like this."

For one Steve would never manage to get any work done. Not a minute. Not if Danny looked like this. Warm and solid and naked. Smelling like them. Persistently keeping him the only place he even ever wanted to be, so knotted up in Danny it was like his own body wanted to forget where either of them started and ended separately anymore. Because it seems so much less and less true, especially the more distance that was strung between them.

He should be locked up for how amusing he finds all of this. Danny hugging his pillow like a five year old who is certain if he tries hard enough he can wish away the day, even while making a disgruntled noise that is trying to announce to the world he knows he's not winning and he hates everything and everyone because of it. Well. Not everyone. If Steve presses the wash of a smug smile against Danny's hair for a moment.

If he doesn't look at it too hard, too long, not like dawn, he can hold that. Okay. The idea Danny loves him. And keeps saying it. Keeps seeming to mean it. Stopped insulting him for a few seconds right before he fell asleep to make sure Steve heard it. And he does. He hears it. Everytime. Not like a whisper. Like a jackhammer or the counter of a bomb. Everytime. But also. Something bigger. Something so big that if he looks at straight on the glass will shatter, and everything he's stared out at for so long will vanish.

There is no might. Only a when. But until there he can nip Danny's ear lightly and squeeze the fingers he has wrapped around the other side of Danny's chest, and complain about how, "This is pretty much the opposite of getting out of bed, you know."

[haole_cop]

"Bossy. It was so much less bossy when you were gone."

It was much less of other things, too: fun, interesting, compelling. The days were never boring, but he wasn't thrilled by them, either, okay? Kono and Chin take their own rides to and from work, and even when he's got one of them in the cab with him, it's not like having Steve there. There's less arguing -- usually no arguing at all, actually -- and less joking around, too. He finds himself wanting to install an ejector seat in the car on a far less regular basis, and tends to enjoy a full day of wearing clothes that won't get ruined by Steve accidentally taking him out along with the perp, or instigating a full-scale on foot chase through crowds, or on a beach, or in the jungle.

But it's less --something. More sane, more stable, more calm. Less this. The insanity that takes hold of him every time Steve's within arm's reach. The need to get a hand on his arm, shoulder, the small of his back. The way the face Steve makes only make Danny want to puff up bigger, bluster louder, cobble words into the longest sentences he can string together and throw them at his head, just to get that roll of Steve's eyes, or a flat line of his lips.

And none of this, because this doesn't exist in his world when Steve's not in it, and he's still not sure how it's there when Steve is, but he's not going to question it this early in the morning while Steve runs his lips across Danny's ear and along the back of his neck, and isn't letting go of him, no matter what nonsense he might be spouting. No playful mornings, full of lazy teasing, no nips at his ear that make him push his back in an arch into Steve's chest, like a stretching cat, no company, no floating feeling buoyed in the flood of warmth running through his chest, under his skin, chasing the path Steve's mouth is making. "Well, you're not exactly helping. What I'm saying is, these are some pretty mixed signals."

Voice low and rough and sleep-thick, a bass rumble in his chest, while he breathes deep. His sheets smell like Steve and sex, and he's sore as hell, and the last thing he wants to do is get up and actually leave this spot.

"You're making a great case for staying right here. For the shower, not so much."

[thebesteverseen]

There's an outright laugh threatening to break out right into Danny's skin, where presently it's just a growing crooked smile, while Danny is talking about how terrible he is. Already throwing rocks at Steve's head, about his orders, in a display of being entirely over the part now where there was yelling at him for not calling, over the shoving him into a wall, over wake him up, only to break the world again and shove him back to sleep.

At least verbally.

Because there's absolutely no way for Steve to miss the way Danny arches back into him, at least as much pushing back into his chest now as forward into the pillow. When Steve is smugly proud, each time, no matter what it is that Danny reacts to him. Forget that it's well established pattern, somehow it's always a relieving high when he does it suddenly. When his voice is thick, slow, complaints he's clinging to distracted by something Steve's mouth, or hands, or words can do.

When for so long they didn't matter at all. None of them. When Danny couldn't see this, and Steve was sure it was a sign of insanity setting on. These feelings. These wants. Theses ones that woke him up in a sweat, fingers still sure they'd just been on Danny's skin, gasping for breath, in a cold, empty bed, where he was entirely snap to the second sure they never would be. And maybe that's lodged like a dye in there, too. There were so many more months of that.

And two weeks fits in there somewhere. Hazy and away. A breather in which someone could change their mind.
Not that Steve could. Change his mind. Do anything other than get back here as soon as the second his duty was up.

Stop chasing every inch of Danny's skin, and every arch of that body back into his, and every handful of rocks thrown at his face, like Danny thought his words in the pillow made any sense or had any weight. Aside from the billowing balloon filling Steve's chest every time he chose Steve. To throw those words at. To arch into. To talk to instead of fight the world and dawn. Goes to his head faster than helium and good pain drugs. Makes him want to draw it out, and drag it everywhere.

Label it somehow still his in this five seconds. Like it wasn't a few hours ago, or half the night before that, or the last few months. It's still fresh and as uncertain as it is certain, even all these days and weeks and months later. Always an inflating, crowning achievement. Something that comes and goes in the flash of a second when Danny is trying to call him on his crap, the way Danny always is, always does, more fearlessly than anyone he knows.

Making him shift, and try for pulling Danny his direction, to make him twist and forget the death grip on his pillow and shift toward his back and Steve instead, who, in his opinion was much more exciting than the pillow or sleep, and was already touched toward designs of swarming him, and becoming his blanket in the next second if this worked. Even when he's raising eyebrows comically that Danny can't see, like those words deserved a flippant consideration of wrongness, because Danny can't ever be right, even if he at least half the time, always, is.

"Nope. You still have to get up." Steve chucked out, with sparking, rejecting warmth. Lips closing around the top corner of his ear lobe to suck on it. "You still have a workday today." As if Steve didn't by being early home. As if there was any world, anywhere, in which Steve wouldn't still be at his side even there, even early.

[haole_cop]

He wants too much, always has, always will. Is greedy, selfish, and it's no different just because it's morning and he's bleary and sore and heavy with sleep. He wants to see Chin's and Kono's faces when Steve walks through the door, wants to get back in the game with his partner, the one he knows like he knows his own hands, the length of his own stride, wants the teasing and arguments, wants to look up from his desk and see Steve sitting there across the hall. Almost as much as he wants to just stay here.

To slide around, turn into Steve's chest and burrow his face against his neck, breathe deep, tang of salt and sex and the heavy warm scent of sleep, clouding his head and letting him drift off again. Or he wants to run his mouth along Steve's shoulder up towards his throat, spend the morning hours coaxing those tiny raw sounds out of him, that he somehow manages to get, make, that Steve gives to him, tiny gifts Danny has no idea what to do with aside from collect and hoard, fiercely protective of each and every one.

Of every time Steve wants to touch him, or wants to be touched by him, even if he has no idea why or how to make it keep happening, how to make sure it never stops, even though it should, it should stop, they should stop, shouldn't they? There are only weeks, months at most, before everything's going to fall right back out of his hands again, like it always does. What happens if they stumble across another bomb? How much deeper can they really go?

But. He wants to follow Steve's pull, and that he actually can do, lets go of the pillow with grumpy reluctance, like a limpet being pried off a rock, like there might actually be any world in which he prefers a pillow to Steve, and rolls back towards Steve's chest, where he's being tugged. A dull flush of heat flares and settles, pulses from ear to temple to the juncture of neck and jaw, head tipping to expose more skin in a reflexive push. "You're telling me the criminals aren't taking the day off? They really oughta unionize, or something. Get some, hmmm --"

There's a low, content sound humming from his chest, while he takes a deep breath, eyes sliding closed, not for sleep, but to concentrate. The faint graze of Steve's teeth, that skitter shivers cascading down over his shoulders and along his spine. Warmth everywhere, to sink into, melt muscles, pool limbs, pervasive and perfect. Steve's arm heavy and insistent, the fingers counting up the rungs of his ribs, mouth making a helpless pudding of Danny's brain, short-circuiting every thought but the one to get closer, to try and sink straight under Steve's skin, to live right there, against the heart that's counting out the passing seconds against Danny's back. "Vacation days, personal time. Even crooks need to run errands every now and again."

Rolling where Steve's dragging him, with a perfunctory and necessary complaint that's nothing but an ugly lie, okay, because there's nowhere he wouldn't go if Steve wanted him there.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny comes, like Steve knows he will, once he's awake at least. Asleep he's something more of a challenge, especially if he thinks he's being woken up. But awake, and moving in the direction of how Steve wants him to move, Steve can just loose the edges of of his mouth and let that crooked, smug smile unfurl against the slow growing light of dawn infiltrating the room more and more by the minute.

Pull back while still turning Danny toward his own back, and throw a leg over him and vault up just a little, until he's over and then on top of Danny. For the most part. Most of his weight on a knee, and his hand flat on the other side of Danny, rather than quite on Danny. When he's screwing up his king of the mountain flicker of a face toward an expression of confused, nearly insulted, consternation, that really hasn't diluted the tug of that far more real, and boasting, smile entirely.

But going with it, squinting at Danny, like he might be blurry or foreign, "Are you sure you're awake?"

There's the up ante of a flicking an eyebrow up, and tilting his head, "Because all I'm hearing is a lot of nonsense."

Not that Danny isn't entirely free to go on spout nonsense. Steve would listen. Steve would listen to all of it, and even if he lied and pretended to zone out, or that he wasn't interested, he could repeat a good ninety-five percent of all of it, too. He might not always agree with Danny, and he might still think he used a million words where two could work, but it didn't mean he wasn't listening. Always listening. Keenly felt it when all that noise was gone.

Except maybe at this second. Maybe he's not exactly listening as much as he could be, when he's busy, okay, looking at that truly hilarious explosion of hair on Danny's pillows case and around his ears and temples. The pillow creases from the night and from shoving himself tight into a lock with it, like nothing, not even more or Steve could steal Danny from it. Even if he, totally, just did. The stubble and groggy morning alertness that is almost begrudged of the world and Steve.

The way all of it is as cantankerous as is it warm and fluid. Things Steve missed, even if they were never counted or said.

[haole_cop]

He oofs as Steve rolls on top of him, complaining at the weight and the intrusion on his space and making a face, but it doesn't mean his hands aren't moving directly to Steve's back, one flat on the rounded arch of Steve's ribcage, the other near his hip. "No."

Grumbled, aggravated, spit out as derisively as he can when he's not actively trying to shove Steve and all his long, insistent limbs off him, even if he's pretty close to one hundred percent certain that look on Steve's face, like someone just handed him a lit birthday cake, definitely has something to do with mocking him.

It's morning. No one looks good in the morning. No human being has ever once woken up looking as attractive as the movies and TV would have everyone believe. Not even Steve is his usual superhuman level of good-looking when he's just woken up: there's a patch of hair on the side of his head that's sticking up in a determined cowlick and pillow creases on his cheek; his breath smells like something that died and was abandoned at low tide, and he's already getting scruffy again, despite using Danny's razor barely eight hours ago. "I'm definitely not awake, this is all just a bad dream."

Except, well. He's had this dream before. Had it most nights over the last two weeks, clear enough that he would blink his eyes open in the morning mid-reach for a Steve who wasn't there, who he could swear he'd just been touching, talking to, kissing, holding.

Even if those were peanuts compared to the ones from months ago, before he had any idea what it would actually be like, when all he had were fantasies he'd kept stubbornly hazy and dreams that refused to obey the same rules. Dragged him into sleep on the curve of a smile that wasn't really there, the warmth of fingers his brain was feverishly imagining, a composite of Steve that was too much, too perfect, until he somehow managed to get, see, touch the real thing, and then it turned out to be nothing more than a pathetic shadow.

Nothing could ever be better than this. Steve's weight, his warmth, night sweat and sex and salt and Danny's soap and shampoo, the delight in his grin, smug and satisfied, like no matter what words might be coming out of his mouth, this is exactly where he wants Danny, and he's not planning on letting him leave.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny makes faces -- the best, most inconvenienced, crumpled up faces of deep consternation, just waiting to spew all his opinions of Steve's lack of thinkings -- while he throws that single word out. Like he can stop the tide that is Steve moving. Like he's even trying, or wants Steve to start trying.

Steve is well aware of what Danny would be screaming and thrashing about like if he was actually annoyed or trying to shove Steve off. But he's not doing that. Not at all when his hands are landing on Steve's skin and spreading out possessive over wider spaces than than the hand, forearm and arm he had only seconds before Steve made him move. Fingers across his ribs, and framing to round of a hip.

Looking surly and put upon, like he couldn't for the life of him understand why the world had shackled him with dealing with Steve. Like he wasn't ranting last night. Like he didn't wake Steve up before dawn, just to pull him out of falling hard first hard into the black, drive him about, and shove him back into the black, curled around Danny like a blanket, he can just do whatever he pleases with. Because. He can.

"Nah," Steve says it all warm, and flippant. Dipping his head down toward Danny's shoulder. "I can think of a lot of good-"

There's a breath of a near laugh, right as his mouth brushed the skin below Danny's collar bone. "-reasons to be awake now."

Even if the ones that will, could, might be pulled out of his mouth, aren't the one's flooding his head and his chest. Wild and reckless, broad stroked kind of glee, painting itself through the easily brush-able cobwebs of two weeks that are gone. Behind him. A door closed. Echoes of Danny replaced by Danny, here, when his eyes open. Sounding annoyed and irritated, hands warm, heavy and present, like the rest of him. The way Steve wants every morning, no matter where he is now.

[haole_cop]

"Oh yeah?"

Maybe one day, if they last that long (if they live that long, manage to keep thwarting Steve's daily attempts to kill them both), he'll stop taking every word that comes out of Steve's mouth or every foolhardy action that's sprung from Steve's twisted head as a challenge. It doesn't make sense that he fires back, all argument and annoyance, even when Steve's doing something he wants or likes -- Exhibit A, right here. Steve rolling him over, sliding on top of him like particularly self-satisfied blanket, leaning down to brush the ghost of a kiss over Danny's collarbone.

It makes him want to stretch. To spread out. He's as loose as warm butter, limbs melting into sheets, chest hollowing out and filling back up again with this horrible, terrible feeling, the one that's been dogging every breath since he got out of a borrowed car to see Steve on that tarmac, and his head is like those cotton candy machines at state fairs: all his thoughts are spinning out and floating in wisps he can't seem to quite catch.

They do need to get up. They probably could both use a shower, and Steve needs to leave in time to head home and find clothes that aren't travel-stained camouflage. Just because their phones haven't rung doesn't mean there won't be a case. The car needs gas. He has a strong suspicion he's out of milk and they'll need to have time to stop for coffee.

But his priorities are all out of whack, okay, because not a damn one of those things seems anywhere near as important as just letting Steve run his mouth over Danny's collarbone, touching just a bare breath that's still somehow enough to pass a jolt of electricity strong enough to do a hard reset on everything Danny had previously considered necessary or needed.

What does he really need, that isn't right here?

Eventually -- if they make it that long -- he knows it won't feel like this. That he'll, they'll, start taking mornings and nights together for granted. That things like getting up to hit the bathroom or brush his teeth will start taking precedence again, that he'll be thinking more about morning breath and the annoyance of stubble than he will about how nice it feels to have Steve's warm lips pressing against his skin. Right? That's how it all goes, always. People get used to each other. The death of romance is the only way anything gets done in the world, must be, because otherwise, everyone would just be lounging around in bed all day, unwilling to peel themselves away from their partner.

Or maybe it's just that none of them are in bed with Steve, because even knowing it, even expecting it, he just can't see how it'll happen.

How any of this could ever be taken for granted. Expected. Boring. Normal.

It was never supposed to happen. He was never supposed to. Not like this. Not with everything he's got in him. Love wasn't going to happen to him again.

Which is probably what people say, right before they get hit by cars or struck by lightening or fall off a cliff.

"Okay," is a small allowance, a bare, resigned acquiescence. "I can think of plenty of good reasons to be awake. Fine. Awake is okay. As long as it's right here."

There are a million reasons to be awake, and here, and not all that many to be awake anywhere else.

[thebesteverseen]

He knows Danny will follow his lead, in the field as much as in here. Steve doesn't quite know when that stopped being a question, in all of this, finding their footing and their never really having any hold or balance on the explosive nature of it, and just started being true. Like it was another extension of every conversation and interaction, from the car to work, to cases to off.

Steve tosses out caltrops and Danny follows him, agreeing and avoiding, charging and complaining, back-up, clean-up, side by side partner. The way he knows, he can shove at the clock, on the bed table and, even more, the one drilling into the back of his head, dragging his mouth on Danny's skin and tossing out alluding, arrogant statements. Knowing Danny will react to them.

Will shiver or strain toward his mouth on that skin, holding tighter elsewhere, and will throw back at least twice as many words.

Will take what he said, the way he said it, and go the direction Steve has pushed him toward with his words.

So he can pull back, looking entirely too fond and smug straight through his dragged out expression, looking like he's amused but put uponly disgusted by Danny's insistence of staying having shifted from the pillow itself, grasping it and growling out warning, to that being the bed and possibly even Steve's skin now, where his hands have relocated. When he can give something of an entirely too transparent wrinkle of his brow and frown that neither of which look entirely hard or sharp.

"Nope." Steve says it straight off, like that was a question. A request in writing. Something needing his approval. "We've got a job to do, and you--" There's a jabbed point, even when his mouth is all crooked and pleased with himself. "They'll definitely notice if you don't show up. You've probably been in at these mythical dawn hours your reports say you actually acknowledge exist only when I'm gone."

He can joke about it. But he gets it. He'll never forget, and never be able to wipe from his bones or his mind the way Danny said, I don't want to be you. Steve. Who doesn't mind being up at the crack of dawn, and working into the night. Who Danny drags away from his desk in the evening more times than either of them admit except in joking. Danny doesn't have to be the Task Force Leader that Steve is. Only Steve's partner. Shouldering what he needs to and has to. And more than often, picking up whatever slack Steve leaves lying.

Until he has to take on more, in Steve's absence. And he knows Danny will do it perfectly. But it's not Danny.

It's not what Danny wants to be doing, and he doesn't live it the way Steve does. Feeling adrift from it when pulled away.

"If we're lucky," Steve tossed in with a manic slap of a grin. "There might even be a case just waiting to break in my first day right."

[haole_cop]

Nowhere, Steve had said, that one terrible twenty minutes on the beach by his house. This goes nowhere. Saying he wouldn't ever be able to give Danny what he, Danny, wanted. Saying this had to, should, stop, because of it. That it would never be anything other than furtive, stolen moments, never defined by either of them. Derisive of the term boyfriend. Saying it goes nowhere.

When Danny's, okay, maybe not a hundred percent sure of what it is, exactly, what words could actually be used to define this, but it's definitely not nowhere, and it's not nothing, and even if they haven't publicized it, this is about as real as it gets. Sidling closer and closer towards deserving the term relationship, with sidelong, casual steps, while whistling innocence. Because he talked Steve down, that day. And now they have this.

Steve coming here, instead of to his own house, his actual home. Staying with him a number of times now, that weren't because sex was on the table, like when Danny was healing up from that concussion that he still has check-ups for. That long, horrible night after Faruk and the bomb. Weeks ago. A couple months, now, since they started. And here they are. Comfortable, and easy. No threads of panic anywhere here, to get tugged at and teased until alarms start blaring in his head. Just delight at getting Steve back, relief and this warm rush of happiness that's turning his insides to mush and his good sense to gooey infatuation, because he's lying here hooked on the curve of Steve's smile, that horrifying near-crazed Cheshire cat grin of his, five hundred watts and magazine-ready. "I don't call that luck. You are deranged, there's something so wrong with your head, have you ever considered allowing your body to be studied, for science? I bet if there's anything left of you when you eventually blow yourself to kingdom come, Max would love to, literally, pick apart your brain. Want a case. You're sick."

He doesn't want a case, not least because it would mean pain and suffering for someone else in the world, but also because it would mean actually getting up from here, this nice warm cocoon, with Steve on top of him, and he's missed Steve. Maybe not like he did while Steve was in Japan and not answering his phone, but maybe even more, in a way, because he's got more to miss, now. These hands on his skin. Kisses and smiles and waking up to Steve's sleep-rumpled hair.

Not even feeling sticky and gross from last night can put up a decent argument about what he's got, right now, right here.