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.

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[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.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve gets exactly what he intended to there.

Danny wrinkling up his face, looking even more disgusted at Steve's head.

That it's even worse than anything he's been considering or rebelling against already.

Out of bed, a shower, out the door. That Steve actually, totally, whole heartedly, wants to be there already. Past all of those and in the field. And maybe he does want to be there that much, too. As much as he needed to originally get here. It's not like he was going to take today or tomorrow off and play it low until he had to be back. That's not him. Even Danny knows it's not him. Knows he'll be in today. And tomorrow.

But he loves putting it that way. He loves screwing up Danny's face, making him look utterly disgusted at Steve's lack of sanity, when those eyes never stop being bright even squinting at him like he's gone crazy. Again. Like Danny might have forgotten for a few seconds, a few hours, Steve's brain is screwed on backwards and needs smacking upside the head with five thousand words.

Words Steve wants, too. Because it is dawn and day, and they can tuck the night away. Find the shower and the car and the office. Where Danny will nitpick everything he says, does, wears, telling him how much of a backwards ape or child or whatever new sling of insults he's found and saved the last two weeks, and still back him up without a single hesitation when the wire goes live.

He wants all of it. All of this day, this life, this job, every part of it, and every part of Danny in it, back in his hands.

Steve let his expression go long, eyebrows pressing up, like he couldn't believe Danny could be so selfish and blind. Like everything else wasn't here, their hands on each other, barely the foot of dim dawn between their faces. The breath of morning tugging at the urges to curl back in and hold on tight. Like he hadn't stayed there braced on his knees over Danny, too. "You can't be saying you'd rather just lay here and let people continue to get away with screwing the world?"

Because that was the given. Not that somewhere something new would start this morning. Only that they'd get tipped off to it finally. After however long it was already going on. The way it was going on world over, by hundreds, or thousands, of different groups and singular people. The reason all of their jobs existed. Vigilant of what was next and vengent of what had been discovered, drug from the depths of darkness and needing to be burned out next.

[haole_cop]

Look, he loves his job. Okay? He loves what he does, and he's good at it, and he knows how good he's got it with this partnership, how well they work together, even now, when all logic dictates that the exact opposite be true, and he's been looking forward to getting back out there once Steve came back, to getting things back to the way they're supposed to be. At each others' side, like always. Putting some good back in a world that seems determined to wipe out every shred.

It's not a question of not wanting to work, all right, that's not part of the equation, it's not even on the radar, is never an option or an excuse or a reason. Sure. There are days the job drags him down, is nothing but a steel-toed boot driving into his ribs and gut over and over again, or a soaked anchor rope tied around his ankles. There are days and weeks when, as much as he loves what he does, he hates it, too. Parts that never get any easier.

But none of that is in play right now. There's no case yet, no victim, no grieving family to inform or interview, and there's no reason at all for him to not want to be at work, except this one most obvious one, the one still blanketing him. "For someone so interested in saving the world, you're taking a hell of a long time to get off of me."

Sure. He could roll Steve off if he wanted to, get up, find the shower. It's not like Steve's pinning him here against his will, or even like Danny can't try or succeed getting past him -- he could, if he wanted to.

But that's the problem. He just doesn't want to. Doesn't want to get up, to leave this skin-to-skin contact, this warm cocoon, this perfect little nest. Doesn't want to go running after meth heads and thieves, or get caught in a car chase, or go running after a suspect in the hot Hawaiian sun.

He just wants to stay right here, and is that such a freaking sin?

[thebesteverseen]

Steve knows something is potentially wrong with him. It's not like Danny does have the longest, epic, unending list, with probably dated evidence and examples to back up each of the things he has thrown at Steve's head for being wrong for years. But he loves this. Loves this harried, annoyed, wanting to dig his heels in the ground, or mattress, look Danny has on his face.

Like Steve suggested something repugnant, and absolutely out of hand for sanity. Getting up. Going to work.

(Like anything that involved them leaving this bed, and leaving them being this close, was the insanity.)

He shouldn't love it. It fiddles back there with that other statement. That other one. About those words about Danny. That he can't quite make shut up still, and can't let form into words, even in his head. Because he's over Danny, and staring at Danny, and flew the whole country, and arrived two days early, because he's not sure how anyone on the planet could not do that. Not once they knew. Once they'd been here. In this place. Watching this face. Getting everything he had since arriving.

That whisper can be smothered down in the fading shadows and dark of night. Not something for dawn, or work, or now.

When Steve pushes up, even though he knows it'll ruffle Danny even more, because his hands haven't gotten to anywhere like letting go. But his words are poking at Steve like Steve is holding them up. Which is not what Danny wants. Up and out, and onward, into the brightness of dawn getting going. The way Steve wakes up in a snap of awareness, and Danny is clutching every last shred of night, and sleeping hours into morning on his free days.

But he goes, Steve, pushing up and off, bright, mocking crooked twist to his lips, throwing the sheet and blanket up off his back, and springing toward the side. "That's your excuse?" He can get a foot on the ground, looking smug, and holding out a hand like he could be offering to help Danny up, or might be about to drag him out the second that won't work. He'll have to go sometime soon, but the whole getting up thing, leaving the bed thing, didn't mean he quite wanted to be leaving Danny.

It never did. Never. Which was true, even as he tossed out more words. "Seems pretty empty now."

[haole_cop]

Steve moves, and he's just way, way too coordinated and enthusiastic for morning, okay? He's all coiled, ready to spring muscle, even now, even relaxed and dopey and buck naked. If there was a threat, Danny's sure he'd snap to high alert in the blink of an eye, whereas Danny is pretty sure it'll take him a long hot shower and at least three cups of coffee to even start feeling like more than just a truncated brainstem.

Of course Steve can just get up. Of course he's raring to go, to get back to work, to steal the driver's seat and Danny's keys and Danny's sanity, because something is wired all wrong in Steve's brain and he legitimately loves doing all that stuff more than he does just staying in bed, like a normal person. He's all go go go all the time, and it never stops.

Frankly, Danny's amazed he managed to keep him in bed this long.

Which doesn't stop him from making annoyed noises when Steve springs out of bed like a freaking breakfast cereal spokesperson, already bright-eyed and delighted, while Danny bats at the outstretched hand left there like he might need some kind of assistance getting out of his own damn bed in his own damn home. "Christ, you're annoying. Why did I want you back? Was it really worth the aggravation?"

Grumbled into the air as he shoves at the sheets as though they've personally insulted not only him, but his mother and grandmother, too, gets his feet on the cold floor and cards his fingers through his hair after scrubbing his palms over his face, skin scraping against thick stubble.

Movement is not his friend. He gets that message loud and clear when he goes to stand up, and the faint soreness that's been haunting him since he woke up sharpens into something that feels torn and fragile, making him stand up awkward and uncomfortable, already wincing at the idea of walking, or sitting for long periods of time, or anything that is not taking some Advil and doing his best not to disturb what feels like ripped open tissue, and deep internal bruises. "Ow," he complains, because it's all Steve's fault, of course, just like everything horrible that ever has or ever will happen to Danny. It all comes back to Steve, somehow, and this definitely does, because Steve doesn't understand the concept of patience. Of course not, the guy came home two days early, and broke into Danny's house -- how would waiting ten seconds to grab the lube have made any sense, right?

Leaving Danny here, making faces and shoving at Steve to get out of his way, grumbling and wincing at the steps necessary to make it to the bathroom and shower he so desperately needs. They're both pretty gross, dried sweat and other stuff sticking to his skin, and he probably should have gone to find a washcloth last night. Just another detail that got not only thrown by the wayside, but set on fire, dragged into the street, and left for dead. "Next time, can we skip the part where you prove a point all over my body? Ow, you maniac."

[thebesteverseen]

Danny's getting up, curled and cantankerous, like complaining and drawing in, trying to hold on to the last seconds as long as possible, could be something his body is doing at least as much as his mouth. Being drug from the pillows and blankets he was so attached to. Batting at his hand like it's an insult that it was even there, so that it just ends up on his hip, raises to cross for a second and drop loose, because he's really not paying attention.

At least not to anything that isn't Danny. Looking offended and overtaxed by awareness.

Making Steve grin, and shake his head, wondering how in the world Danny ever woke up a few hours ago and managed being awake, no less deciding to get up to things that weren't sinking back under his pillow and into Steve's back, or chest, or shoulder. It wasn't even like it was entirely real. There was fuss and fire, but there was no real sharp edges and anger to it. No twist that took his voice in that direction.

Even when he's tottering, with a shove at Steve, toward the bathroom and Steve's expression only slips for a second. Not toward worry, but more like consideration. Toward the tottering and the reason for the complaining. Even if the words that come out, on the heels of Danny's word, while he's following right behind on Danny's, too, don't really give much of that away at all.

"You finally admitting how fragile you are?" The bathroom isn't far, and Steve really doesn't give more than a glance towards the boots on the floor, or the uniform folded on the counter, or his dog tags strewn on the edge of the sink. It's all things he'll have to gather and take home. Soon. But not yet. Right now the whole world is still a few breaths away, still Danny. "Is that what I'm hearing?"

It's not like he's forgotten. How that happened. Danny egging him on the whole way, before and during. Calling him tired, and worn. The way the whole world turned inside out, blurring burning needs. Danny never saying no, or to slow down, or to stop. Danny, never more than in step with him, throwing insults at his head, digging fingers into his skin, pushing into him, both of them ragged and worn and just at the edge of exploding on contact from the second Danny touched him when he first sat down on the edge of the bed.

[haole_cop]

"You would love that, wouldn't you?"

It's a challenge, tossed back at Steve's head as Danny brushes open the shower curtain and leans down -- that was a mistake, leaning, Christ, he's got to rethink this whole moving idea, today, maybe he can just telecommute -- to turn the water on, filling the tiny room with the splashing sound of the stream hitting the tub floor. "Actual physical breakage to go along with the mental scarring that's been the hallmark of our entire working and personal relationship, because you are just deranged enough to think that kind of thing is a goddamn trophy, aren't you? No, I am not being fragile, and I'm not being sensitive, either, you emotionally stunted twit, I am being sore because you have the patience of an untrained puppy on methamphetamines."

God. Today is going to be miserable, even if he feels rested, even if he's actually starting to feel something like human, and it's got way less to do with the literal pain in his ass than with the figurative one, because Steve's going to have that goddamn dopey self-satisfied smile on his face all day, every time Danny winces or walks funny, all pleased with himself and annoyingly proud, which is just, it's just fantastic, really, Danny can't wait.

He just needs to keep it together enough so Chin and Kono don't put two and two together, but he's honestly feeling less and less like their ruse is actually working and more like Chin and Kono are both too nice to point out that this? Is all unbelievably obvious.

It must be. Right? It definitely feels like it is, like it's painted right across his chest, like it's stamped on his face, like it's in every glance he takes at Steve, every hand he ever gets on the guy's arm or back or shoulder. Chin and Kono are smart -- it wouldn't take their level of detective to take the fact that Steve got home last night and the fact that Danny's walking stiffly today and put them together.

Would it?

But those worries are old and small and they just gnaw gently at him, like usual, so they're not going to actually deter him from turning to face Steve, while the water starts running hot, steam beginning to slowly build in the little room. "Are you coming or going?"

[thebesteverseen]

If Steve looks smug, he'd blaming it on the crap rolling out of Danny's mouth, while he just stands there watching him. The catch of his shoulders, and the way all of the muscles down his back seize and make him freeze for a second, before he moves more gingerly, and sounds sharper. The way Danny is the one referring to himself as trophy, and it's not exactly the word Steve would choose, but it makes something zip in his blood.

The idea of Danny tossing it back, like there's a reason he wouldn't be glad. Sure, it was reckless, and Steve's had that load to bare before through a day of work. Or a few, depending on which memory and how long in his head, or even more in the field, he'd been. But there's something far too electrically, arrogantly, selfishly pleased in him. Warm and stuffed in his chest. Because they did. Because there wasn't a no, or some stumbling sudden stop. It was insane. But it was both of them. Insane, together, neither of them pulling back.

From the moment Danny kissed him, then shoved him out of his bed, then into a wall, all those words never stopping.

And all of these words now. Endless and noisy, rising more now, so that Danny can be perfectly certain the tirade against Steve's thoughtlessness -- like Steve got into that, any of this alone -- can be heard over the water, that make Steve feel even less remorse than he probably should be feeling. Because he knows, okay. He know both that it hurts, and that he's at fault, they're at fault. But even more he knows what it looks like when Danny is pissed off and he's slammed straight over the line.

And that isn't this look. This belligerent, harried, looking back from the water, that maybe once upon a time maybe would have left him cautiously uncertain about whether that question was an invitation to get out already. It's not. He knows it not, and it's not even that he's a mess, so much as it is that maybe something is broken in his head. Because he wouldn't be anywhere else, go anywhere else, want to pick up his uniform and tags and head right out.

Like Danny was something he could put away with the night. He never is. This never is.

It's all a mess in his head. Most of the time, but even here. When Danny bites out the question, and Steve just flicks his mouth into something lazy, crooked and just as accusatively sharp. Except his has the hint an arrogant, sunshine warmth trying to get messy around the edges of everything else. "Pretty sure I already did that this morning."

He'd need a shower before he put his uniform back on as it was. Even if it needed cleaning. He didn't need it to need cleaning. It wasn't like he'd never had that problem, checking clothes over. But the shower was right there, and so was Danny, and it was so very easy after all. Just taking broad steps toward him, bare feet padding on the tile, and getting into his space, crowding him back toward the shower.

[haole_cop]

"Ugh."

It's derision deep in his chest, while he waves Steve off with a hand that ends up on Steve's chest, as if Danny has ever once managed to actually fend him off when Steve has that look on his face, as if he actually would want to shove Steve and that obnoxious lopsided crook of a smile away. "You are the worst person I've ever met, that was awful. See if you get anymore early morning blowjobs from now on -- I already did, God, I hate you."

Hate. That's what this feeling is, right? This goofy, dopey, feeling, stumbling around his chest on awkward coltish legs, trying to figure out how to walk and run and only succeeding in tripping and tumbling down a Sears Tower worth of stairs, ending with the pooling, fluttering warmth deep in his gut, like he's been sucker-punched by a rogue flock of butterflies.

He's clearly lost any desensitivity he might have once had, might have built up as a matter of self-preservation when Steve comes this close, because his stomach tightens into fainting knots and his skin is pricking and flushing in a way that has nothing to do with the steam rising from the shower, leaving him no choice but to awkwardly step backwards over the tub edge, into the falling water, before Steve shoves them both in and someone cracks a skull or breaks an ankle, and, still. Still, it's so much better than Steve disappearing back into the SEAL, back under cammo and dog tags. It's so much better than waking up and finding him gone, even if gone only means 'swimming out in the cove.'

There's really no world in which having Steve is a worse option than not having Steve, especially when he's just had a two-week refresher course on what the latter feels like.

So maybe this won't be a fun, languid shower of the type that leads them straight back to bed; maybe they need to get into work and start saving the day again, but they've still got time for those other showers, those other mornings. Maybe not ever enough time, but still some. Some. For a little while longer.

He steps under the water, lets it sluice down over his head and face, reaches up to scrub fingers through his hair and tip his face up to the fall. "You gotta stop back at your place before HQ, right?"

[thebesteverseen]

There are fingers pressing against his skin on his chest, and it strikes through everything the way the scent of salt off the ocean steals all of his ability to breathe the first time he catches it again. Better than air or clarity or anything else in need of focus. Bubbles shoving out and up through his veins, refusing to let him have air or blood. Like somehow Danny wasn't layered against more than half of him back on the bed.

"Bet I still do," Steve says flippantly, with all fire of a proud, unrepentant child, and the distraction of someone who is nowhere near childhood. Maybe doesn't even remember the moth wing brush of it, when his eyes are stolen from him. Tracing, almost frozen for that first second, as water falls down across Danny's first shoulder and he has to reach out to smooth his hand against it. The water. Danny's shoulder. The water on Danny's shoulder.

Like he isn't aware. Always. That the thing trembling in his gut at that touch, the heat of sheet warm skim warming even further under hot water, would do anything, keep saying anything, do nothing, say nothing, if it meant he could keep being able to do something as simple as this. Running his hand over Danny's skin, and talking about any of this like it was his, and there was never any question in it. He hadn't questioned if Danny had, questioned it, while he was away.

But then there are other words, and Steve can let his hand fall away, reaching for the soap through the fine mist of the water spraying off Danny and around him, while it washes straight down his chest, like it's not the kind of image that reburns itself into Steve's eyes and Steve's brain every time he has to see it, gets to, can't look away, and nod even though Danny can't see him with his eyes closed and the water covering all of his face. Turning Steve's voice a touch rough. "Yeah. I need to get everything."

Clothing. His gun. His badge. "Give the house a once over to make sure it's good. I didn't stay long last night."

Long enough to be deeply unimpressed by it existing without Danny in it, waiting for him, already there.