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]

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.

[haole_cop]

Yeah, maybe he still will. Probably he still will -- okay, definitely, definitely, because this...whatever it is they're in is still a battle of wills and one power struggle after another and Danny kind of likes having a few marks tallied up on his column, okay? And that's even before he gets into the entirely amazing noises Steve makes, or the way he feels on Danny's tongue, or how good he smells, or how good Danny feels when Steve's laid out, wrung dry, unable to string together words or summon anything even faintly resembling fine motor control.

So, fine, maybe he still will. That doesn't mean Danny needs to give him the win by agreeing, or doing more than snorting and making a skeptical face, eyes still closed, at water running over his skin, water, and fingers. Actual fingers, not silky ones made of liquid, and he opens his eyes to find Steve's hand on his shoulder, and Steve in the shower with him, and Steve looking at him, like --

Like, God only knows. Like he's still not convinced Danny's not a mirage, or a dream conjured up from the voicemails on his phone. Like he somehow still hasn't gotten enough of him, or is still surprised to see him there, after all night, after the last two weeks, after the last two months, after the last two years.

Like he's not standing in Danny's shower, and it's somehow become a totally normal thing.

Things that Danny still has no idea what to do with, aside from grasp at and cling to like a life raft, because eventually, those looks will stop, right? Leaving him with, "You need a lift?" while reaching for his shampoo, and only wincing a little.

Hot water, man. No matter how grumpy or tired he is, hot, running water is nothing short of a miracle. He's got no idea how Steve only stays in for three minutes, because showers are about so much more than just getting in, getting clean, and getting out, right? They're about silky smooth fingers tracing over his chest, about the water sheeting down his back and soothing his sore muscles

Three minutes is a tragedy. A travesty. Just plain wrong. He'd only be in that kind of rush if he knew Steve was back, but didn't have him here, was going to go find him. For a regular work day? No dice. He lathers up the shampoo, sticks his head under the stream again to rinse it out, blunt fingertips scrubbing quick neat circles against his scalp, and it feels like freaking magic. "Did you bring the truck over, or commandeer some poor sucker's vehicle in order to get here last night?"

[thebesteverseen]

He doesn't need a lift. Though he almost wishes he did.

It'd be only too perfect to just get to steal the camaro at dawn, and drive into the day.

But he does still have to go home, as nothing he needs for the day is here, no matter how much he wishes it would appear for a fleeting second, and his truck is still, actually, parked out in front of this place, on the street. Looking oddly like it could belong. Like Danny could have company. Something that stands out in a neighborhood that doesn't in a packed apartment parking lot.

"Huh." Steve says, looking up, mouth firm and thoughtful for a second, at least as thoughtful as a brick through a window ever is. When he's nodding, and continuing on like Danny might be on to something. "I'll have to think about doing that next time. I'm sure no one will ever figure out I'm back on the island early if I car jack some bystander in the middle of the night and strand them somewhere."

There's a sideways look at Danny, that isn't entirely G rated, when he waits for Danny to be able to see him, and thinks his an idiot. Before letting his eyes drag down Danny's skin in thickly obvious fashion of appraisal just for the point of the words rolling out then. "Unless you hit your head while I was gone and you think you've upgraded the importance of national security, too."

Though there was no denying Steve would have found a way. He found a way across a continent so many hours and days before he should have. He would have found a way, if he had to, to just get across this city. He couldn't think of anything, that wasn't national security, or a case, or detrimental to Danny, or the team, or his own family, that could have stopped him. And even then, it wouldn't be stopping. It would be delaying.

This might be on a collision crash course with a future date stuck in the sand like a flag, but until that day there was nothing Steve was letting get that far in the way. It wasn't like he even got a vote about it. Not when it woke him up, and strung him out. In two weeks. Two. That kind of thing should have been a wink in the dark. Not every morning and every night like shoving his thumb into a deep bruise.

And now it was just gone. While Danny stood there, in the water, frowning at him, but never vanishing.

[haole_cop]

He wipes water out of his face and leans back to squint at Steve, just in time to catch the lascivious look Steve's currently painting down his body, which, okay, does not exactly make him feel bad, so to speak. Right? When a guy who looks like Steve aims that look at you, you don't question it, because the questions and impossibilities will only drive you stark raving mad, and Danny would like to hold on to what small semblance of sanity he has left.

Or at least be able to to accurately pretend, considering they're about to be spending the day with two extremely observant people who know them well and will probably already be suspicious of Danny's sudden good -- okay, better -- mood. "Hey, I'm not the one who bartered his way onto a cargo plane to get here a little faster, am I?"

Brash and challenging, throwing it out there, like a gauntlet. That Steve already proved that, everything in those words, everything in his face right now, the way his eyes are tracing down Danny's body, like Danny isn't the most average guy around, like maybe there's some, real, tangible reason for Steve to be standing here in this shower with him, for Steve to have rushed home. Here. Not his house, here.

So Danny challenges, because it's the only thing about any of this that he actually understands anymore.

Reaches for the conditioner, shrugging. "What? Maybe Duke and the HPD boys would consider it a coming-home present. Nothing like a car chase and grand theft auto to get you back in the swing of things, right?"

Even if he wouldn't have wanted to wait another second, and, yeah, he still kind of wishes he'd been there to pick Steve up. Would have been, in a heartbeat; it wasn't that late, and then they could've ridden in together, even if they would probably been at Steve's house instead of here, and -- how weird is it, that that's normal now? That Steve might have expected Danny to be at the beach house, just on his own, that Danny found it actually strange to spend entire evenings alone in his own house.

It's nothing he wants to think about right now, and, anyway, it can't be that many night he'd spent there, right?

[thebesteverseen]

Yeah. Maybe. But. He likes this better.

The thought spikes out and down and slams against his teeth before a breath or heartbeat happens, feeling like it causes a static hiccup of something like shock and seize in the second before each of those should happen. Do happen. Even when the thought is jittering like an echo in his teeth, his bones, his head. It's not that Danny doesn't have a point. He would love those things.

Would be fine with any of those happening later today. Ten minutes from now, even. Five. He could come up with an excuse for being in Danny's car. It's not that Danny is wrong. It's that he can't think of anything else he would have wanted instead of the last seven or eight hours. He can't remember if he's ever pushed off from a early-free mandated period when it wasn't to buck straight back into a mission.

He can see it. If he doesn't look at it head on. And he doesn't regret it. Okay. He doesn't. He's not sure what to do with it. But he doesn't regret it. It was worth it. It still is right in this second. He would choose this over a case in the mid-hours of this morning. All of Danny's bed head and yelling and orders, and the soft catch in his breathing, and the once intrusive, and now somehow normal, way of his almost always finding a hand to put on Steve, even when he's sleeping. Especially when he's sleeping.

"Yeah." Steve shook his head, with a roll of his eyes. Like it was simple. Like maybe he'd rather. "Maybe next time."

Like he'd wanted to be anywhere other than right here, shouldering in on one side for water while Danny is staring to use the conditioner. Soap still in his hands, that he starts lathering. "Maybe then I'd get some kind of proper welcome. It'd be like a parade, and there'd be shoot out, some arrests, and -- hey," He calls out a little louder, broad and full voice, like he's got a brilliant idea.

"Maybe they'll even invite you. You can do that thing with the crooks, and the talking while they're handcuffed."

Because Miranda Rights will never not be a worthwhile dead horse. Especially while he neatly sidesteps what he didn't say. While acting like reading someone their rights is a carnival-party trick that would fit his partner to a T.

[haole_cop]

"You're missing the point."

He's moving out of the way for Steve, and still manages to slide past, under the water, by way of bumping into Steve's hip, Steve's side, rolling his eyes at Steve's amusement and those dark, pleased threats, like he might actually consider it, next time.

(Which Danny slides smoothly past, and doesn't bump on, because next time wouldn't be for another year, unless Steve gets re-activated sometime before then, unless he decides to take another jaunt off to Japan or wherever, on his own, and they don't have a year, probably don't even have another set of months to match the first, and now is not the time to think about it.)

"In this scenario? The one where you jack some poor schmuck's car to get here, instead of calling me -- or calling a cab, like a normal human being -- you are the crook, Steven. I'd be handcuffing you, and not in the fun way."

And in front of all of HPD, too, all those nice people who have gotten used to but still don't think much of Danny, in front of Duke and all their backup, and that's -- okay, he just really doesn't think crowding Steve into a squad car would be all that great a welcome home. "Besides, you seemed to enjoy yourself just fine without any of that."

To say the least. Steve, letting Danny shove him into the wall. Taking Danny's challenge and setting it on fire, burning them both down. Waking up with Danny's hands and mouth on his skin, and tumbling straight back into incoherence.

Yeah. There aren't a lot of other homecoming options Danny's all that willing to consider.

[thebesteverseen]

"Wouldn't be the first time," Steve pops back, undistracted from the glory.

Not the first time he's been arrested, and not the first time he's been arrest on Danny and Five-0's watch. Though he's totally not going to point out breaking out of a maximum security facility and being wanted for arrest, but absolved of everything before the arrest could happen, doesn't actually count. Especially given the near dying. He's actually at a pretty healthy minimum for Hawaii. Considering.

"But I got it. You don't want to handcuff me. You don't want to read me my rights," Steve said, mouth turned crooked, even as his eyes kept shifting between Danny and where he was using the soap bar. Making a fast job of it, for the second time in twelve hours. If it wouldn't make Danny screech he'd almost argue for cold water.

"Even though..." He drug those two words as he was crouching down, so the water could get over his shoulders and at the soap. "You didn't seem to care in the slightest about it until now, so if I had done it, you're way over the line into being an accessory already."

No complicit consent, but you could still argue a case on it. You could argue almost anything into it once you were talking about a cop going bad.

But then, hell, if you were arguing a case on this morning, the whole thing would explode wide open just from Steve breaking in, to the them in bed together, to this, now. Here. While Danny is working on his conditioner, and Steve is rinsing already half a minute later, and they are so far over the line from just partners that he's not sure either of them could say when it started accurately.

Because the day he got home from Asia would never be the honest answer for him. Somewhere out there in all of it.

[haole_cop]

"You having a record doesn't exactly count in your favor, you know."

Even if charges were cleared, which doesn't make thoughts of that day any more palatable to Danny now than they were then, which didn't make seeing Steve marched out in cuffs or behind plexiglass at the prison any easier or anything less than getting a cannonball to the gut, sending his world turning upside down.

There was never going to be any Jersey after that. Never.

Even if it was before all this, the thought of losing Steve, of letting Steve down, still sent a chill through him. He'd tried to pretend it wasn't about choosing one over the other -- Steve over Rachel -- but isn't that what it came down to, really?

Was this there, even back then?

Maybe not like this. The way he has to reach out, fingers still slick with conditioner, to push at Steve's shoulder, and run his thumb along the disappearing smears of soap there. "Don't drag me down with you. I could easily and truthfull say I had nothing to do with it, you maniac, and everyone would believe me."

Two weeks away isn't a good enough excuse to steal a car to get here, but he's a little alarmed at the insinuation, somewhere deep in his own head, mulled over by casual thoughts, that there might be an amount of time wherein automobile theft is an appropriate response.

He's gone crazy. It's the only explanation.

His fingers flatten on Steve's shoulder, push with a little more insistence, to get him out of the falling water so Danny can rinse his hair. "Bringing the truck shows an impressive amount of restraint on your end, though I'm pretty sure you lost all those points again when you broke into my house."

[thebesteverseen]

His record has granted him, and counted him in, favor for decades. Not that he can more than imply that, here, or overtly, anywhere. But it is still true. His record is what has gotten him everything, and he's ever reason for every single line written, and redacted, in it itself.

Arrests, a little -- or a lot of -- international law breaking, and a few captures were dust that could be brushed off the table on the way to even more dangerous, across the line, things. Or setting up something like Five-0. Elite, barely touched in terms of management, but getting the job done left, right, and center.

But Danny shoves at his shoulder, and drags him out into the present again. The slick feel of conditioner, and the way those fingers linger after a bit of soap washing away almost as quickly as they landed. But Steve really doesn't mind. Even if makes him a little restless to move, he's equally not prepared yet for how short the time is before he won't be able to reach out and touch Danny. Except in passing.

Or holding still and trying to remember not to catch Danny's hand or arm when Danny touches him even more frequently.

Steve gives at the touch though, as much as it is giving, when they have to do this slippery dance of side-stepping, wiggling past each other. Stomaches and sides, shoulders and arms brushing. Not enough, but Steve know where that all need to be put back away. Until tonight, or tomorrow night, or this weekend. Whenever. The other side of whatever will meet them at the door today.

"If I had a system that was that easy to crack, I'd stop worrying about blame and start working on getting a better system," Steve said, like somehow he was innocent of this charge, too. Like it was a Good Samaritan service he'd done. Giving notes on breaking into Danny's house, like anyone on the street was walking around with his skills set, while swiping Danny's shampoo bottle and starting on his own hair, short and crisp still from being trimmed before he'd left.

Cocking his head long enough to say, with something almost like a straight face, "I know a guy."

[haole_cop]

They've known their way around each other since the very first day, since Steve almost broke his arm and Danny returned the favor with a bruise that just got melted into the ones from Hesse later on, have existed in each others' space almost every day since then, until Danny was as sure of what Steve was doing as his own hand or leg, didn't even have to look to know how far he had to go to get in or out of his space, grab a wrist or a fistful of shirt, split off to corner a running suspect -- he just knew. It was like that for months. Two years, until this started, and he found a whole new meaning to the idea of being aware of Steve. Learned that moving around him when no clothes were a barrier was oddly similar and yet so different from when they were. Learned that Steve is a freaking octopus who can't seem to stay more than six inches away from Danny at any time, once they're off the clock and in the house, or on the lanai or beach.

There's hand on Danny's hips or on his back. A side brushing his. Steve's breath close enough to warm his skin. And the shower is all elbows and not enough room, because Steve takes up so much space, okay, he takes up way more than a guy his size should, because he may be seven inches taller than Danny, but six feet isn't a giant by any standards, so it must just be Steve's natural inclination to loom, right?

Or something. Not that it's unpleasant, exactly, but it does take some choreographing.

His hair's feeling silky and soft between his fingers now that the conditioner is worked through, and he sluices it with water before reaching for the abandoned soap. "Oh, you know a guy?"

Skeptical and exasperated because, all right, yeah, Steve probably does know a guy, even though Steve refused for the longest time to get a security system on his own place, despite the fact that he's easily the most high-profile of any of them and also the one most likely to piss off a violent murderer. "Thanks for the feedback, but my home is perfectly secure, and in a decent neighborhood, and so far you are the one who has had two break ins, not me."

Even if that second one wasn't a crook (or was, Danny's pretty sure the jury's still out on whether Doris McGarrett is just an unlikeable woman with a tough job or a completely unhinged psycopath), he really thinks his point stills stands, lathers the soap between his hands and starts washing last night's sweat and...other activities from his skin.

One day, Kono will notice he and Steve keep walking into work smelling exactly the same, and on that day, he's prepared to bet everything he has saved or owned that she will never let him live it down, ever, not as long as he lives, not if he lives to be a thousand.

He just hopes it's not today.

[thebesteverseen]

The problem is never quite how hard it is to put away. Steve's used to putting things away. He put it away for two weeks. He put it away for two years. He put a lot of other things away for almost two decades. But this. This has a habit of trying, valiantly, and not always controllably, of jumping the gates of barb wire and flashing signs, endless black of loyalty and service he drowns it all in, puts it all behind the door for.

Like during waking in the last few weeks, or when he'd turn to make a face, show off, want to say something to Danny, only to realize he wasn't there ten seconds too late. Or like these last few months, when he'd look up from his work and find Danny's eyes on him, or Danny, utter obliviously, doing something else, and it would slam just as hard as a fist to his gut, to his heart, to his head. The inability of anything else in the world existing except Danny.

And, you know, it's not even like Danny helps the problem.

Danny who touches people like breathing and who seems to forget sometime they are in public. A hand lingering on Steve's forearm much longer than it used to, or getting a hand on Steve, and leaning past him, using him like a piece of furniture even more, and even longer than he ever would have been. Like he knows he can. Like he knows Steve will let him. While Steve's stomach squirms about just what to do now, whether he's supposed to notice or just stay focused.

"I made it out of both of those, too, without one, didn't I?" Like he wasn't left tazed from the first, or utterly turned upside down by the second. But, really, anyone who thought they could break into his house was getting what they asked for. Whether it was a bad luck two-time thief who never expected to meet a SEAL in the dark and learn just how badly it could go even if they caught him half awake in his underwear.

Or the crooks who should have known better, and he was glad to give a second comeuppance to. Clothed or not.

Steve smirked, fingers leaving the shampoo in his hair, like he wasn't really thinking about any of these things. Being apart from Danny, or the threat of any future intruder. Just his mouth listing toward something arrogant, and bragging, all at the same time as looking like Danny had no room to speak. "Perfectly secure, my ass. You didn't even wake up until I'd been here a while."

That was going to be good memory for a while. Not the part where his heart froze in his chest, hard and painful, torn between wanting Danny to go on sleeping, until Steve could remember how to breathe, or desperately grateful for Danny's instinct because it meant he would get everything in a few seconds. The sound of yelling, and the taste of his lips, the too busy, ever alive, never touching enough, flitting of his hands.