Two Weeks

[haole_cop]

 Danny hates this.

He hates picking up the role of 'head of Five-0,' he hates meeting with Denning, he hates that he's been so short with the team that Kono has probably only been restrained from outright murder by the fact that Chin really would rather not book and imprison his own cousin. 

At least he was acceptably apologetic, after the last time, because he's not sure Chin would have actually bothered holding Kono back, and, fine, maybe he's been riding them a little hard, maybe his temper has been on the short side, maybe the only bright spot in this miserable world was his time with Grace last weekend. He catches the glances Kono and Chin shoot to each other, and he hasn't been totally unaware that they've both tried to get him to come out to bars or home for dinners or to the beach or to Kukui High's football games a lot more often, okay. He knows what they're doing, and why.

Just like he knows exactly how long, to the hour, to the minute, Steve's been gone.

It isn't Japan all over again. It won't be six weeks, only two, and he knows exactly where Steve is, even knows, mostly, when he'll be home. Not that he's been counting down the days, but it could be as early as tomorrow. Maybe. Probably. 

And they've kept busy. The two weeks, they haven't dragged -- there was that drug bust that kept them hopping for most of the first, and a number of smaller cases with more relaxed timeframes during the second, and he's been plenty busy, all right, he's barely had time to notice the days turning over, and he's even almost gotten used to sleeping alone in his own bed again.

But he hates it. He hates that Steve is gone. He hates that Steve is gone, and out of his sight, and nowhere where Danny can have his back if Steve needs it, and he's sure the Navy's got great people working there, he is, but none of them are him and he is Steve's partner, should always be there in case things get hot, and they always get hot, it's Steve. He runs at a perpetual fever grade.

He's fine. Danny knows he's fine. And he'll be back tomorrow, or the next day, and he'll have that same stupid moon of a smile and his cheeks might be slightly thinner and his hair will be shorter but he'll look exactly the same as ever, and Danny will stop being able to sleep for an extra half hour in the mornings because he'll probably be going back to needing to drive to his house for new clothes.

Not that he's actually taken advantage of that half hour. He's been in early and stayed late almost every day, and today was no exception, but there's only so long the human body can tolerate that kind of nonsense, because unlike Steve, Danny does not stay in a perpetual cycle of denying himself things under the misguided notion of calling it training, so when he blinks and realizes he'd nodded off on the couch and missed an hour of the DVR'd Jets game, he gives up the ghost, shuts off the TV, and shuffles, yawning, back through the house to brush his teeth, head to the bedroom, hitting lights along the way.

And maybe tomorrow he'll sleep better, back at Steve's, but he's so wiped that for once, for now, it doesn't matter, and it only sort of matters that the sheets and pillow don't smell anything like Steve, and he's out like a light, clutching one pillow and buried in another, before five minutes have clocked out.

Comments

[thebesteverseen]

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.

[haole_cop]

"Most people," he starts, and this is just the beginning, okay, there are so many lectures he could spit at Steve's head about what most people do, there are millions, there are legion.

Most people don't keep incendiaries in the car where hitting one of the omnipresent potholes in Hawaii's back roads could set them off and blow everyone in a fifty foot radius to smithereens.

Most people don't get up at the crack of dawn even on weekends to self-flagellate with exercise.

Most people are appropriately aware of the boundaries, personal and professional and every other kind that Steve just bulldozes through like they're made of tissue paper and not thirty-plus years of emotional issues. And, well.

"Most people would not sound so please with themselves about that statement," he says, eyeing Steve with deep skepticism through the falling water, because, seriously, he's known for a long time that there's something catastrophically wrong with the way Steve's brain processes even the simplest of expectations, but he's never quite gotten over the hope that one day, Steve might react in a way Danny is used to, expects, knows how to handle. "Most people would not put themselves in a position to make that statement in any way true, because most people would not break into their partner's house in the middle of the night under the impression that it would make for an appropriate surprise."

Not that he expects any of this to do anything more than bounce off Steve's head the way water droplets are bouncing off Steve's skin, but what can he say? He's a sucker for a lost cause.

And this is a lost cause. Not Steve -- him. He is so far beyond gone that there's no rehab or twelve-step program that can get him clean from this addiction. There's no getting Steve out from under his skin, or out of his head, or out of his dreams, his days, his every waking thought.

So maybe he's just as bad as Steve. Maybe he's worse. "Here's an idea: how about you never do that again, and we call it still definitely not even."

[thebesteverseen]

Steve stands there, eyebrows lifted only a touch, mouth quirked to one side crookedly, in a smirk that is going absolutely nowhere and shows no sign of even a single drop of remorse. There's water rolling down Danny's skin and his hair, and he looks annoyed, dedicated to his point, that's sliding in and out of Steve's ears with the continual spray of water, and the other most distracting part of it.

The part where Danny's so real it's almost staggering at seconds. That he's there. Not a clipped flash of Steve's memory inserting itself somewhere. The part where, watching him do this, look annoyed, wave a hand, and throw out insults and reprimands, like Steve needs to be reminded he's an adult, and he didn't just come from weeks of more orders than conversations, does devastate everything. Mow it down, with lines of open fire, and the waste land of a chain of explosives. Nothing else is there. Except Danny.

Waving his hand, spitting his words, eying Steve like he doesn't think any single one of those words is landing, or making it inside his head. While Steve's heart just bangs into his rib cage, like it can't take a step in any direction without falling, sliding, slamming the walls of its prison inside his skin every time Danny just breathes. It aches, everything does, in a way that has nothing on his skin, has nothing on Danny's pains he'll be hearing about all day long, even if it's just in momentarily vicious glares.

The ones he's going to collect like a reward all day long, making Danny throw his hands up even more.

He stands still through the next few sentences of Danny's tirade, that hover of a smirk going nowhere, maybe tucking in even more. Like an idiot, like someone who's been humoring Danny just to listen at all. It's wrong how much of a kick he gets out of all of it, but he still goes for beating right over the noise, for riling Danny up further, by making all of it not important, not even vaguely regrettable, for every second that came after, for this, for every single second right now, than by ever considering unwinding him.

Bypasses acknowledging the suggestion or even agreeing entirely, just to let his head tilt a little and nod toward the water still falling everywhere on Danny's skin, that Steve definitely isn't fighting to urge to touch again, or trace, with his lips, under those trickles of water. "You gonna share and let me wash this out, or do I need to borrow the sink?"

[haole_cop]

"Share, he says," grumbled, while Danny fights the urge to cross his arms and add make me.

Because that worked out for him so well last time. "You, you don't share, you take, you pillage, you requisition. What, like my car, my job, my whole life aren't enough for you, you gotta have my shower, too? Gotta break into my apartment and give me your -- unasked for, I might add -- opinion on how to secure it? Huh? You are greedy, my friend. This is, you know what this is? Avarice. Sheer avarice."

Steve doesn't deserve the water. Steve doesn't deserve Danny's good will. Steve tried his level best to give Danny an outright heart attack last night, and Steve has been gone for two weeks, and Danny's still not tired of looking at him, still can't quell the itch that says he needs to reach out and touch, make sure he's real, so clearly Steve deserves to be punished, right? For doing this to him. For making him this much more crazy than usual. Steve deserves to stand there without rinsing off until the soap and shampoo start itching across his skin, the way this want itches across Danny's. Danny shouldn't give him the benefit of washing that smug look away with his water, his shower, his soap and shampoo. Not unless it's Danny's hands doing the washing, the scrubbing. Running his hands all over Steve's body until there's no memory left of a uniform there, no touch felt except his.

It's insanity. It's addiction. It's Steve, and Steve won't stop getting under his skin, and instead of hating him for it, Danny just wants more.

So he does, actually, move. Puts his hands on Steve's hips and starts turning them in the small stall space, like even though Steve's the one who asked for the water, Danny can't trust him to make it there on his own.

Not because he wants Steve's skin under his hands again. Skin, or the lift of his hipbone, or the flex of muscle. It's insane that he wants it at all, impossible to continually want it across hours and days and weeks and months, unheard of that it could still be new and perfect and more compelling than almost anything else he knows.

Maybe it's a good thing they won't ever be able to get to the point of boring and used to each other. Right? He's not sure he ever wants to take any of this for granted, never wants it to be dulled or usual or routine. If it's got to go, at least he'll be able to remember it like this: as not being able to keep his hands to himself for even one single minute, when they're alone.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny grumbles like Steve's had the gall to ask for his perfect, beautiful, world change, never going to compare to anyone, first born child, and not the water for at least ten or twelve seconds. But each word, the way Danny punctuates each word -- take, pillage, requisition -- just sets off a spark, escalating itself towards a depth charge, with each.

Making that thing in Steve's fingers just want to push Danny back, through the water, and take him instead.

Which is entirely why there's a series of fast, surprised reactions when Danny's fingers catch his hips. The way it tightens all of his muscles from his middle down, making them stiffen even as he pushes briefly up into Danny's hands and towards him. Toward his touch, and his being so damnedably close suddenly. Lighting the blood under his skin with everything that has absolutely nothing to do with the words being thrown at his head.

How he's greedy, and selfish, and he is. God. He is. Because Danny's fingers slide on his skin, free of the earlier slick from the conditioner, prickling up tiny hairs, and Steve pushes away his request, his reasoning, without evening needing to look at it, back in its direction. The flat place before there was a cliff to jump off. The way you never look back. Not until you land. Which is why his feet are shifting the way Danny's turning him, but he doesn't take any steps backwards.

Isn't even paying attention when the water scalds against the skin on his side and starts running down, because his hand has to find Danny's shoulder, and he's leaning down to find Danny's mouth, spouting crap like it matters, words falling in the water, in the catch of his breath and Danny's -- a fast, short, stoic laugh of arrogance in "Hasn't stopped working yet." -- like anything actually matters, isn't just rust and drowning canon fire, before the descent to Danny's mouth.

Before even that fades away in a flash of light at actually finding it, and if Danny ends up half under the spray himself, well, he can deal. Steve might even say that was proof he could share, if everything in him wasn't busy, blighted, blown away, selfishly, utterly fixated on the lips under his, and the the fingers on his hips, and how the idea of sharing anything related to Danny with anyone else on the planet was the most insane, outright rejected concept, after letting go.

[haole_cop]

"You're not even using it," he grumbles, but it's half-hearted. He doesn't care that Steve's not actually taking advantage of the falling water he'd been asking for, because Steve's pulling him in and it's better this way, it's so much better. Fresh water, and the faint too-slick taste of shampoo. It's running in streaks down Steve's neck and shoulders, and Danny's smiling more than he's complaining, grinning against Steve's mouth, running fingers up into Steve's hair just like he'd thought about doing, scrubbing in blunt circles against his scalp.

It's not like Steve ever seems to care as much for touch as Danny does. He knows that, is plenty aware that of the two of them, Steve is the one who either keeps his distance or burns any space between them straight to the ground, but Danny's the one who just can't keep his hands away: not here, not at work, not in bed, not anywhere, and, fine, he has kind of a soft spot for fingers running over his scalp, for the light massaging pressure of getting his hair washed. There are a lot of nerve endings and sensitive spots and it's not like it's a usual place to be touched, which makes it all the better.

Not that he's actively washing Steve's hair, okay, because he's not. He just likes the sensation of creamy suds and wiry hair and the way his forearms slant up over Steve's shoulders and behind his head, likes how it pulls him close, fits him nice and perfect against Steve's stomach, chest, hips, legs, wet skin sliding, and, Christ, he wishes it were a weekend. Wishes they could waste their time in here, before wasting it out on the couch or on his own little lanai or back in bed. Not that he's not plenty relieved to know Steve will be back in the Camaro and in the office today, but he lied, before. Steve's not the selfish one: he is. There's a part of him that would be absolutely fine with abandoning the outside world and everyone in it for a few more hours like last night.

They won't. He won't. Wouldn't. But that doesn't make it any less an appealing thought, or this any less sweet, if that word could ever be accurately used to describe Steve in any way, at all. Doesn't mean he won't run his fingers over Steve's head and back down over his shoulders, fit them back against his hips, those indentations that seem perfectly meant just for Danny's fingers, before pulling back and blinking in the water that's sluicing down into his face, dragging out something approximating mockery, because that's what they do, it's what they've always done, and he won't stop just because his gut feels all melted into useless goop. "Sorry, is this a team effort? You need me here, now, too?."

[thebesteverseen]

Danny mutters right against his mouth, and Steve wouldn't have it any other way. That part of Danny. Taking in words and bile and sometimes flashfire, lightning strike, anger, like a shot hotter and faster than anything else you've touched. It's part of Danny. Words, the way they get everywhere, like Danny is still trying to stain his lips with them, while nailing them to the inside of Steve's head. The place that goes a little more stir crazy than normal without this noise now.

Except he goes quiet, too, without becoming anything like limp or defeated. He just meets it, like a wave meeting the beach. Like it was always supposed to go like this. Words and bitching, fading into lips, and the soft groan of surprise, sliding warm and unexpecting up Steve's throat, when Danny's hands slide into his hair suddenly. Unexpectedly. Making Steve's shoulders tense even when he's tipping his forehead against Danny with the surprise of that sound and the warmth.

Having no clue all over again. About Danny, and his hands, and the warmth that slips down his neck to meet the flush of warmth crawling up his back from the spray of water, and that Steve has this uselessly needy surge of wanting to push into, that just makes him feel like he should pull instantly back, leaves him hovering uncertainly toward and from it all at once, while Danny is pulling away from the kiss, skin still glistening with water, throwing words out like they never stopped.

Words that hit something hard, like an arm of steel clanging a bell at those words, sending two trains on a collision course with the center of his chest. The first one swearing faster than a breath that he doesn't, doesn't need anyone, shouldn't, can't, won't, can do anything necessary, with or without anyone there to back him up or ever see it, or him again. Slamming into the second that happens just as fast and just as certainly. If almost unsteadying him it's certainness.

The one that can't look down into Danny's eyes, sagging slightly from the retreat of his hands, and the crinkle around his eyes and the edges of his mouth, making it more joke than insult, and not feel it smack him. Like a two by four, or a pan, or anything solid, smacking the back of his head with a sickened crunch of bone slicing through all the lies he tells himself. Silenced with this wave of pain and certainness.

How he never seems to stop needing Danny to be there. Everywhere. Anywhere. Anything. All the time. Especially now.

"No one's forcing you to stay." Steve finds a way to force out, shrugging as he's standing straighter, like it's easy. Like there isn't a rough drag to the notes in his voice. Like it's totally completely absolutely write-off-able on Danny's mouth and those hands. Like everything else he puts off on them.

But he doesn't move from those hands on his hips. Doesn't pull away, or stir to take that step. Not even when he's raising his hand from Danny's shoulder and making a gesture at Danny's head of slicked back, dripping, hair. "I know it's going to take you the next hour to figure out how to get that all locked down again."

[haole_cop]

"Hair gel is an amazing advancement in the field of personal grooming," he points out. "You know people don't need to set their hair anymore, right? Or that I don't? How do you think I manage to make it to the office on time every morning even when I have to come home first from your place?"

Which is...he's just going to let that thought slide right on by, because he doesn't want to focus on it too hard. How many mornings he does exactly that. How he's gotten the timing down to a science, down to the precision ticks of a carefully wound watch.

It doesn't matter. If it mattered, he would think about it and figure out what it means, what he's planning to do about it, but it doesn't, because there's no possible next step. Not for them, not with this, because as optimistic as he tries to be, there's no way he can beat Rachel and her team of expensive, bloodthirsty lawyers.

So.

So, he's just going to enjoy this while he can, and that means not spending hours of his life worrying about something that isn't anything.

Right?

Like Steve says. No one's forcing him to stay. Just like no one's forcing Steve. And maybe he's already thinking too hard about it all, what it means and what it is, so he just shakes his head, grinning, and tightening his fingers on Steve's hips instead of reaching for the soap. "And leave you here to fend for yourself? That would just be cruel."

Like Steve can't even manage to wash himself correctly without Danny's supervision, and Danny knows, he does, that Steve was mostly fine before he came along. Able to do things like shower and sleep without him. Able to excel at what seems like the worst and hardest job in the world.

But he wasn't this. Danny can't even imagine the Steve he met that day in the garage ever looking this soft, this approachable. Able to joke and laugh and take a hit when it's meant as the softest of blows. That Steve was all edges and cracking bulletproof glass, that Steve never met an edge he didn't ride, that Steve wasn't so much self-destructive as he was just uncaring of himself as collateral. That Steve was only a fraction of the person this one is.

Danny doesn't take credit for it. He can't, because it's not due to him, but he'll sure as hell take credit for being the one who's noticed every shift and change and adaptation, and taking damn near as much pride in it as if it were because of him. If Steve was damn near perfect before, a precision instrument, how could anyone possibly resist when he also became human?

[thebesteverseen]

They'll never get out of here if one of them doesn't move. Away. Move away. Because Steve can feel it creep up the inside of his spine, under the warmth rippling down and up the outside of it, over his skin. This one coming up from the bottom of it, inside, tugging his gut, making him smile irreverent and too fond, at Danny's insinuation he can't even take care of himself in the shower, washing the warmth into him like the rush and crash of the waves in the morning.

Whispering the want to pull him under; his want to always go under, sink down and down and down.

Into the ocean, and into this. The blue light in Danny's eyes, all warm and unending, like nothing he's ever known.

Nothing he was supposed to ever know. Not in the past, and not know. These eyes, this smile, those hands on his hipbones, the way pads of fingers shift, like they are finding the exact place they belong. Like he does. They do.

"You insinuating I don't how to do something in the shower?" Steve joked back easy. He'd meant to reach up and push at Danny's shoulder. Push them apart, push them toward morning. It'd been in the half second scoff in his head that said -- SEAL. Capable of so much more, and worse, than anything that could be done in a shower. Alone, together, or against someone else, even here. Except the severity slipped away just as fast as it came, with the water, and the joking tone.

"That there might be something wrong with my hands?" The way he'd been meaning to move his hand and smack Danny shoulder, but never remember to move that way had. Because his eyebrows went up, but his hand went down instead. Thumb and fingers grazing the side of Danny's ribcage, until it could curve down the side of his stomach, thumb pushing down into the cut of his abdomen, riding straight down the wet, dripping, muscled line inside his hip and the just starting edge of thick, damp curls.

Blown past insinuation, and straight into the blowback that happens when you run right through the warning sign.

If he's dangerously spitting on the fire that is the little time between dawn and work, there's something about having Danny back that just makes him want to keep pushing his luck. Draining down the seconds in every minute. Pulling Danny back to him. Dragging out the madness that he seems to be able to, to keep getting to. But especially now, after being gone. When it was easier to admit, arrogant and flippant and wild, that it's always there, right under his skin, blown open with a dizzying hunger that's never anywhere near done.