5.17 - Keeping the Cover

[haole_cop]

The thing is, Steve's not a cop.

They're years into this partnership, and Five-0 has done a lot of good work, but Steve is still, demonstrably, not a cop, and he never has been. He's a SEAL with a badge, a sailor working with detectives, and it works for them. It's not orthodox, it's not by the book, but it works, and they get results.

They've even been on plenty of stake-outs before, him and Steve (or Steve and Chin, or Steve and Kono -- even, once or twice, Steve and Lou), and, normally, they've got it down pretty pat, because normally, they're sitting in the car (or his ex-wife's house), and they don't expect to be there that long, They've never needed a cover, because the thing about Steve -- not being a cop, and all --

Things tend to move pretty damn fast. One might say, explosively so.

So this is a new one, for them, and he knew it would be dicey going in: knew Steve would hate sitting around doing nothing but watching, knew that session with the therapist would be eating at him (both of them, if Danny's honest, but why start that now, after so many years of willful, blissful ignorance?). If he'd thought about it, he'd have known Steve wouldn't be much for keeping any kind of cover, either. Steve likes things straightforward and simple: he takes the straightest line through, even when it means knocking down walls and ruining plans.

Except this plan really can't be ruined, and when that old bat says those words and Steve turns to glance at him, disbelieving, Danny knows, he just knows, that Steve would rather through their whole cover out the window, rather than just roll with it, because Steve is not a cop.

But Danny is.

"Good to know," he says, smoothly, just as Steve's turning back and opening his mouth, no doubt to say something like we're not gay, we're on a stakeout, because Steve is a moron.

Stepping forward, with his hand going -- like it does, right, this is nothing new or different or even weird, for them, and maybe he should stop to think why that is, but frankly, he can't right now, without blowing the same damn cover he just saved -- to the small of Steve's back, and resting there, familiar. "That last place was pretty close-minded."

Turning, just enough, to glance up at Steve with a you'd-better-follow-my-lead flicker of a smile. "Right, babe?"

Comments

[thebesteverseen]

The hand on his back is about as unsurprising as it is surprising, his mouth already open as Danny, who he has to turn his head to look at from the touch, is bulling his way forward, with that affable, but not too affable smile, into responding first. While saying that. Which makes Steve stare at the side of his head and then his pressed-on, even more pointed smile, when he looks at Steve, longer than Danny probably wants him to.

Which he knows. But he doesn't get why Danny chose to do it. It would have been just as easy to tell her the truth and send her away. Harmless, dottering, old woman. Lies and covers only got more elaborate and important to remember, neither of which they were even supposed to be here long enough to need to worry about. This wasn't even going to take a full day if they got lucky.

But now there's an apartment full of equipment. A cat he can't trust Danny near with a gun. A bag of weed the length of his arm on the other side of the kitchen island wall. And Danny being.......Danny. Like somebody's auntie needs a better story than the truth. Like she wouldn't just stay out of their hair, and go away faster, if they just explained why she can't be here and no one else should be told about them to bother them. Because they're Five-0. Which means everything is classified and supremely important.

While Danny instead has moved from telling her that he's the tenant's nephew, to that he and Steve are together. Together-together. With that laugh, that actually isn't entirely fake because the edges of his eyes and his mouth are crinkled. Sliding in by his side. Putting his hand on Steve's back, in a way that isn't close enough to not be obvious, and running with it like someone just threw him a pass. Blatant and nearly annoyed at the unnecessary nature of the choice.

"Seriously?"

[haole_cop]

If Danny could kick him in the shin and keep their cover intact, he would – as it is, he's limited to just prodding at him with the hand at the small of Steve's back. "You heard the lady, Steven. I'm sure she's happy to help us keep things quiet."

None of this is going to be sold with Steve looking at him like he's nuts, and Danny wants to strangle him, just a little bit. Maybe with the tail of that cat who's perched so contentedly on Steve's shoulder.

Seriously, is it going to lie there all day?

She's looking between them, and Danny slides his hand up Steve's back to his shoulder, to lean there like Steve's a piece of furniture, and that's not an unusual thing for him to do, but it feels loaded, this time.

Dangerous, in a way he can't look at now.

(Or ever.)

"Sorry," he says, with his best, most ruefully affectionate smile. "Old habits. Military, you know."

With a tip of his head at Steve, while he watches her eyes go wide first with surprise, and then understanding.

"Oh, of course," she says, and Danny's pretty sure she's about three seconds from offering to bring them a casserole for their house-warming, but that's okay. It's a hell of a lot better than telling her who they are, and why they're actually there -- a fact Steve never seems to quite be able to wrap his miserable brain around.

It's fine. They just need to get rid of her, and get back to work, and he can maybe go stand on the other side of the room for a few minutes for several deep, calming breaths.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve doesn't approve. This isn't unusual for any given workday, and definitely not since he woke up this morning and had to have another of 'those appointments.' But this is not in the normal work around of expected things to come flying out of Danny's mouth. Steve's had his share of fucked up covers in his life, from the down right weird to the utterly memorized for months, but this was not one he'd ever thought someone, Danny, would necessitate.

Gay peeping tom. Gay. Peeping. Tom. That's just. Brilliant.

It would serve Danny right if Steve grabbed his collar and kissed him for that.
With the force of a mack truck and teeth, loaded with annoyance at Danny's choices.

Which is before Danny is sliding his hand up Steve's shirt, and leaning in on him, in an absolutely normal way that Steve wouldn't usually even give a damn about, but suddenly it's like every inch is something he's being asked to pay attention to and even begin to pretend is normal -- which and except it is? But not like something he'd ever react to, not with how Danny does it every day almost and never notices himself -- and do whatever it is Danny wants him to do.

Which he cap off with insulting the military through apology, making Steve shove out, low and testy, "You should be."

He's going to say it, without touching Danny, because Mr. Pickles is meowing at him for stoping, and Danny is still giving the cat the eye even now. It's not that that ground isn't unknown to the world, or him, but he'd rather have some warning before Danny decides to shove it in his face. Even as a cover excuse. A pale one. An easy one. For Steve's stalling and his lack of agreement. For wanting to know what the hell happened to any the sense his partner has.

(As much for the fact there are a load of things Danny has no clue about in any part of his duty, past or present, that dovetails this and exactly what rules it slams apart. Accelerations it would ruin. No one smart would. That's not even old. The knowledge, maybe. Not the choices. That's as recent as every phone call to come in.)

"Alright, Ms. Tennenbaum." Steve stepped forward, not wanting to know what Danny was going to try and get out his mouth next. "Ruth." It's rushed and maybe a little patronized, but widely turned toward trying to smile even it was tight. "It was very lovely to meet you. As you can see, we--" There's a raise of his hand from the back of the cat to gesture toward his chest and then back toward Danny. "--we're just getting settled in here." Doing god knows what.

Snooping on the neighbors with four cases of professional grade equipment that billionaires could afford but not normal citizens.

"Thank you for the cookies, but we'd--"

Except that she was starting to sit down in the kitchen chair, slowly like it was a labor, next to the plate of cookies she'd brought instead of walking toward them and the door. Rubbing a spot on her head, while saying, "I feel much safer knowing you boys are here. There's been a lot of crime in this building."

[haole_cop]

So maybe, maybe, a little part of him is enjoying this, a little too much.

Not the whole scene, of course -- he's not thrilled about trying to keep their cover when they have surveillance equipment out and they hadn't planned any specifics -- but Steve's annoyance. The way he looks half like he wants to open the window and push Danny straight through it, for making him go along with this, or maligning the military...or both, who knows?

It's a warm little vindictive knot in Danny's chest, and it leaves him crossing his arms and grinning.

Maybe there's a part of it that's revenge. A little harmless revenge on Steve, for being such a control freak, and always bulling ahead without any thought to their plans or anyone's opinions but his own. Maybe it's partially a little dig at how great Steve thought everything was going, with his obsessive counting of the days they've worked together that jars against his complete refusal to talk about any of the shit they've been through.

Matt. Wo Fat. Hell, Steve was there at the hospital when Danny woke up with a stomach full of stitches and a brand-new betrayal to contemplate and try to forgive.

Maybe it's really too complicated to think through too hard, or look at too closely, with the therapist's words still ringing too clearly in his head, so maybe it's a relief when Ruth tosses him a liferope, and Danny clutches onto it, drags himself back up out of the murky waters in which he'd unexpectedly been swimming. "Yeah?"

He shifts to lean against the plastic-covered couch, arms still crossed across his chest, like he would against the smart table in the bullpen. "What kind of crime wave are we talking, here? Somebody steal your cookie recipe?"

[thebesteverseen]

"A plant," she says. "A fern." Her voice shaking and getting noticeably wet, as her words get short and more breathy, as she gestures toward one of the walls. Assumedly, toward the direction she lives in. "It was stolen from right outside my door."

Which is followed by a sniff that hasn't quite turned into a sniffle, while she curls into her shoulders, at a loss into her pink and purple dress there. While Steve's eyebrows are trying to make a a line for his forehead. Hand stopping petting that cat, while his bewilderment at the incomparability of a plant and their case racks up like the comparison of a puddle and the ocean. He can't even get entirely to annoyed by the time his gaze swings to Danny.

Because this is all his fault. All of it. Because they are now gay peeping toms, with a neighbor, who is concerned with foliage loss, when they could have just gotten rid of her in seconds had Danny not decided to throw this caltrop right out in the road in front of them and any forward momentum.

She sniffs again, and goes on, "Maybe you two can help catch the hoodlum if you're here long enough."

The turn of Steve's mouth is flat by curved, but it has nothing to do with a smile in the slightest. It is a rather blinked, with a head tilt, and raise of his eyebrows at Danny. Because this mess is on him. He's gotten an old lady, obsessed with cookies and plants keeping them from the window, their computers and the suspect. The annoyance is half-ripe, and only neatly in check. At least as much as it ever was this morning.

"Yeah, Danno," Steve says, looking at him with that expression the whole time, half turned from the little old lady. There's an edge of shoving this back at him, that comes laden in Steve's words, knowing he's both accosting and offering the impossible. Even if a sliver of him isn't entirely certain he wouldn't be a little glad if it wasn't. "Why don't you go help her with her problem?"

Make it Danny's job to figure out how he wants to keep his stupid lie and still not walk off on his job.

[haole_cop]

Oh, no.

No, nope, no, no, no way, Steve is not palming this off on him. He doesn't care how watery her voice gets, or how sweet she seems: he doesn't have time to go track down a missing -- most likely mis-placed -- fern. He's not leaving this room, or this job, until they're done, no matter how Steve needles him.

They just need to get rid of her, get her out of the apartment and uninterested in barging back in.

That's got to be easy enough, and he does the first thing he thinks of: reaches forward to loop a finger through the closest of Steve's beltloops, and drag him sideways towards the couch and Danny. "What, trying to get rid of me already? I guess the magic really is gone."

It makes people uncomfortable. He's seen it a million times. People -- especially old people -- get edgy and standoffish when presented with overt physical affection, and Ruth, okay, maybe she's down with same-sex marriage or whatever, but Danny's willing to bet she's not going to sit around and watch him get handsy with his erstwhile significant other.

Probably won't want to hang out, while he's dragging Steve hip-first between his legs, and tipping his head back with an insouciant grin, like Steve isn't being a petty jackass that Danny wants to thump upside the head, before tilting his head to glance at Ruth, letting his index and middle finger stay hooked familiar and fond and possessive in Steve's beltloop, like this is something they do every day, and not a thing he's never done, tried, thought about.

Not a thoughtless hand on Steve's chest, or tug at Steve's shirt. Not leaning on him, like he's furniture.

In all the times he's never thought about how he takes moving Steve around for granted, he's never once done it this way: to come to him. To pull Steve towards him, instead of away from someone else. Not to pause a red haze of murderous rage. Not to distract, or direct.

Compelling. Coaxing. He doesn't want to think about the warmth of Steve's hip through denim against the backs of his fingers.

"Did you try putting up a 'Missing' notice?"

[thebesteverseen]

In the line of things he was expecting -- and he's good at multitasking, great at it, that list had five or six options already -- that was not the one Steve expected Danny to take. A hand finding his hip and claiming it, while pulling Steve suddenly toward him. Making every muscles in the back of his shoulders tighten and loosen in a series of surprised spasms, balance making one of his hands catch Danny's nearest shoulder.

When he's looking down at Danny. Very close to him. Smiling like it's nothing.
When there are only very certain circumstances that Danny happens to be this close.

All of them, regardless of whether it's good or bad at the time, are dependent on Dire Circumstances.

While the suspect in question already has one murder charge, this situation is not dire. There are no guns out. No one's had to hit the floor running or the deck. But something in Steve's gut feels like that basically has. Making it head for the bottom of his ribs in a knot. Like the whole rope of his intestines took a one foot jump northward. One hand frozen on Danny and the other on the lower end of the cat wiggling slightly in his arms, looking at Danny for bumping into them.

When he has to stop between Danny's legs. His hip all but leaning into Danny.

Danny's tugging pressure on the waist band and one side of his pants.

"I hadn't--" Steve blinked, hard, and his head turned, fingers flattening against the cat who gave an annoyed little meow, as his eyes landed on Ruth who'd spoken again. Sudden and sure. About her being there. About her being there and Danny's hand on him. Danny's stomach brushing against his hip, but not flat against it. The way all of his skin had tightened and prickled, centering on his hand on Danny's shoulder. Even though it's been there a million times.

While Ruth continued on, expression tightening though Steve wasn't even sure he was entirely registering it right. "I had it six years. Did I mention it was a fern?" Still teary eyed, and hiding her face in one hand, before picking up a cookie and mumbling her last words into it instead of looking at them any longer. "I don't mean to bother."

[haole_cop]

If he's honest with himself, he knows he's been touching Steve more, ever since.

Or maybe he just started noticing it: how often his fingers ended up in Steve's shirt, or his hand landed on Steve's shoulder or back, because he hadn't ever really thought about it, before, just moved in when it seemed like someone needed to get between Steve and the world (or the other way around, depending).

And then everything shifted, and he couldn't stop noticing. Or couldn't stop himself, maybe. Letting a hand linger a little too long. Leaning a little too close. Sitting on the couch with Steve's arm around his shoulders, like that's not a weird thing for two partners to be doing, but it was, right?

It was too much like this. This is deliberate and that wasn't, but it feels the same: like he's a piece of wool suddenly dropped into too-hot water, every inch of his skin shrinking all at once. Every nerve in his body suddenly clamoring, hyper-attentive of Steve's hand on his shoulder, and Steve's hip brushing his stomach, and how easy it would be, when Steve's looking down at him like this.

With that expression. The one they don't talk about. The one they don't tell the therapist about, the one Danny feels freezing up his own face, clutching in his chest, sharp claws prickling and gone again.

Ruth's talking, and the only thought he has is to sell it, right, because this is a cover, and that's why he lets go of Steve's beltloop to grip the waistband of Steve's pants, four fingers curling just inside, thumb against the loop he just let go of, heel of his hand against Steve's hip, while he looked back at Ruth, heart sprinting like he just ran a mile.

"A fern, huh?"

He feels only marginally like he's hearing and understanding everything she's saying: he's too caught, like his fingers up to the first knuckle, on the pressure between Steve's waistband and t-shirt and the slight, tiny, sliver of skin he's promises himself he can't feel. "Maybe we can look into it for you while we're here. Since you were so nice to bring us cookies, I mean."

[thebesteverseen]

Steve is grateful for two different things. One, that he is already looking at Ruth, trying to maintain some semblance of attentiveness toward her plant problem even though he hasn't said anything in half a minute. And two, that he's insanely good at not needing to breathe even under the worst of under fire circumstances. Which is helpful when Danny suddenly shifts and there is a hand in Steve's pants.

In them. Jerking that knot of his guts even tighter. While he forces himself to take a breath in through his nose.

Because Danny touches him all the time. Like. All the time. Enough that people notice. Enough that he's caught the questionable looks that come at least twice as often as the actually joked questions and dismissed them all. Ones he'd asked himself years ago, but in a completely different way. Not light hearted and amused at all the contact. But actually torn up and tripping on his own inability to stop looking for it to mean something, anything, more.

But it wasn't. Even in the moments, carefully kept and cataloged across all these years, with rare varying barenesses of expression, whether terrified or grieving or laughing, when Steve thought Danny seemed almost like it was -- it wasn't.

It was just Danny, and if it was just Danny didn't extend in the same capacity to everyone else he touched and worked with, it was still Just Danny. Danny who manhandled him or his clothes, on a scene or at his house, like Steve was a personal jungle gym or a door, or a wall to lean on. But that was it. It was just how Danny was. Incredibly tactical, and almost entirely unaware of it, too. And over time, it just became their thing. Normal. Everyday.

Which had even let Steve slide that way, with the smallest of footsteps over half a decade.

But that was just their friendship, their partnership, just Danny. Like this was just Danny keeping his cover.

Even if it involved, apparently, shoving his hand down Steve's pants, like a ninety year old woman needed that kind of proof to believe Danny liked dick even when she'd already clarified her acceptance with the idea. Danny's fingers knocking against the skin under his shirt and getting a twitch out of a part of Steve's body that absolutely has no place in the case. Or Danny's stupid cover decision no matter the face on it. That Steve can just roll with.

Because even when he's annoyed as hell at Danny's choice, he's Danny's partner as much as Danny is his. He doesn't leave him hanging out there, even there in front of the old lady, not even if he's already planning the line dry hangout of him, and it, as soon as they can deep six her. But until then, he can resolve not to tense up and not to jerk away, no matter what his body is considering. Just let his hand slide across Danny's shoulder. Like it isn't Danny. Like it's someone else. Anyone else. Whoever the last guy was, whenever that was.

Until his fingers find Danny's collar, and wrap half against his neck and half over that collar, forearm resting a little more on his shoulder.

"Could you really?" Easy enough when Ms. Tennenbuam is looking all lightened hope through her tears that Steve still isn't sure are real or not, or whether he really even cares. Because it's a plant. Probably not even a twenty dollar plant. Definitely not a shoot your accomplice in the stomach and drive away with the spoils plant.

"Actually, better idea." Steve was raising his hand back from Danny's neck, and the nape of his hair, which was softer than Steve ever understood. But the man was obsessed with it. But he raised that hand so he could gesture and point with it. "We have a friend who is great with this kind of thing." Because someone has to be thrown under the bus. And they need to get back to work.

And Danny's hand needs to get out of his pants before his body starts reacting any more to it.

"Loves unsolved mysteries and getting to the bottom of them, he's your man."

[haole_cop]

If he's all too aware of touching Steve, these days, it's got nothing on how his whole body goes on high alert when Steve touches him back.

Which also doesn't mean anything, and never has, except that he and Steve are close, closer than most partners, and maybe closer than most friends, because Steve doesn't touch people, and he doesn't like people being in his personal space, but he touches Danny. A hand on his back. Arm slung over his shoulders, hooked around his neck. Tugging him into a bone-crushing hug.

Steve's physical affection has always been has all-encompassing as the rest of him, and Danny knows it.

It's just that Steve's never touched him like this, before.

The deliberate sliding of his hand, without lifting it from Danny's shoulder, until it wraps, too big and just the right size all at once, at the back of Danny's neck, right over a prickle of sudden goosebumps.

Steve's hand is warm, which is too bad, because if it were cool, he'd be able to pass off the sudden hard shiver that vibrates through his shoulders, down his back, and up with a trill of panic along his scalp. But it's not, and he can't.

Leaving his skin feeling prickly and abandoned and too cold when Steve lifts his hand again, and Danny remembers that they were talking about something. To Ruth. Finding her plant, and Steve knows a guy -- "Oh. Oh. Oh, yeah."

The penny that dropped might still be bouncing along the tilting, torn-out floor of his mind, but he can snatch at it, and sanity, because Steve touches him all the time and this is nothing unusual, and, also, two of Steve's fingers on the back of his neck really isn't enough to do this to him, right. No matter how he might have cataloged and questioned and kept preserved any other touches anything even slightly like it.

Giving Ruth his full and undivided attention, because the back of his neck is not still tingling, and he doesn't want Steve's hand back there. Sliding his own fingers out of Steve's waistband, and dropping both hands to his lap, winding the fingers together loosely. "Yeah, he's definitely the guy you want."

[thebesteverseen]

Steve thinks she looks hopeful and doubtful now, but Steve is in motion. Since he has no clue what Danny is or isn't doing now. Parroting words, that aren't adding anything, while touching Steve in ways that only helps his cover, and do not in the slightest help their case getting back on track. When anything could be happening. The suspect could be gone already, and with her any timely clue of where she was going or what she was planning.

Danny shivers before he lifts his hand and Steve tells himself not to look back, because he doesn't want to know, okay. He doesn't want to know if Danny's Cover just got the better of Danny's ability to be okay just moving himself through the motions of the cover. It could just be anything. Really. He can just be grateful, because that's the word, right, not something else, when Danny's hand slips away, and Steve can't even pay attention the fast fade of phantom warmth because he's taking fast, direct steps to Ruth.

"I'll call him right now," Steve said, hand nearly gracing her shoulder, but not landing at all.

Instead taking her hand and helping her up, careful of her balance but with the absolute goal of getting her out the door. His posture and his voice both gone all over instantly soft. Compelling. The expression understanding and sympathetic. Entirely sincere in promise. "He'll be glad to come over and look into it. I'm sure he's not doing anything."

Which was almost like being sure whatever he was doing wasn't anything important, followed by the fact Jerry loved getting to help out Five-0 when he could. These two would probably be a match made in heaven, and maybe she wouldn't even come back then.

She took faltering steps, holding on to the hand that had been against Danny's skin seconds ago. "Such a sweet boy."

"Okay." Steve says the words not even mattering, because she's looking sad but she isn't disagree. She's taking those steps toward the door. "So, you go home, and you expect to see somebody soon. Okay?"

Steve followed along behind her, a solid mass, free hand ready for the door, while the rest of him was a wall allowing no detours back to the table, the cookies, the couch, since she'd made herself welcome to sit and talk the first time she'd been encouraged to go. Face understanding, but most of it backed up by impatience. With the last four or five steps to the door, and the way, she paused very briefly to tell Danny, "Be sure to return the plate when you're finished with it."

[haole_cop]

Jerry probably would love to come over and dive into the mystery of the missing fern, and it's a good move on Steve's part: gets her out of here without asking too many questions, and gives Jerry something to do with that free time he seems to have in spades.

"Oh, yeah," he says, when she looks at him, stern, pushing himself up off the couch back and lifting his hands in capitulation. "You bet. And, uh, thanks. I can't wait to try some."

He might, even. Stake-outs can get kind of hungry, and they'll probably be here all night, maybe into tomorrow.

Just another reason not to rock the boat.

Even if he's kind of wishing he'd just told her the truth, or let Steve, because he's not sure letting her know they're Five-0 would open up the can of worms he's pretty sure are now wriggling around the room. They shouldn't be, right? It's just a cover. It would be better if their surveillance equipment wasn't in the living room, but it is what it is. They didn't talk about what they would do if someone knocked on the door, aside from the nephew story, and they should have. That's on them.

Still, it's not great, and he knows it wasn't great, can feel Steve seething from here, and that's...

Not great.

(But at least there are baked goods.)

[thebesteverseen]

Ruth doesn't go easily. It's not as simple as just getting her to the door. Or getting the door closed. At every turn he has to get close up, while keeping his face congenial as possible, and his voice as soothing and sympathetic almost as possible, while she keeps looking back, and yes or okay or goodbye now. Down to the very last inch between the door and the door frame even.

Which is just about as pressing toward damned annoying as it is toward sad in a way.

Ways Steve doesn't have to think about when the door finally sinks shut with the hard pressure of fitting into the frame, and he knob loosens into place and he can turn the lock. Turning back to the room and Danny, while that facade drops fasted than a real bomb in the air. It's easy to take everything pushing up, prickled from those last seconds and the whole day, if he's being honest, and push it right back out. "Seriously? What was that?"

Mr. Pickles yowled unpleased at the sudden swing of movement, and maybe even the sudden explosion of Steve's voice. Normal, but far more forceful suddenly than it had been at all. They did not need a cover. They did not need a cover as Gay Peeping Toms. They were not supposed to be here long enough for that at all. They shouldn't have needed to stand over on this side of the room pretending to be anything they weren't.

It was not hard to explain to the hapless old woman they needed her out of their hair and not to be dealing with her.