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?"

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[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.