He stops, but he doesn't stop leaving. Not the entire time.

His hand stays on the door, and his look, even when he looks back, is pained.

It's the face Steve could drag out in a handful of ways on his beach with a single question. Has to. Sometimes. To check on Danny. How he's doing with the things they don't talk about every day. That it's another part of their friendship. The one that was like nothing before Danny. Not even Freddie. When there's to it something more about making sure he's okay, too. But he can't hold on to either of those statements when Danny's words happen.

Danny looking away from the door, right at him, and this time it isn't ranting dictionaries being thrown at him, wide eyed and wild. It's that pained expression and there are only a few sentences so bare and to the point Steve is almost sure he's insane. Dreaming. Things that only happen in occasional dreams, where sanity and reality aren't needed. These words that make him want to swallow but there's a desert there now.

I wanted. All of it. You. Growing across his whole body.

Clashing like tidal forces. Riptides. An undertow. I wanted. All of it. You.

Danny cementing it with those words. About being his best friend. About. Loving him. Those words Steve uses more rarely than it snows in Hawaii. On the phone with Mare and Joan sometimes. Always when they are leaving, again. He's used it more frequently and publicly with Danny that he ever did with Cath. Than he really ever even said it to her. Always telling himself she knew. She did. She always had. But Danny. Danny. With those words shuddering in his his head.

I wanted. All of it. You. slamming, brutally, mercilessly, into and I love you .

Those words they exchanged and wrote off like the hot breeze here. Steve dragging it out of Danny, mocking him with the words he couldn't say as comfortably anywhere else. Even if Danny said them easy as the wind. Like it was nothing. And Steve tried do that, too. Use the words. Pretend they were nothing. So long as he didn't look at them. Not even when it wasn't. In bone crushing hugs where he almost lost Danny again, or thrown at his head like an insult. Like it didn't mean everything those words were supposed to mean. Everything those words meant but could never be said to anyone else like that. Easy. Even when they never were.

But nothings is staying. Nothing is holding firm. Nothing is anchored and it comes at him in battering storms when Danny looks down suddenly, and he needs Danny to be looking at him. Is moving even closer into Danny's space, shoes almost touching, before he even thinks about it. He needs Danny to be looking at him. He needs to be sure Danny isn't fucking with him. Isn't lying. Feels sick that he even thinks Danny would do this just to fuck with him. Here. Tonight. Now. Ever.

When it's an onslaught suddenly. Or not suddenly. Maybe it's never stopped. Since. Hands in his hair. Fisted in his shirt. The perfect sound when Steve forgot Danny was Danny, without ever forgetting at all, and run his mouth up Danny's throat. (His pulse was sky-rocketing.) Thoughts coming so fast. Bullets raining. Kissing him hard. Hand under his jacket. Saying. Saying. Steve can't remember any of the words. But he remembers. How hard Danny drug him in. He remembers Danny's gruff, winded voice shooting sparks down every vein.

His eyes. The blue ocean turned to erratic leaping flame. The taste of him. (Not a lie.)

In the middle of one. The whole night was one. But. . . Danny wasn't. Danny --

The jealousy about Campbell, and not using the line he should have.

Steve took another step. Dangerously close. The whole room is gone. Maybe the whole world. It's him, and it's Danny, and Danny has his hand on the door like it's the only sane thing left in the room. To escape. To run away. And Steve suddenly, insanely, can't keep his mouth from saying exactly what his head says, "Let go of the door." A directive, that doesn't even request. It's like orders, without being ordered, specifically. But it isn't a question. Isn't a request. Shudders with something like hilarious terror and the expansive high right after shooting a sniper rifle (for the right reasons), taking down a body like a landslide.

Because he doesn't want Danny's hand on his door. His head is shuddering, unable to stay still. A landslide.

He doesn't want that hand on his door. He wants Danny's hand back on himself. Fisted in his hair, his clothes. His sanity.