It's amazing how often one word, a single word, can change the course of everything he thought he knew.

Rachel saying yes. Matt saying goodbye.

Steve. Saying he's wrong.

Making that sharp ache flare again, brighter and harder and more painfully, a bird trying to beat its way out of his chest. Not something small and sweet. Something huge. Destructive. An eagle. Or one of those flying dinosaurs. Something that threatens to burst out and leave him as a bleeding, broken shell on the ground, still trying to figure out what it was he got wrong.

Wrong. Like Steve had wanted him to, wrong. Steve wanted that kiss, wrong. Steve wanted his hands on him, wrong. Steve wanted everything Danny was so sure he hated, everything Danny was certain he was disgusted by, wrong.

Danny's not even sure he's breathing, or knows how to, anymore, because if he was wrong about all of that, he might be wrong about everything else, too. Whether up is really up. If down is actually down. If water is wet. If the sun is hot.

He hates the hope that's crawling into his voice, no matter how cautious he's trying to be, while his fingers start to relax on Steve's wrist, and feel the skin underneath them, electrifying him. Asking. Nothing he ever thought he could, because it wasn't even the shade of a possibility, was never an option.

Except. Steve is saying. And so Danny asks, leery, still waiting for the other shoe to drop, the axe to fall.

"How wrong?"