AU: Trope Minefield

[haole_cop]

He's pretty sure this goes against his contract.

Actually, he's sure it goes against not only his contract, but also the various non-harrassment papers they all have to sign every time some aide in the Governor's office gets a little twitchy.

Like after Lori left. And after he and Gabby...

Well.

So maybe he hasn't made the best choices in the world, in the last few years. Maybe things have been a little extra rough, for him and Steve and the rest of the team, between Doris and Kono wandering around looking for Adam and --

(he doesn't think about Reyes, or about Matt, unless he has to, and he doesn't have to, tonight, so he just skips, like a record needle scratching)

-- well, that building. With the bomb. (And Amber, who -- speaking of bad ideas. Good kid. But a kid.)

Anyway you slice it, they deserve a win, Five-0. All of them do. It's been a hard few years, and they've all taken their lumps.

So when this got served up to them, it seemed too good to be true. Right? Straightforward. Sleek facade concealing sleazy underhanded deals, that first came across Duke's desk for possible fraud and tax evasion, now linked to not one, but two murders -- which means it's theirs, now.

Danny was even happy about it, until it turned out they'd be going in UC, until he's the one pulling open the door, stepping into a wash of air conditioning and dim lighting from Hawaii's sultry Saturday night, until this plan started looking less like recon and more like a heist.

At least this suit still fits.

Comments

[thebesteverseen]

It's perfect. He could die on that noise and never --

No. That's not true. Not in the slightest. He doesn't want to die on that noise. He has so much more he wants to do. To Danny. For the rest of this night. He wants to make that noise shoving under his skin, like jagged shards of glass, happen over and over and over, until it's the only noise the entire top floor of his house even remembers.

This sound, the way it just keeps going on, and Danny shaking, then pushing, himself into Steve even harder and more forcefully than he'd been when he was just attacking Steve's skin. Grinding into his hand, and Steve's hand into himself along with the rest of the flat of Danny, due to the lack of any room between them.

There's something like manic glee evoked by the tone of Danny's voice when he finally speaks again. Thin and so high that Steve wants this recorded, too. Painted on his skin, in his ears. The tone of the voice and exactly what he asks. Tossing it back at Steve, like he's holding them up, causing more problems. Like he's the one that punched them into the wall and started this.

"It's helping me," Steve shot right back, caustic amusement, as his hands tightened just enough to squeeze gentle, but serious, around the whole of where his hand was cupped. Because. It was, and god, but it wasn't. Because all it made him certain of was the fact he wanted Danny out of these pants, and up those stairs, and to go wherever the rest of this could.

Which should mean he'd stop. But when had logic ever really dictated anything when they were shoving at each other?

[haole_cop]

"No."

Gritted out, against a blaze of heat and light, as Steve squeezes, and stars burst in Danny's skull, threatening to send the world tipping right out from under him. "Wrong. You are not helping anyone."

Not Steve. Definitely not Danny. Who maybe is worried about this going too fast and slamming like a car hitting a cement wall right off the freeway, but who also isn't willing to stop the train right now.

It's too much. It's not enough. Sending him ripping himself backwards, and gripping Steve's arm, for lack of a shirt to haul him around by. "But I am."

Helping Steve, and maybe, by proxy, helping himself, by a mixture of pushing and pulling and this almost does feel familiar, right, hauling Steve along after himself, even if it's normally not on the stairs, and Steve is normally wearing clothes, and it's not normally because Danny is dragging him up to Steve's bed but --

The gravitational forces, at least, feel right. Like the world is coming back into alignment, even if his whole body feels sore and throbbing without Steve's hands anywhere on him. "Will you hurry up, please? Aren't you the one who just said there was a deadline, huh?"

[thebesteverseen]

It's hard to want to move. Now and ever, again, when he can move his fingers so marginally and the whole world reinvents what he knows of it, again. Danny's face shuttering up and shivering outward, beyond his control, beyond his ability to talk straight through. Expressions blurring into and fading out of each other that Steve's never seen and needs to memorize so he can never forget them again.

Which makes it insane that he smiles, grim and pleased, to watch Danny shove through it, too. Drag himself away, out of Steve's hands, and bodily attempt to drag Steve by an arm. There's a momentary consideration of digging his heels in and making it nearly impossible for Danny to move him, but -- what would be the point, right? when he wants what Danny wants? And has for so long -- he doesn't instead, letting himself be dragged like a tug boat.

"For you," Steve corrected, arrogant like he was somehow unaffected, or just as good either way the chips fell in that.

Yet he doesn't fight it, taking the steps with Danny, and not tugging back his arm. The landing is even fewer seconds from the middle stop when they aren't navigating each other's feet and the inability to see. Putting them on the hallway and right next to his room, door already mostly open from when he left this morning, in the middle of thoughts that had nothing to do with this.

The person he was this morning would have laughed, and then broken someone, for implying this would happen tonight.

When it's easy to keep up the motion and propel Danny toward the inside of the room, even in the dark, leaving what little light is being thrown upward by the scant light turned on and left on in the living room. He didn't even reach for the light switch, not even though he wanted to remember everything about this. There was something different to that, wasn't there? Turning on the light and pushing forward through it, glaring light and every inch of exposure.

It's not the same as suddenly snapping his arm in toward himself, fast enough to drag Danny off course and pull him back into Steve's arms. Too long already. When he needs his hands back on Danny's shoulders, and arms. His chest. To find his mouth again, somewhere against the thoughts about the light, and drag Danny right into the places he's always been in this room, already, too. Part of Steve and shadows that Steve keeps here. In his head and his bed.

[haole_cop]

Steve doesn't argue, except to toss that smug comment back at him, and he doesn't fight Danny's grip or direction. He actually takes the stairs quickly, and then stiff-arms Danny into the bedroom, before Danny can really think about what it is they;re doing, only to drag him back once they're inside. In the dark. Where Danny's momentum sends him crashing into Steve, but Steve seems ready for him, and then there are hands all over him, lighting his skin on fire. Running over his shoulders. Down his arms. Along his sides. Flat against his chest. Pulling out tiny sounds, while he's catching Danny's mouth with his, and setting off little muted explosions all the way through his body.

There's no time to think. No time to think about how they're in Steve's bedroom, and Steve's bed is right there, or how Steve is naked and Danny is getting there. It's all just flashes, while his hands reach back for Steve, again, for his hips, sides, to run down the slope at the small of his back. Everywhere he was never supposed to touch Steve, before, and now can.

Live out every one of those fantasies, by letting his hands track over smooth planes of muscle and the dip of his back, amazed because Steve's skin is so much softer than he would ever have expected, more sensitive. And warmer.

He could be happy, more than happy, completely satisfied, just with this. Just getting to put his hands on Steve, and kiss him, here in the dark, and have it be real. While Steve wants this. While Steve wants him. Said so, against the door, downstairs. Almost lost it during a job, because of it.

There's no chance of getting enough. There's no such thing, there's too much of Steve to learn and memorize, to have to torture himself with when this inevitably tosses him off a cliff, blows up in his face.

But it hasn't, yet, which is as surprising as anything else, tonight. Somehow, they made it all the way up here, to this quiet, dark, warm room, where the ocean is murmurming outside and the breeze is slipping through the windows and Steve has brought him up here, because he wants Danny in his room, his space, his bed.

That they aren't actually moving towards, but that's fine, too. Danny's not sure he's done here, yet.

[thebesteverseen]

It was never long winded thoughts, about how it would happen. He spent so long trying not to think about anything happening. Which worked better in the last few years, but worked for absolute shit that first year. While Danny was a wreck, angry and sad, often at his place after Rachel left him a wreck again. Then, staying at his place, sleeping on that couch. And when Gabby happened, and Danny needed him, needed him to help him with every agonizing step forward.

Yeah. It was hell through that year. Like every time he looked at Danny was designed as his own personal superweapon.

It got better. That's another lie, isn't it? It's such a lie. When Danny folds into him, without hesitation, hands finding his skin and Danny's mouth just as responsive, even here, in this room, in the dark. Maybe not better. Maybe livable. Just as livable as his dad being dead and his mother being alive. The way certain scars tensed to a small ache right before they got a real squall in that had come across the sea. He learned to live with it, because he could, as long as he was still basically living next to Danny.

He never thought about it like this. With the door, and the stairs. With his clothes in piles on his living room floor, and Danny looking terrified or thinking he'd punch him. Never with him here, making small, dark, hot noises that, even more than those looks in that year, too close and always meaning absolutely nothing, are actually made to destroy him. Thumbs and fingers dragging down ribs with his hands curved on Danny's sides.

It's this, and not that. This that he couldn't imagine. This. Every step, and every sound.

This would kill him to have left in his head. The knowing so much worse than any hazy given into image. Feeling.

It would help if he cared. Any other day, with any other person, Danny would be the one telling him to care. To give a damn. Think about himself. Not rush into the house that's on fire, or full of gang with guns, or explosives. Not even if he was trained for just that. Danny who cares more about Steve's life on a daily basis, and his heart getting shoved in a grinder constantly, than anyone in Steve's life ever has. Including Steve.

But he can't. He can't slow down and he can't stop. Doesn't want to rethink or overthink this, or let Danny do both, that he's, also, better at doing than Steve. Danny who, also, isn't slowing down. Hasn't made him, and he could, couldn't he? Steve's hands would stop and he'd pull back entirely if Danny told him to, or got a hand flat on his chest and shoved him back. He'd go. Wouldn't he. Without thinking. Without much surprise even.

Which only makes his grip a little harder on Danny's skin as that spans through him. A spike of fear in a wave of absolute possessive necessity against the brush of reality, with Danny still kissing him back, making these noises and Danny's skin under his hands. At least until his fingers run into the top of his pants, again, and Steve, breathless and torn between a groan of the impatience and a laugh, shoved more out, baiting, biting. "I have to do everything for you, don't I?"

Hands sliding in and starting on Danny's pants, while Steve started stepping forward into him.

Pushing Danny back toward his bed, and on toward being finally totally done with these pants that could go.

[haole_cop]

He wants to drown in the sensation of hands on his skin, body pressed against his, mouth owning his, lighting every nerve in his body into life and then setting them on fire all at once with that laugh that's half a groan, and a sound Danny's never heard him make before, wants to hear so many more times. "Are you saying you don't want to undress me?"

He's never been intimidated by Steve, and he's never backed away from taunting Steve, but it comes out dark and edged in flame and humor that's less a laugh and more a challenge, while he pulls back far enough to hit the bed with the back of his legs. Making himself watch Steve's face, instead of glancing down, the way he wants to. "Because you had me pretty much convinced otherwise, downstairs."

Back when Steve was peeling clothes off Danny like plastic wrap off a toy he couldn't wait to take out of the box, before he stopped, and went for his own clothes, instead.

Not that Danny's complaining, even if he hasn't had much of a chance to step back, and look, and try to hammer home the reality of this: that Steve is naked, that Steve wants him to be naked, that all of this is actually happening, and he's not going to wake up in a puddle of sweat, painfully hard and feeling dirty all over for another dream about his best friend. "I can't believe a control freak like you doesn't want to be the one in charge of getting me out of my clothes."

Which is definitely not the case, as Steve's fingers work at his pants button and the zipper and Danny's breath catches as Steve brushes against him, through fabric that is too thin and too thick all at once, leaving him reaching to set his hands at Steve's hips to steady himself, and keep from losing his balance, falling back onto the mattress.

"Listen, I'm sure buttons can be very confusing to a Neanderthal like yourself, but I have every faith you can manage it, Steve."

[thebesteverseen]

Danny isn't wrong, even when he's laughing, taunting, goading with those words. Having no clue. Not the faintest concept. How many times and how many ways Steve has wanted it. Consider it. Seen it flash across his mind, and have to be shoved back, like somehow it was painted on his face. Startling and too true in that moment than it had ever been before it, until this newest one was missed, too.

Wanting to shove Danny into a wall. Or a crate. Hugging him too tight while other urged ran rampant in the swell of relief and success that felt sharper than a hair split by a knife from everything going the opposite way, and losing Danny entirely. The madness of the days when only one of Danny's button's would stay, while out on the beach or the water, constantly dragging in Steve's attention and his want to at least undo it and stop the madness from wanting to undo. Just to set it looking normal.

Somehow it worse then. Somewhere in between. The tight pressed shirt and the absolute nothing. A burn worse than either.

Like this one right here -- Danny's bare chest bumping into his, Danny's bare hands on his own bare skin, and the cloth that feels too thick and too wrong in contrast -- except this one is nothing like it. While Danny is talking about him wanting to undress Danny. That he has. That he was. Like his hands aren't on Danny now, while Danny's breath was not catching, his body not shivering or straining toward Steve.

Steve looked up at Danny's face, appraising for one steady blink. The faint narrow of his eyes, press at the edge of his mouth, the meant a ledge was about to be lept. A roof climb. A door blown off. The car was going to go through a gate. On a boat. A wall scaled when already ten floors up. A leap, even once he'd run out of ammo two minutes back. Before his mouth twists a little crooked, and he's pushing down Danny's pants and boxers with one hand, and shoves Danny in the opposite direction of Danny's obvious attempt to remain standing and holding on to him with other.

"At least I'll finally know if this will finally make you stop talking."

It's said already in movement. Steve dropping, fingers sliding to Danny's hips, stomach, groin. Hard to say, really, if it's Steve's right knee that finds that ground or Steve's mouth suddenly shoving straight down around all of Danny, fast and cheeks pulled in tight. Only one of them matters to Steve anyway, and it isn't the ground. He can manage even the ground forgets to exist. If Danny falls back on the bed, or sits, or refuses, clinging to standing. Everything is details against the scent and texture and taste filling his mind, nose, mouth.

[haole_cop]

It all happens in a second: Steve's on him like a landslide, shoving Danny back, and pushing Danny's clothes down off his hips, and dropping like a stone at the same time as Danny's ass hits the mattress and bounces him up just enough for it to be a shock like smacking water at speed when Steve's pushing into his lap, and then --

And then it's his mouth, and his tongue, and Danny feels like he's being swallowed, the world gone hot and wet and narrowing down to nothing but Steve's mouth on him, while Steve attacks with the kind of dedication Danny would normally admire from a career soldier but which is currently dismantling his ability to do so much as breathe with a sledgehammer.

The only breath he can take, sharp and painful, and expulsed again in a "Christ, Steve," that sounds more like a swear than prayer.

One hand balancing himself, the other going to Steve's head, shaky with adrenaline and nerves, and it's too much for him, when his eyes open again, and he looks.

It's dark in this room, but there's enough dim starlight from the windows to illuminate it: the silhouette of Steve bent over him, between his legs. Outlining the edge of his shoulders, the back of his neck. And his mouth. His. Explosions chase their way up Danny's spine in a chain reaction. Steve's lips wrapped around him. Steve's tongue dragging against the most sensitive part of him. Steve, swallowing him. Steve, kneeling between his legs. Steve. Steve.

Striking a hard shudder that rolls through his body. Followed by another. Another. Every muscle now shaking like his fingers just were, from the strain of trying to keep it together when just the thought of what's happening right now, the thought of Steve's mouth on him, is enough to send him over the edge, embarrassingly quickly. It's Steve. It's Steve. The name, face, person he knows as well as himself. The name that's getting breathed out in stuttered groans now, ragged as his pulse.

He needs it to stop. He wants it to never stop.

[thebesteverseen]

A lot of what they say is lies, insults, and over exaggerations. It's who they are, how they roll, what they do.

A lot of people outside of Five-0 think every bit of it is real. Never understand how they could still be working together six years later if they hate each other this much. But they've never hated each other. No matter how many times Danny has said it. Not the first day, trying to bulldoze each other, and not even the first time disappeared to Asia and Danny called almost every day saying I hate you as often as he said come back.

Not now, when they still constantly disrespect each others skills like breathing. When Steve doesn't even have to say and Danny doesn't have to hear that no part of Steve wants Danny to be dead silent. That every cell in him wants to shudder and push harder, pull deeper, hold longer when Danny's voice takes his name and swears like Steve dropped Danny on frying pan instead of his bed, and it goes to his head, expanding fast and hot through his chest, like nothing else in the world.

Danny's fingers finding his head. The side of his face and over his hair. Shaking enough -- just like the rest of Danny's body -- that Steve can feel it. Wants to laugh. Dizzying madness shooting through were his blood is supposed to be, but has no room to be, when this is shoving through, ballooning the space of his veins to twice their size. Because he's doing this to Danny. Him. To Danny. That Danny is holding on, and can't stop saying his name.

When Danny has never said his name this many times in a row when he wasn't trying to get Steve's attention to keep him from making an example of someone, or when he was drunk and he had found the newest thing he absolutely needed Steve to pay attention to. This third one, dribbling into his ears like acid, when he doesn't want to stop. He wants to keep going. Wants every single shudder that smacks Danny's body so hard, Steve's name following it like an echo. A warning trampled.

A double spur pushing into Steve along with all of Danny. Warm and solid in his mouth, pushing up into him with every shudder and buck of his body that Steve doesn't even try to stop. Not really. He could pin Danny's hips or his thighs. But he doesn't. It's electric. He wants this. He wants whatever Danny gives, pushes at him. All of Danny. Wants to hear his voice as it gets more and more wrecked with each solid shake, turning from profane to something like begging.

He's never heard Danny like this. This isn't even what it's like when Danny is miserable, or angry, or desperate.

This is perfect. The cracks in his almost never crackable voice. All of Steve's name. In a dozen ways Steve will never be able to wash out of his mind or his skin. Ragged and cracking, with such an audible promise. That Steve could just shove throught the whole damn thing and show Danny. Take him here and now, in less than half a dozen minutes. That Steve could do that. Have him coming in minutes, maybe even the next one if he put his back into it, when Steve's barely taken a single breath in again.

It's tempting. Red and warm, burning under his skin. But not winning. Shoved at. Because, and Steve wonders if he's an idiot, too old and gone soft -- or if it's that other thing, that he can't look at, not tonight, not this and that, and still manage -- because he doesn't want that. He doesn't want a wham, bam, thank you ma'am here on his bed in form of Danny Williams.

He doesn't want Danny done in the next forty seconds, capable of falling asleep or leaving. Doesn't want Danny's hand off of him and his name not in Danny's mouth, garbled with marbles and written in boiling oil, being torn out of his chest while Danny is incapable of control his own mouth. Steve wants everything, but he doesn't want to be done. Not yet. Not now. He'd kill anyone who called and needed them now. Just. Kill them. Fast. Silent. Even if a part of him whines at the concept, more important thing. But, nothing in the world is this.

It's pulling bones from sockets, to pull back. Tongue licking the ridge of Danny's head, before it's playing at his own shiny bottom lip for a second in the stretch of his jaw, before he laughs. A crackling sound in the dark that is anything but silent. "Guess we're going to go with no on that one, too."

[haole_cop]

The last thing he wants is what Steve does -- pulls away, and pulls Danny's guts along with him, like he'd causally swiped a knife along Danny's belly and hooked a finger into his entrails to tug them out into a pile on the floor, leaving him feeling hollow, gutted. Sitting here shaking on Steve's bed, while the jackass licks his lip, and smiles, as self-satisfied here as Danny has ever seen him. As proud as if he'd just sandbagged a perp, or beat Danny in a race, and Danny might be concerned about that, if he could look past the way Steve's eyes have gone dark and dilated and more than a little predatory.

Not like he's done. Not like he's about to up and leave, or turn the tables and tell Danny to go, they're done.

Just. Steve. Looking exactly as familiar as he always does, while suddenly taking his own place in the impossible fantasies Danny hasn't been able to avoid, over the last years, and making Danny reach down to catch his jaw between both hands, and drag him up. Not brooking argument. Not allowing Steve to pause, or hesitate, or pull away, any more than he ever does, when its his hand fisting in Steve's shirt or tight around Steve's wrist.

Dragging him up, because Danny's not interested in joking, right now, and he's not interested in prevaricating or pausing or potentially allowing any second thoughts to seep their way in, through the shadows of this room, through the space between them.

Hauling Steve up, and leaning to kiss him at the same time, demanding, feeling it burn like a lit fuse along his spine, sparking, as he shifts back along the bed and drags Steve with him with one hand, pushing at the pants and boxers still on his legs with the other, toeing shoes off, because he is pretty much just done with these clothes, okay. Has been, for a while. The suit is great, but the suit is pretty definitively no longer needed, right now.

Not when he can have Steve all across him, instead.

[thebesteverseen]

When Danny's hands hook on his jaw, Steve thinks that. Well. He thinks two things really. One, that it probably wouldn't work with anyone else. This sudden jerking direction by, if anything, a delicate part of the human body. Two, that if it wasn't Danny Steve wouldn't be disregarding the sharp slash of piercing tension that creeps up his muscles fast for a second, at fingers curled and pressed under his jaw, into soft, easily broken skin where no bones sit to protect it, inches from his windpipe

But it is Danny. Danny, with his hands on Steve. Dragging him up. Demanding him this way.

Knowing Steve will come and Steve will be fine and Steve will listen to him. Already is, without really thinking.

Pushing off the ground and getting one knee on the bed, barely balanced, with something of a laugh when Danny says absolutely nothing. Except that he can't keep it. The joke, or the sweet triumph, of actually silencing Danny. Making a comeback impossible. Which is exploding through him. When Danny's drug his face up far enough it's not a tug, but a collision of mouths, into a kiss that feels like Danny is trying to put every ounce of what he was just feeling straight into Steve's mouth.

When it's dark and hot, demanding fire, and nothing matters from seconds ago. Nothing at all. When it's perfect, snapping, sharp and explosive, and he wants to fall into this, and shove through it, and never, never, never stop running straight into it. Hard and fast as he can. Like if he could keep up with it, it could never outrun him, never be done, never be gone, never have to stop. He wants to own every second of knowing he did this, made this, deserves it. Is getting burned alive on burning up Danny. That he can, has, is.

Even if it's, also, caught up in trying to keeps one hand on Danny's shoulder, pinning him back to the bed, and one knee on the bed, balancing himself, while his other hand is shoving at Danny's pants along with Danny, in the haphazard agreement with Danny's hands and Danny's mouth. Sense gone somewhere far, far away, when he has to finishing laughing where he started. "That was all it took, after years of trying anything and everything else?"

He might never sleep. He might never shut up. He might never come back down. Or remember how to do anything with a gun or a vehicle, again. Or be able to remember anything aside from the need to run his hand down Danny's leg and back up his knee, his thigh, and back, again, as he was helping push, and kick, pants away. Nothing else in the world felt as important or as necessary as trying to get his fingers everywhere.

Touching every place he'd seen, and cataloged, and knew empirically, but was never going to know like this. But was. Now.

[haole_cop]

Steve comes surging up to meet him with a laugh that feels like it's splashing hot oil on the inside of Danny's chest, but he goes along with it, like Danny's demanding, because Steve has always, for some reason, let Danny drag him wherever he wants. Listens when Danny has a hand wrapped around his wrist, even when Steve is thrumming with furious energy. Pauses, when Danny asks him to. Has, ever since Danny hit him in the cheek that very first day, listened to Danny and Danny's hands and Danny's opinions and Danny's thoughts and hopes and fears and theories.

Danny never thought he wouldn't do the same thing, now, but it still takes him by surprise.

That Steve pushes up, not only into him, but through him: pushes him back onto the bed, while Danny is trying to push himself back, and they wind up knocking teeth a couple of times and Steve almost sets his knee right on Danny's thigh and Danny is in real danger, momentarily, of getting totally tangled in his own suit pants and boxers --

But then his back is on the bed, and Steve's over him, shoving at his pants and boxers. Twin thumps as his shoes hit the floor. A sudden exquisite flare as he squirms under Steve to hook his finger into his sock and tug it off, before getting rid of the other, and then there's nothing.

No more suit. No more shirt, or boxers, or socks, or shoes. Just his skin, bare in Steve's bedroom, and Steve's blanket under his back and Steve hovering above him, too far away and far too close at the same time. Pulling back to say that, and making Danny crinkle eyebrows at him in an amused, bemused frown. "Are you talking about getting me to be quiet?"

One leg hooks around one of Steve's, and he reaches up to pull Steve down again, to blanket him, to finally, finally, feel every inch of him against every inch of himself, shivering as Steve's palm runs its way up his thigh. "Or about getting me into your bed?"

[thebesteverseen]

There's something vicious that comes up unbidden in a spike from Danny's words, even as Steve's eyes make an effort to roll back in his head when Danny pulls Steve down fully against him. It's not the greatest position for it, with how tall he is, but it could suck more than it does, when all the air in his lungs turns to ash and smoke, a current humming in the roots of his teeth, warm skin everywhere against him, and the prickled need to shift already.

To want to goad and roll Danny right back into action. The want to rock his hips, or shift his weight.

Which does not play well with the spike of ice that slaps into chest with the second set of words Danny tossed out.

It's a good response. Flippant and fast, Danny getting back into the game, even when words are being made of evaporated sounds on contact. Danny being the one to drag him down, shivering under him, and asking if Steve implied it was easy to get him into bed. Like maybe Steve, jokingly, like he could joke about trying to get Danny to shut up, had attempted to keep Danny out of his bed, or himself out of Danny's.

Like he hadn't been doing well -- and why does that make him feel punchy. Wary. Insulted, and suddenly ready to defend. He'd been doing well. He had. He'd learned to live with this. Like the ocean close, but never right. The Navy part of his life, but never enough. Good enough to make it through each day. Good enough to make a real try of things with Catherine. He'd managed this. Enough that prodding at it was dangerous with all the walls shivering against Danny.

"Fuck," Steve groaned, torn between both reactions under his skin, caustic and chaotic, when he can't keep himself from shifting. He can't. The roll of his hips into the rigidness pressing against his groin and into his hip. When his own is warm and rough, sliding against Danny's skin, and then Danny. When it just makes his teeth want to shatter even more. Blinds his vision momentarily and stuff his throat, even as he forces himself to continue. "If I ever knew you were this easy to get into bed--"

The need to lean down and find the side of Danny's throat before something too true falls out of his mouth.

Not sure how bare it will go. If he'd ever known. It was possible. He could. Danny would. He would have burned the world down years ago. He would have made a mockery of every step he was viciously defensive of having made it through. Managed. Handled. Survived. He would have thrown them all away. And what did that really say about him, then? About the whole year of trying, really and truly trying, with Cath? About who he was? Or could have been.

[haole_cop]

What he should say, of course, is that he isn't. Easy. Not to get into bed, not to deal with, not to live with, work with, be with. He's a trying person at the best of times, and easy has never been a descriptor anyone has ever tried to pin on him.

Especially not with this.

Just getting coffee with Gabby was like girding his loins for battle, right? He remembers it just fine: the anxiety, the pessimism, the utter certainty that it was all going to blow up in his face anyway, so what was the point of even trying? He was anything but easy, then, drawing out dates over weeks and months before she ever stayed over, or he ever stayed at her place. Steve ought to know. It's Steve's fault he even dated Gabby to begin with, and, tangentially, Steve's fault that he ever dated Amber. (Melissa. Not that it matters now.)

It's not that he's never had one-night stands; now and then, a chance meeting that turned physical. It's not an alien concept to him.

But not like this. Not ever when it means something, and this means so much more than Gabby ever did or could, because it's not just him, right, it's his job, and Steve's trust, and Grace, and Hawaii. Everything here is tied up with Steve, and if he was thinking, if he thought at all, he would have slowed them down after that very first kiss.

Maybe even before it. He has the sneaking suspicion that just allowing Steve to kiss him to begin with was the tipping domino setting all the rest in motion.

Easy. He's not. Shouldn't be. Should stop and think about this, talk about it, try to work it out. Put together some kind of contingency plan. Figure out what this means, to him, to Steve, to both of them. Everything he should know before he goes headlong off this cliff and never comes back out again --

Except Steve's already jumped, and dragged Danny with him, and Danny couldn't stop them now even if he wanted to, when Steve's rolling his hips and making Danny dig his head back into the mattress, blinded, and Steve knows everything Danny would warn him about, because Steve has known Danny better than anyone for years, now, and Danny might not trust love or sex or promises or blind optimism, but he trusts Steve.

Hands slipping down to fit over Steve's hips, while Danny's still trying to push back further onto the bed, shaking his head, laughing and insulting on the burned-out remains of his breath. "You call any of this easy?"

[thebesteverseen]

It hasn't been. Easy. None of this has been easy. Letting Danny into his world. Realizing each step of the way that he couldn't hold back everything Danny shouldn't know about him, because everything about his life kept happening while Danny was right at his side. Danny being more loyal than anyone Steve had met, after Freddie, and arrive so close on the heels of Freddie's death that the last thing Steve wanted was anyone in his boots and his head again. Ever.

Their partnership. Bumpy and competitive as hell, refusing anything but equality, even when their skills were absolutely different in every way. Their friendship, and the loyalty, and affection Danny handed out, that screwed with Steve's head, because no one did that, not the way Danny did. Until Steve didn't know how to let go of it, not want it, not rely on it. Depend on Danny in ways he couldn't depend on his own life. Family. Teammates. Head.

And....this.

The want that scorched through Steve's skin, while Danny's fingers found his hip and tightened in on him, shoving through Steve every proof that he'd never really pushed it all the way down. This want. Attraction. All those moments that weren't moment. That. Were. Moments. Moments they'd both been feeling. Shoving down, until this exploded in a stupid undercover case, and that kiss. Not the one in the bar, but the one at the door.

And. This one. This one right now, where he has to find Danny's mouth and do it all over agian.

When he's adjusted to the word love in his mouth. Throwing it around like it wasn't a more dangerous bomb, the only weapon Steve might actually be afraid of and ready to give up on entirely, after his family and his whole last year, if it wasn't for Danny. Which, yeah, he knew how fucked up that was. Yet Danny had been unwavering. Always. For all six years. Never once lied. Let him down. Made himself the one thing Steve trusted most in the world.

Could love. If he pretended that word wasn't what that word was, except out of the corner of his eye. Even if it was like saying, he could just break his bones for Danny. Try that word. For Danny. Which should make none of this happen. Because he's never needed to fuck anything so much it could fuck up the only foundation left in his world. With Doris gone, and Cath. But he can't stop. He can't back down. He can't walk away. It's not who he is, and he has never understood how anyone would or could from Danny.

Have all of this in their hands and choose anything else. Ever. Sanity isn't possible.

"Yeah," Steve breathed out, insanity in the glide of sliding against Danny again. "This does."


As for everything else. It shouldn't. God. It shouldn't have. But it was Danny. He'd throw everything on Danny. Unblinking.

[haole_cop]

It does. Is. Easy. Easy enough it feels like breathing, except that breathing is impossible as anything other than a groan, when Steve is rubbing along him, hard and hot and perfect. Blanketing him completely, just like Danny pictured, when Steve had him crammed up against the wall.

When he wasn't supposed to touch Steve. When it was for the job, and a lie, until it wasn't either, and it was Steve's door against his back, and then Steve's mattress.

And now, he can't stop. Touching Steve. Fingers gripping into his hips, before one hand lets go, to run down over the curve of muscle, and back up, following the sweep of Steve's back. Wrapping Steve's leg with one of his. And opening up into this kiss.

Another one. And another. Each one feeling a little more like complete madness, like Steve is taking the claw of a hammer or a backhoe to the floorboards and ripping them all up, demolishing everything Danny ever thought of as true and unchangeable between them. Everything he was never supposed to want, and couldn't stop wanting. The reason, very probably, why things never quite worked out with Gabby or Melissa. They were never his confidante or the person he trusted the most. Not the first person he spoke to, not part of ninety-five percent of his days and weeks and life.

Someone he never had to worry about, with Grace, when she loved him so completely from nearly their very first meeting, on, and vice versa. Who always had his back, no matter what. Who would do anything, and be anywhere -- whether Danny told him to or not.

Of course it wasn't easy with them. Of course it is, with Steve, because Steve has always, despite everything Danny has ever shouted at him or accused him of, tried to make things easy for Danny. Held him up and pieced him back together. Let him crash on the couch. Brought him beers and commiserated. Dragged him out of the house and back into the sunshine and fresh air. Took on the harder parts of the job, on the days when Danny's heart simply couldn't take it.

Easy. Let striking a match, easy. Tripping and falling. Cocking a gun and squeezing the trigger. Easy, and foolhardy, and too, too good to stop.

Pushing his hips up into Steve, and unable to stop, or even to want to stop, the sound that punches out of his chest at the sensation, new and strange and perfect. Fitting like he never knew they could. "Yeah, it does."

[thebesteverseen]

It was never like this in his head. He doesn't know anymore how he thought anything he pictured was good enough, even for a one off, when this is like this. When Danny writhes beneath him, fingers digging bruises into his skin. Body shuddering and bucking into his. Those hands, that Danny can't ever stop moving, somehow in his hips and across him, still. Tracing up his back and down into the small of it.

Greedy and tiny and largely warm, and everywhere all at once, and Steve wants to push up into them as much as he wants to keep pushing right back down into Danny, dragging that groan out of him. Dark and sparking. The flaming sputtering toward what he doesn't know. Does. Wants to find out. Wants all of it. Every part of Danny, suddenly here, somehow, naked and under him, holding on to him, touching him everywhere.

Danny pushing up into him, while he says those words that go to Steve head almost as hard and hot as each thrust of his body. Danny, saying this is easy. When he probably means the same thing. Has to. Right. The thing where neither of them can hold on, or back, and keep shoving forward. This thing where they are on fire, a blaze made to burn down this bed and this room, Steve's whole house. Just that, right. Just.

Except Danny is never about just sex. Ever. Not with any of them. Steve knows. Steve's watched him get screwed each time.
Them throwing him away, because Danny is never the one to leave. He holds on until the floor caves out from under him.

Steve can't think about that though, even as it starts licking at everything. Pulling up stakes and pulling chains tight. The idea that somehow Danny feels the same. The someone how you're my best friend, and I love you means what it sounds like, when it suddenly bursts in his head like a volcano reappearing after a century forgotten. Too easy, too perfect, and it could have been like this so long ago.

They could have fucked it up. They could have gotten it right.

Maybe Danny never would have been stabbed and Cath never would have picked Doris.

He doesn't know. Doesn't want to know. Wants to punch that sound from Danny's lungs into his mouth again.

This tumble of shuddering, spasming, limbs they've become, where Danny is clinging to him, grinding into him, and he wants everything. Everything he's never allowed himself to think about. That nearly makes him want to come remembering, while doing this, that he had Danny in his mouth and Danny nearly begging, on the edge of coming already. Only minutes ago. Him. Danny. Them. Making his own body spasm as it slides through him like a physical blow instead of a series of thoughts and images.

Maybe someone else would think of time and plans, but that person isn't Steve. The way the person who is stopping them and demanding they talk, think, isn't Danny. Danny who is just kissing him back, and getting his hands, his legs everywhere. More space when he wraps a leg around Steve's, giving him more weight to one knee, space to his hips and more leverage to thrust. More thoughts about where he could be thrusting. Thinking isn't a thing, and this isn't good enough. He wants more. He wants everything.

He wants to watch Danny shatter on him, and fall apart, unable to pick himself or any of his words back.

He wants that to be his, in a way no one else can take back from him, when he slides a hand between them, circling both of them and starting fast. His mouth harder on Danny when there's a collision of stars behind his eyes, and nearly moaned into Danny's mouth at the sudden increase of friction and closed-in pressure even on his own skin, but definitely at lining them up together and pushing closer, faster.

[haole_cop]

There's no such thing as slowing down with Steve, and it's true enough that Danny can almost forget the times he's gotten Steve to not only slow down, but stop entirely, to listen to him. Fingers knotted in his shirt. Danny's voice getting louder, higher, words coming faster, hands flying.

He probably could. Stop Steve. Right now. If he put his hand on Steve's chest and pushed him, or said stop, stop, stop, hold on, Steve would. He always has, because he has always, for God only knows what reason, listened to Danny. Danny might mock and joke and complain that it never happens, but he knows that's a lie, that Steve does listen, does pay attention. Close attention, even. Surprising Danny with memorized details of a throwaway comment Danny might have made days or weeks or even months before.

He'd always thought it was because Steve is a details type of person, and he'd always known he was closer to Steve than most, but now he has to wonder, wants to know, if all those little gestures and comments and gifts and favors, if they weren't just Steve, being Steve.
If they were this. The way so much of what he felt and did and said was this, even when he tried to convince himself it wasn't.

Any and every time he grew possessively, protectively angry about Doris, or Catherine, or the latest traitorous ghost from Steve's past to rear its ugly head. Dragging Steve to family holidays. Making sure he never stays by himself too long. Pulling him in on things he would never consider on his own, but that Danny knew he'd love, like camping with Grace's scout troop, or helping her train for a fitness test.

Anything and everything to chase away the blank distance in his face, or that false surfer boy smile. To dig Steve out, from beneath the SEAL and soldier.

All the reasons he knows they would listen to each other, even now, and no very good ones not to put them into practice and throw the brakes on, aside from how impossibly perfect it is.

Steve's mouth on his, fitting together as lips open. Steve's hips sliding against his, locking them together like pieces of a puzzle. How their height difference has been completely negated, and turned just into Steve everywhere, everywhere Danny can touch or reach or be touched. The way his pulse is sprinting, hammering into his head, threatening to shatter his ribs.

Or maybe that's just this feeling. Finally let loose, and filling rapidly, too fast to have any kind of a handle on it, impossibly big for Danny's chest, this room, this house, this island.

How much he loves Steve. How much this was never supposed to happen. How much he wanted it to.

Steve's hand is around them both, and Danny is gasping, holding on to Steve's back and hip like Steve's the only piece of driftwood keeping him from being swept out to sea, but the world is narrowing, and he's falling closer and closer with each slip of Steve's hand. "Fuck, Steve."

He's helpless against it. This. This feeling. Steve's hands and skin and mouth and breath. Steve. Him. Them. That wasn't possible. That was, for years. "It's been, Christ, I wanted you for so long."

[thebesteverseen]

It's everything he wants. The way Danny's hands hold on to him, sudden and hard, like the world is splintering beneath him and the bed isn't beneath him, making it so there is nowhere to fall. But falling, doesn't matter here, does it? They've both already fallen. If it can be called falling. It's a lot like falling to Steve. Not off a bed. Or even a building. But more out of a plane. When his hand can't stop, and Danny is gasping against his lip, pushing into his hand, his stomach.

Saying that, making the world blur like Steve has jumped out of a plane at a questionable height, that is going to make descent rougher and faster than every other time. All wind, and speed, exploding heart and not enough oxygen in the air. Fingers rough and fast. Lips the same. The way those words are, rough and fast, with everything inside of him. Knots of years, mistakes, missteps, walking past, melting into pools of frying, bubbling, splattering heat.

"Tell me," he can hear his own voice saying. Lips nearly against lips.

A demand more than a question, when he has no clue if either of them will even make it through two more sentences. If he wants Danny to tell him, more, everything he's never know, shouldn't know even now or if he's just going to bull rush them through the last wall left standing. The reckless shoving of his own hips, friction of his fingers, the slide and thrust of Danny, in his hands, against his skin, when everything outside of these few feet is gone already.

Gone, forgotten, he doesn't need it. Doesn't need or want anything more than Danny, and it's always been that way, hasn't it. Even when he was lying, even when he was trying.

[haole_cop]

Tell me, he says, like it's that easy, as easy as just letting his body take over and do everything his mind and too-cautious heart would tell him to stop, to consider, to think over and debate. Like it's easy to put into words, everything he's ever wanted about Steve, every time he ever wanted Steve, when he first figured out that love was the right word with a different meaning than the one he'd been using, and how much earlier that was, than when they started saying it out loud.

When it started. How it started. The confusion and fear and disgust with himself, at how easily he could betray their friendship and trust, by wanting more, by wanting something Steve never, wouldn't, didn't. How shallow, to want, to spend a day snapping at everyone and everything, pissed off and annoyed because Steve took his shirt off again, and Danny had to watch. Or because Steve smiled at some girl on the beach. At a bar. Had a date.

Every time he came here, and Catherine was curled up on the couch, or wandering in from the beach in a bikini, and how much he hated himself for hating her, when he should have been happy Steve was happy. The arguments he had with himself, and how they manifested first in pessimism about Catherine suddenly being around all the time, only to over-correct into pushing Steve towards her, feeling like a selfish heel, and trying to do better.

The frustration of being angry at not being to have something that wasn't even an option, and not something to have, either, but instead a person with his own wants and needs that Danny was supposed to support and encourage. Who never did anything but support and encourage him, straight into the arms of other people.

There might be words for it all, but he's damn sure they can't be found now, when Steve's mouth is on his and Steve's hand is stripping each nerve down to raw endings, and Danny is shuddering and shaking, trying to hold on for dear life, a little longer, another few seconds. Wanting it to last, but too impatient to slow down. Steve wants to know. Danny's not sure he really does. But. He asked, and Danny's even less sure he can keep from giving Steve anything, anything at all that he asks for, right now. "You --"

Gets choked off. By Steve's mouth. By Steve's hand. By all the words and years and memories and feelings caught behind it, that he's never spoken aloud, tried too hard to ignore, turn into something else.

It's so much bigger than words. Bigger than anything he knows how to say, or do, so he just brings his hands up to cup the sides of Steve's head, and drag him into another kiss, fingers sinking into short brown hair, like that could convey even the slightest shade of all of this. Everything. Everything Steve has been. Everything he's wanted. For so long. That was impossible. That he could never quite convince his heart was. Impossible.

When he caught Steve's eye across the cab of the car. When a hug lingered a little too long. When they sat on the couch with Steve's arm across his shoulders, and Grace curled up on both of them. When any time Steve was gone, missing, hurt, there was a gaping, echoing chasm in Danny's chest.

He doesn't even know if it can be filled like this, here, now, dragging Steve into him and pushing up against him like he could slide Steve right into that empty spot, but he's trying. Pushing flush up against him. Legs and arms wound around him. Wanting every inch of skin to be covered. Like proof this happened at all.

[thebesteverseen]

It's insane. Seconds ago, he was joking about finally having found the one thing to shut Danny the hell up. His mouth on Danny's skin, swallowing him down like every hot dream and forbidden fantasy, hard and soft in equal measure, dragging noises out of him, and leaving him wordless and demanding for the minutes after. That was explosive and hilarious, but this is different. Entirely. He can feel it down to his bones even where there is only one word.

Danny's eyes bright and dark even when there is barely any light making it into this room. When Danny's eyes go wide, and helpless, struggling through Steve's own two and Steve's hand. His inability to stop kissing Danny for long enough for Danny to even put sentences together. Because Danny doesn't need his permission to talk. Has been throwing out shit at him right back. Was only a minute ago. But this is different.

When Danny's eyes are wide and his mouth forms that one word, and then there are no other words.

It's Danny's hands back on his head, like when Danny jerked him from his knees to falling on Danny himself. The taste of Danny still on his tongue then, and Danny's fingers on his jaw. This is like that. But it's different. More. Shatters and scattering the last standing beams in his head and his spine when fingers are fisting in his short hair and Danny is kissing him like the answer to his demand is written on the back of Steve's mouth.

When Danny said a single word and nothing else, but Steve can hear it, feel it, screaming into his skin. Going off like a countdown that just hit zero. Somehow he did this to Danny. No. Not did. Does. Is. Long ago, and tonight, and right this second. All of those are true. This thing that is happening. Rampant and so big Danny can't even cloak it in sounds, and is writing it, like a new language, on his lips, his teeth, the bruises pressing fingers into hips, and heels into thighs.

When it drags something dark from him. Old and black, and hungry and shoved down for so long. Pummeling out his mouth, while his hand is suddenly moving faster than he can even keep track of thinking of. Because it's shuddering through him, shaking everywhere, muscles contracting, body snapping out of his own control and hold and he's thrusting up, chasing a light and a heat and a darkness that he thinks every part of him can see in Danny and answer with every part of himself.

[haole_cop]

He's glad Steve doesn't push for more words, because, for once in his life, he has none. No words at all. He's got nothing, not even air.

Only his mouth on Steve's, and his body pushing into Steve's, and Steve's weight shifting with each press and roll of his hips. Gravity converging on them, dragging him down, and shoving him back up again, into bursts of light and heat.

Steve's rhythm falling apart, under Danny's hands, against his skin. His palm stripping Danny's skin. Hips shuddering. Steve losing it. Against him. Because of him. Dying on his mouth and hands and all across this bed, across his ski. Going up in flames, with his name breathed back into his mouth, riding the tail edge of Danny's groans.

Finding words, finally, but without making any sense, repeating Steve and please and egging him on, and on, and on, telling him to come on, come on, before it chokes in his throat, on a wave rolling through his whole body, demolishing everything in his path. Thought and sense and speech: nothing but his hips jerking helplessly into Steve's hand, up against him, and a hard shudder washing through him. Rolling and rolling and crashing, finally, in a burst of white and a full-body shiver that feels like a seizure.

Muted blasts, wrecking brain cells and muscles and clutching his stomach, leaving the inside of his skull white-washed, with an ear-piercing hum shrieking, and his head digging back into the bed, and tumbling, tumbling, gone, with a gut-shot sound he already can't hear, because he's down the rabbit hole, and there's nothing left to do but fall.

[thebesteverseen]

Saying Danny finds words would be a gross understatement. There are sounds that whimper and beg, making Steve's skin burn and peel. That he wants to have tattooed straight into the places Danny says them, like the spots he is certain he'll have on his hips and back and sides and thighs. Soft blue and vibrant. He never pictured it right. That's the thing he can't get over. Never. Not once. Danny like this, saying please, like that, to him, needing more of his hand and his mouth.

His name on Danny's tongue, pushed in a shuddering breath back into his own mouth. A hot poker down his throat that is going to shove him over, until Danny starts shaking, hard, words in his mouth obliterated into a ragged and choked abortive sound and Steve, by the very skin of his teeth, has to stop. Hold back even though it feels like even considering it, before he's looking straight down, is cutting ragged chunks of his skin straight off his back and into his thighs. Everything angry, but none of it mattering next to this.

Because he can't miss it, okay. He would rather be blind and dead, first.

Danny shudders the way a mountain does when the avalanche snow slams the ground, all force and explosion in free fall. Eyes screwed shut and face so tight it looks like it hurts. Except it doesn't. Nothing about the sound coming out of Danny's mouth, and Steve's need to kiss him through it, this, the wetness suddenly spurting through fingers, and down their skin, while Danny never lets go. Because. Danny never lets go. It's nothing but impossible and gorgeous, every bit of it.

Fingers slick on skin now, gliding so smooth it makes Steve groan Danny's name, torn apart by both things at once. Giving in to what has been threatening to shove through him for minutes now. No reason to hold back. No reason to wait. Nothing he wants more than to just give into that absolute disaster that starts ripping up everything in the back of his head. Brilliant blindness punching him from inside of his head. The tense ball in gut suddenly expanding in waves outward. Taking out everything left in its way.

Shrapnel waves of pleasure buffeting him as he fell forward on to an arm, his body shuddering harder than seemed possible.

[haole_cop]

There's barely enough left of him to notice the weight, when Steve collapses. He's already gone, washed out and hollow, all the struts holding him up blown out, his insides a splintered mess.

Except not splintered. That's too sharp. He feels like a toasted marshmallow, all gooey and melted on the inside, after being shoved into the hottest part of the fire. Too knocked out to do anything other than breathe, eyes shut, while aftershocks rock gently through him at the slightest shift against his skin.

Conscious that there is something heavy on top of him, something pliant beneath. Unfamiliar space, familiar scents. Cotton and salt and aftershave and sex, mixed and sharp and heavy.

Unwilling to pull himself back out of it, because it was the best possible dream to have had. Right. The most realistic yet. Unlike anything he'd ever allowed, or caught himself imagining, before.

Maybe, because he'd never imagined this.

As pale a comparison to reality as his most vibrant dreams, fantasies, wishes had been, none of them were anything like what just happened: not from the moment Steve shoved him into the door to this one, where he's collapsed on Danny like a house of bricks that has only just realized nothing is holding it together, and Danny could never, not in a million years, not if he worked out every possible likelihood, have come up with anything like this, at all. Even the slightest shadow of similarity would have been impossible to find.

Because he could never have imagined it. How it feels, when Steve is dropped on him like a pile of rocks. What his breath sounds like, when it's rough from some other exertion than running, or fighting, or pulling himself up a cliff. How warm he is. How surprisingly soft, when Danny can detach his hands enough to run them down along Steve's skin, flat over his back.

Keeping him here. As well as Danny, who is having trouble remembering his own name, or how to keep his eyes open, or do anything but breathe in and out and slowly melt into a puddle of himself, here in Steve's sheets, can keep anyone anywhere, which is about as well as someone armed with some pipe cleaners could tie him to a chair.

Words are a laughable impossibility, while his eyes are sliding shut again, somewhere under the lead balloon that just crashed into his skull, but there's a low, slow, stupid noise that rumbles out of his chest, content and clouded.

It's just nice, okay. That's what he never would have expected. It's nice.

[thebesteverseen]

The world is a shell of itself. Inverted and decimated. The hollow, white noise, rushing noise that is water flooding in a hole too far down or air escaping one too far up. Steve's head and his body aren't even making that much of one. Not when his body feels like it only narrowly managed to even contain the explosion inside of it. Everything else that hollow screaming white noise. Not screaming. Just layered. Hard and heavy and huge. Between every cell, muscle, and bone.

Thinking is not something his head wants to do. Can't do. Can. He can force it, but it feels gloriously empty and he's not even sure the last time anything, that wasn't the rush of a good rough fight with someone, felt this intense. He doesn't even want to open his eyes, forcing them from their exodus for duty and ability.

Danny shifts, fingers and palms suddenly finding Steve's back, pulling and pushing, some lever, warm and wide, that paints his back into existing, and he makes a noise. Someone to the side of Steve's gead. Both together making Steve have to pry up his eyelids to the flat of a shoulder and Danny's head to his side. Some noise he couldn't entirely remember or piece together, but there were other things he was. Danny made some noise. Danny's hand were on his back.

Because he hadn't thought. He'd. He was an idiot.

Clarity of that fact, smashing into the mirror, even while the clouds clung.

"Oh, hey, sorry-" Steve was pushing up, only catching up with mess that didn't matter when it clashed with not collapsing on Danny by way of having absolutely collapsed on Danny. The way he never would have collapsed on top of Cath. Or anyone. Ever. Not at his height. Not at his weight. That he should have been more careful. Earlier. Should have even thought about Danny's knee, like he hadn't even remembered the man had knees at all until this second, even when he'd had his head next to one, and whatever the hell else he had forgotten, too.