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]

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.

[haole_cop]

He doesn't even register words, it takes a second, where his hands go flat and hard on Steve's back, and his arms tighten, and that low and rumbling noise in his chest, that had been so drowsily pleased, is suddenly a growl.

Annoyed, insistent, exasperated, once it reaches his vocal cords, becomes actual words. "Stop, stop, stop, stop moving, where are you going, huh?"

Dragging him back, bodily, the few inches he'd managed to push away, that Danny still wants. Is still hungry for. Maybe even more than the sex, and the kisses against the doorway, because this, he can feel sinking into every cell, and swelling. Suffusing him.

This, is slow enough, long enough, to enjoy. Not lighting a fire and threatening to burn the whole house down around his ears. Just. Steve. Blanketing him. Loose and easy. Completely relaxed in a way Danny's not sure he's ever seen, and he's suddenly desperate for it, to see it, know it. What Steve's like, after sex, if he can talk or move or think, if he falls asleep right after, if he's a secret cuddler, if he gets weird and awkward or just rolls over and checks out.

He wants to know it all. Wants to see it. Wants to know he's the one who made it happen.

And he doesn't want to move. Doesn't want Steve to move. Steve dragged him up here, and pushed on top of him, and now Danny's thinking he kind of likes it, right here.

Which means Steve isn't going anywhere. "Just relax, come on, please don't destroy this beautiful afterglow I'm currently enjoying. Come back, shut up, relax."

[thebesteverseen]

Danny's hand went hard and flat on his back, pulling him right back down the few inches Steve had managed to push up. His voice a soaked growl of noise that suddenly cut through the thickness of the room. Complaints that would usually be knife shapes shaped like warm whining even as they were suddenly beleaguered potential seeds toward insults as Danny was drug toward the light, even here in the dark of his bed. Danny, who didn't want him to move at all.

Which made Steve have to shift back, something surprised and uncertain setting through him, which might go easier if his head wasn't still made of fluff. Or he wasn't distracted by the sudden awareness of Danny under him, and the hands over him. That Danny didn't want him to move. Danny wanted him right here. Not moving. Not all off of Danny. Telling him to relax, to shut up. Adding that word that stung at Steve soft and surprising. Like it was nothing.

Enjoying.

Catching under his sternum and tripping him up. Impossible and amazing all at once. It wasn't, okay, like he'd forgotten that face Danny had made as he came, or the existence of that single word -- You -- stumbling at him, before Danny attacked him like Steve had stolen his entire lexicon from Danny's head. But Danny here, wanting him here, not moved even an inch away, pressing him into the mattress, sweaty and a mess....and enjoying it.

By the time the thoughts happen he's already back, movement less a thought than any of the rest of it. Steve's body a god damn traitor, because it listens to Danny's hands more than it's ever listened to him. Especially when he can't think. Or is it, especially because Steve doesn't want to be anywhere else? He wants this doesn't he. That's more of why the fragile uncertainty that looks more like wary jaggedness bubbles in his chest, while he flattens back with a roll of his eyes, and snort, muttering, "Your funeral."

Becuase it isn't.

It's never been like this. Not in his head, and definitely not in his bed. Even in other places with other people. Men. That weren't Danny. Never. Not even if they were picked for something that sunk it's nails into that part of him. He didn't to be there, want to stay. His skin to their skin, sweat and slick chilling, breaths slowly becoming manageable instead of erratic. He wanted as far away from those people as possible once they served a purpose, even if he didn't treat them as such.

He doesn't even want to move, which is worse and better. He could stay here. Making sure Danny doesn't move, and remembering every second again, that it really happened. Shift and tilt his head, letting out a breath, and end up with his cheek on a shoulder and his nose finding Danny's neck, the absolute disaster of his hair, and only just narrowly keep himself from pressing him face in against it or kissing Danny's skin again. Like it was a compulsion that couldn't stop itself, because it might be too soon.

[haole_cop]

"Whatever."

He can be totally derisive, and exasperated, because Steve is listening to him, the way Steve always listens to him. Following his hands back down, the way he always follows Danny's hands, except Danny's never tried it like this before, feels a little thrill that it works.

Wonders how many times he could have tried it, in the past. If it would have worked, then.

If Steve was telling the truth. If it's really been years.

But none of that is anything he wants to think about, right now, because he doesn't want to think about anything, right now, just wants to slip back under, go back to floating along that lazy river, with Steve flattened out on top of him, taken out like someone whacked him in the head with a pipe. "Shut up and stop moving."

Drowsy, but not drowsy enough. He doesn't want to even be able to put words together, to form them and speak them. He doesn't want Steve to apologize, and he doesn't want Steve to move. It might be the very last thing he wants, in actuality.

It all happened so fast. The job. The drive. His confession. And. This. No time to stop and think, or let it soak in, or be savored. The only moment of pause that one down at the doorway, when Steve decided to strip down, and even then, Danny didn't get to really take that moment for everything it should have been. Didn't get to fill himself up on looking, or let himself run fingers over every inch of newly exposed skin.

Everything Steve will almost definitely mock him for. Say he's sensitive. And maybe he is, because once Steve capitulates, and settles back down over him, Danny lets his hands and arms relax, and slides one palm up Steve's back, slow and lazy, over the nape of his neck, to curve at the back of his head.

Turning a little towards where Steve's face is not quite pushed into his neck, but his breath is puffing against Danny's damp skin, and his nose is brushing into Danny's hair, and for a second, Danny wants to turn them both over.

Blanket Steve, like Steve's blanketing him. Keep him from trying to get away. A thought that makes Danny shift, a little, under him, and let his other arm circle Steve's waist like a seat belt, even if it doesn't press down, or drag him in.

Just. "Don't go anywhere."

Okay. Not now. Not anymore. Not now that Danny knows.

[thebesteverseen]

It's a little harder than just a second thought to calm back down to nothingness, even when it's still shoving at his edges. A feeling he could pound into submission if he needed to roll out, just like broken bones, or didn't want to be wherever here was. But, he does, and he doesn't have a reason to fight it. Which isn't the same as it coming back easily as deciding he doesn't need to move or go somewhere. Like some part of his body is still uncertain, ready for Danny to change his mind.

Except that Danny's hand find his back again, amid his warm snapped words, and they trace up Steve's back. Danny's palm warm and flat, more solid and settled than it ever is except when Danny is trying to give comfort. Except this isn't that. It's so far from that. When Danny's hand is on his bare skin, has been on nearly all of it, and he's just running it up Steve's back, to curl it at the base of his neck, while he curves a little into where Steve's head is.

Steve can't help pushing into those fingers, on his back, his neck, letting them drag him back.

Even when Steve huffs a scoff that really comes out more as a heavy breath than a real scoff, barely settled into the hand and Danny's shifting when Danny adds an arm to back and says those words. Like Steve was still changing his mind. Like Steve wanted to be anywhere else in his house or the world, or had moved for any other purpose than that it was what he was supposed to do, always did, planned better, usually never got so smacked over that everything was an impossible blur and he didn't remember to pull to a side, or wasn't usually on the bed already by then instead.

"I thought you'd be less bitchy after sex," Steve says, low, too warm for a scoff too, even though it's all shit and lies, because he's never once really pictured 'after', except as Danny with other people, as something to hurt and keep himself reminding cold and brutal of his place, where he should be, can't be, but is tonight, suddenly is, and he has to give in to cross that barely an inch, since Danny shifted, and brush his cheek against Danny's shoulder, which brushes his nose and then his mouth against the side of Danny's neck. This small tentative thing, that isn't a kiss or a scoff or a laugh or an insult.

It's just Danny's skin. Another piece of it, like all the parts he's covering aren't enough still.

[haole_cop]

Steve shifts, and for a second, Danny's arm tightens, until it becomes clear that Steve is shifting closer, close enough to brush his lips against Danny's neck, in a way that would make him shiver, if his nerves weren't over-stimulated and shut down for repair. It does tug a little sound out of him, content and soft and low in his chest, while he turns his head so his mouth is against Steve's hair, Steve's forehead, thinking about it, drowsily.

The faint kiss. Steve, staying here. Saying that.

Something that should have been an insult, but isn't, because Danny's too distracted by what it means to pay any attention to the half-hearted attempt at mockery. "You thought about what I'd be like after sex?"

He doesn't want to joke about it. Doesn't want to trade barbs back and forth. They aren't in the car, or at the office, or on the couch downstairs, where a solid ninety percent of their conversation might be made up of digs at each other.

They're here. In Steve's bed. Naked. Had sex.

None of it anything like what Danny now knows were pale imitations of the real thing, and this -- he wouldn't have known where to start, even if he'd ever allowed himself to think about it. Sex could be a fantasy, a harmless daydream, or a more realistic, guilt-ridden one in the middle of the night, but after?

After is personal. Intimate. It seemed like too much of a betrayal of trust, too real, too raw. He never let himself. Would never have been able to come up with anything even slightly, remotely, resembling actuality.

Wouldn't have been able to imagine Steve's loose weight on top of him, or how much he wants it to stay exactly there. How Steve's voice goes low and rumbled, dopey and tired. How Steve's mouth feels, brushing gently against his skin and lighting Danny's whole system right back up again, like someone threw a fuse.

Or the idea that Steve might have thought about it. Any of this. From the doorway, on.

He wants to know, if he did. He wants to know everything.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny's arms tighten on him even for a small shift, and he's be amused, if he had the time he might snort or laugh, but Danny asks that question and any faint laugh that might have gone out in the next breath out his nose goes absolutely dead silent, because it doesn't happen. Laughing, or breathing out. Or in. Breathing, at all. Not when Danny asks and it's quiet and thick with the darkness, like it's crawled into his throat and his chest from the rest of the room.

The question absolutely real instead of the insult Steve had made of it. The only way he could say it.

When it parades back louder and broader into Steve's head than the glancing thought from with the words. The only ways he ever thought about it. Amber in his t-shirt, from the gloriously detailed misery of Danny that morning, panicking over Grace meeting Amber that way. Half dressed, in his shirt, obviously from the bedroom and entirely unknown. Back to Gabby, who he couldn't even picture like that, with her graceful veneer everywhere. A lot like Rachel in that way. Amber a complete opposite, a slipping slope in the opposite direction.

(And what did that make him, then.)

The silence drags and Steve does the only thing he can, too still and too silent, with too many thoughts that he absolutely can't say, doesn't want to say, but doesn't want to lie to Danny either. So he shrugs, haphazardly for the laying down and it quite being a true up and down movement like this. As though somehow that was a granted. He'd thought of it. But not exactly how, and never why. It wasn't about him. He was never going to be here.

He was growing more certain by the second that even being here, he was getting this wrong, when he couldn't find a word.

[haole_cop]

It's pretty clear from the moment he says it, that letting those words pass his lips was a mistake. Steve stiffens, against him, and hesitates long enough that the silence stops being a background shade, and starts lowering itself into the room with a low buzz, before he shrugs.

Awkward. And silent. A mistake.

But not one Danny wants to take back, because he wants to know, is hungry for it. Everything that led up to tonight. When it started, if Steve already hated that gray suit the very first time Danny wore it, years ago. Why Steve kissed him, instead of punching him, yelling at him, firing him. How any of this happened, when Danny is demonstrably not a lithe Navy lieutenant with glossy hair and a fond smile.

If maybe Steve did think about this. What it might be like. Pictured Danny, here. With him. Specifically, Danny. How it would go. What he would be like. What he might say or do. Everything Danny never allowed himself, because it was too close to what he really wanted.

More than sex, because it was never about sex. Never just about getting Steve naked and seeing how his bare skin felt, or where his tan lines ended, or the sounds he might make, the things he might enjoy.

Enjoyable, certainly. Incredible, even. Impossible, even as it was happening. But Danny has always been a sucker for this: these quiet moments, after. Feeling closer than he was before, to this other person in the same bed. Savoring each slowing breath, and each accidental brush of Steve's lips against his skin. Dissolving into it, that expansive, cracking feeling.

Once he'd known, once he'd been sure, what this was, he couldn't have pictured this. It would have been too hard, left him too desperate for something he couldn't have.

That he is having, right now.

Except now, the room is thickening with Steve's silence, and Danny doesn't want to take it back, but he never intended this: Steve, without an answer, except a belated shrug. Steve, tensing under his hands. "Hey."

Rubbing his thumb into the muscles that are starting to knot between Steve's shoulders. "Everything okay over there?"

[thebesteverseen]

Clarity works too well in moments like these, where everything feels frozen and precarious suddenly. The last thing he wants is to talk about is how he made himself be fine with everything Danny did, and who, for the length of their friendship. That he used as a prod to remember himself. His place. While constantly pushing Danny forward, or laughing at his mistakes, or giving him advice and calming him down from his panics.

It's selfish and probably insane, but he needed what he'd done, never to Danny's face or where he could see it, and it'd worked. But it wasn't something he wanted to give Danny. Not here, like this, talking about Danny being with other people. Not while Danny already feels so much further away and that was while the man was pinned under him.

A thumb rubbed into his muscle making him freeze briefly, in some surprise, startled from his thoughts, before realizing it was just Danny. Rubbing his thumb into his muscles and asking another question. Like somehow anything could be wrong. Or Danny could ever be an idiot, when Steve suddenly had absolutely nothing. Incriminating himself as bad as any other criminal, when all he wants is not to explain fully, but not to lie to Danny.

He doesn't lie to Danny, not about anything he has a choice about. Doesn't leave the city, state, without informing him now.

There's a thumb pushing into his muscles and warmth spills from his skin there, like it's been waiting for Danny's touch. A reminder that his bones and muscles, even as he's torn them back from relax, because they listen at the ready, for any run, are still close enough to what just happened that the sliding scale goes both way. Everything still full of warmth buried right under all this crap suddenly shoved on top of him.

Confusing him, wanting anything better to tell. Something worth Danny hearing. That he'd ever, even for a moment, pictured this for a good reason. But he hadn't picked this. Them. Danny, here in his bed. After sex. Wanting to be here truly at all. It wasn't something Danny was going to want. Him. His bed. Steve couldn't ever lie to himself beyond the pushing moment of using the idea of what just happened.

Except there's a thumb pushing into his shoulders, in small circles, that keeps dragging him back out in every turn, reminding him Danny is waiting. Making him nod in the dark, even if he goes from no words to only a single one now. "Yeah."

[haole_cop]

Steve's lying, over there, like Danny can't always tell he's lying even when he isn't collapsed like a building right on top of Danny. Only saying that one word, but that one word is a lie, because Steve had been relaxed and content, and now he's tense and silent in all the wrong ways. It's not unlike down by the door, when Danny realized, when Steve slipped up, admitted that it had been so much longer than Danny could ever have imagined. Years.

He'd pulled back then, too. Maybe he never wanted to talk about any of this. Maybe he just wanted to finally let it happen, and never actually talk about the why, or how long it took to get here. Maybe he never wants to talk about it ever again.

A thought that curdles anxious in Danny's stomach, at how easily Steve might simply pretend it had never happened. How good he is at compartmentalizing. Maybe this got it out of his system.

Whatever the reason, Danny does. He wants to talk. He wants to know. He wants to work through these things he's feeling, that are so raw and sore from being suddenly dragged out into the light and let loose for the first time. He wants to know what it is Steve is thinking, right now, that's making his muscles tighten and head turn in on itself.

Even if he doesn't want to know, he wants to know. Whatever it is. Good or bad. "I couldn't."

It's a small enough thing to do. Go first. Say to Steve whatever Steve is having a hard time saying to him. Confess a little more. Steve said he wanted it all, before, and Danny couldn't tell him, but he can start, a little, now. "I could never let myself get that far without feeling guilty about it."

It's his turn to shrug, a little awkward, because that's not quite right, either, and he wants it to be. Right. "Guiltier."

Because that was never very far away, when he broke down and let himself try to imagine, picture, fantasize about any of this.

But. "I wouldn't have gotten it right, anyway."

Not anything about it. Steve. This room. This feeling, knotting and unknotting in his chest. He would never have gotten any of it even slightly right.

[thebesteverseen]

He's jumping at shadows and he knows it, because Steve is surprised enough that Danny starts talking at him in the dark about it. The answer to his own question that Danny hadn't asked himself and Steve hadn't asked him in return, and Steve is jumping at shadows in his suddenly ragged uncertainty and tension, because suddenly he's not certain what Danny means at the end either. About never getting this far, because he'd never get it right.

Whether it's that he could never picture how it would be, or if he had, and now he knew Steve couldn't get it right for him.

Which has to be wrong. Right? Maybe. Steve is certain he might be back to the need to smack his head on something very still, solid, and heavy again suddenly. Desperately wants to slide back five minutes, to the absolute certainty of his hands on Danny's skin and his. His mouth on Danny's, the sounds and the sensations. The lack of any question except to shove through and submit, all at the same time. All of that feeling miles away, when Danny isn't inches away even.

Making Steve shove himself back to Danny's words. The ones Danny just said. Something before it. Something else. Something worth saying, because Steve can pretend he has a clue what words are and that he knows -- because he does, and can't not know, knows better than anyone on the planet in these last few years -- that Danny needs to talk out everything, and that it's only worse when Danny doesn't.

Even if Steve wants to shove a rag in his mouth. Somehow hold this moment. Refuse to let it change, turn, be touched, be broken the way it feels like it is already, crumbling in his hands, dust on his tongue, because he inevitably breaks everything, or isn't good enough, or enough enough for them, even the things he actually tries for. Everything in this house turning sideways and sour. The number of goodbyes. Betrayals. Other places that needed all of those people more. Than this house. Than Steve. Because Steve could survive all of that. Had. Did. Kept.

The way the entirety of the inside of his body and head aches at the idea of Danny being next on this. Especially now. That he has to shove hard away.

Close his eyes and just shove something forward, even if it's unfair. At least Danny has some words. "How far did you get?"
How long has it been, what day was it when, where did it start, and how far away is Steve from what Danny'd wanted.