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.

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[thebesteverseen]

Nothing else exists in the world with Danny's skin warm and heavy on his, making him snake a leg around Danny's thigh. One that is almost two, only nearly not just trapping Danny against his body. Maybe because Danny makes that noise, and Steve can't even be positive what causes it, because there is so much. All of this is so much, so new, so neither of them able to let go or slow down. When everything flows and floods into everything else.

Like Danny, going from that sound, to those words, to right back to kissing Steve.

But those words burn inside Steve's ears, down into his chest, even while Danny is kissing him, grinding right back into him. Smoothness lost in need. Tell me. I want to know everything. When this is. Everything. Kissing Danny, while sparklers impale his eyes, crackling down every vein in his body. Making him feel more alive and on fire than he's felt in anything but a fight in. Too long. Too long. He doesn't know when or what the last thing was. Only that it makes him kiss Danny again.

Tell me. Danny voices wheedles in his mind, while Danny's hand are on his skin, mouth is on his mouth. Everything. And maybe lesser men would let it pass. Let it go. Because Danny is kissing him. Trying to drown him back down in fire and madness, stealing his mouth and his focus. But Steve is made for madness. He excels there. More than any other standstill second of his day. Week. Life.

Where everything is red, and haywire, and insane. That's where he most know how and what and who.

His fingers are in Danny's hair and at his hip. Still fisted, still sliding, still grinding steadily up into the mess of slipping movement above him becoming messy, words coming with no plan to them. Fodder on the forsaken altar of Danny's skin that he can't let go, can't forget, can't stop wanting even more with every new second of it.

"It was always you." It's almost an accusation. Sharp, a little almost to mocking, but somehow it's relief, too. Finally saying it. Carried so long. When he's kissing Danny and keeping them close. When he'd go for broke for Danny, if Danny wanted him to, and because. Yeah, maybe. Because he wants it that way. Broken and ragged at the edged. To know if the things he can't say, ever, can be shoved over the cliff, with this insanity, and Danny.

Those first words too dangerous, too real. Everything. Danny said, and it's a marvel he didn't use that word right back. Everything. That Danny was everything. Always had been. Every new thing he learned about Danny taking up space. In his head, his gut, his memory. Building itself into perfect memory and an ache Steve couldn't control. Respected more than he respected almost anyone in his own branch, from the best of the best of the whole country.

That it wasn't about just wanting to shove him up against a wall and fuck him daily for all these years.

That it was everything else, too. How he was with Grace. With victims. Jersey, and Christmas, and how he was with Steve. Daily. Sticking. A friend, a partner. Re-inventing those words, a relationship, into things Steve had never before had anywhere with anyone, and how no one could ever get close to it after he realized that was there, between them, no matter its limitations on what it wasn't over what it was.

It's all too close to coming out of his mouth. Battering at his teeth like a tank, while he swallows white fire creeping along his skin, trying to help it come burning out on every heavy breath and hot, messier kiss. When it makes his words trite, more mocking, less serious, almost like it has to be. To survive not covering Danny with everything this same second.

"You and your stupid hair--" Curled in his fingers even now. Smooth, even with product. Golden in the sun. Soft looking fluff on the days he woke up on the couch, or went to the beach without. That perfect dome on more days than Steve could count. "--and your stupid shoes." That really were. Stupid. Loafers in Hawaii still. Bitched about always somehow getting sand inside them, but never given up. Things Steve would mock him for, but wouldn't see change.

It was all Danny. It was all the way Danny was supposed to be, and had been, and pieces of what him right.

[haole_cop]

"My shoes?"

It's what he wants, and it's nothing like what he wants. More of the same. Everything they've ever tossed at each other, in a brand new context. All the old insults, that feel both wrong and right, when Steve is shoving them through kisses getting messier and messier, and Danny's whole body is getting hotter and hotter, winding tighter and tighter from the way their hips are rolling, skin rubbing on skin, hot and tight and almost perfect. "Now I know you're lying."

Which is a joke. Or, it is, more than it isn't. "You hate my shoes."

And not in the way Steve hated the suit that's currently taking up residence on Steve's floor. They were the mark of his status of outsider, that haole cop who might have finally given up the ties for everyday wear, but who would never really belong. "Even I know they're terrible."

Hideous, but comfortable. They're functional, and he's used to them, and even when he tries his best to shine up, these days, he knows they're not what might be called attractive. His work shoes and work pants and shirts, there's nothing special about any of them. He takes care in how he dresses, but he knows what the end result is: Steve's mocked him for it, endlessly, for years.

But he shouldn't be surprised. Isn't, if he stops to think about it, which is difficult, because Steve is trying to take him apart, unscrewing every nut and bolt holding him together. This is how they communicate, right? Steve says something ridiculous, Danny counters with every word he can haul from his sizable collection, lying in wait.

Still, he refuses to believe it. That Steve wants him for his hair and his shoes and his one good suit. That those things encompass those too-fragile, easily shattered words, that are still slipping closer and closer into his soft inner organs. I just want you, he'd said. He said those words. Steve did. In a way that Danny doesn't think has anything to do with his shoes, at all.

[thebesteverseen]

There's something a little tight, and a little caustic, about the way Steve's mouth twists at Danny's words.

Even if it gets lost for a second in a slide of movement, and a near snap of teeth, back arching, and fingers tightening on skin. In the hands on his skin, and the riot of movement that is Danny pushing, curving, driving into him, along him, at the same time as Steve kisses his mouth, and there's more, something more like the air of smugness and laughter than the actual sound of it. Because Danny rarely admits to that either, but it's very him, too. He keeps to what he likes.

"Maybe." Is half burned out. Dizzying, disastrous heat, twisting like a chain, tighter and tighter in his gut.

Maybe he did hate Danny's shoes and his hair at the beginning. His every thrown about hand and dancing movements. So much movement, that seemed like flashing signals and plane directions anytime he got going, that Steve never knew, never could have dreamed hard enough, to think would become this. The rampant press and slide of every ounce of that movement being played out against his skin. Rubbing thighs, and lips that could barely part for long enough.

He has to move. It's just a necessity, pushing them upward, taking Danny's weight with him toward sitting, not stopping his movements in the slightest, even as the muscle burn slid into Steve's lower back and his thighs. Keeping his hand along Danny's neck and the back of his head, fingers tightened in his hair, kissing him as it happens. Shifting, but keeping close enough, unable, unwanting, to stop any part of this friction, drive, dizzy dive toward sparklers crackling through more and more of his veins, as the floor was singeing to a smoulder everywhere again.

Because, maybe, he's never been able to stop any part of this. Ever. Drown it under. Cover it up. But not stop it. Never stop it.

Not when he was heartbroken over Rachel, or drunk on Gabby. When Steve was trying with Cath, and Amber appeared at the beginning, lightening Danny up again. It was always there. Those moments. Those sessions. Those days where the world demanded they keep choosing each other, again and again and again. Because they were partners. Because they were friends. Because no one else could, would, had, and really because it wasn't even a choice. It was less choice than breathing. It was who they were, who'd they almost always been now, too. Like one breath in and out.

"Everything," Steve said, after another kiss, he didn't know how many later, forehead pressing Danny's briefly in a thrust of movement. Taking Danny's word, his tell me everything, and throwing it back at his own mouth. Danny's mouth that got Steve in so much trouble, in the day, from the screaming and in the black of the night. When it was his fingers he'd been thrusting up into and not Danny's skin, and his eyes had been tight as death, instead of drilling into Danny's like this even in the dark. "-is a lot."

And he'd already gone miles to prove he was shit at it in the last twenty minutes, hadn't he?

And for some miracle reason Danny was still right here, fingers on his skin, breath heavy and fast against his lip, his cheek, somehow?

[haole_cop]

He's not a teenager anymore, and the refractory period is a real thing, but nobody seems to have told his body that. Steve pushes up to sitting, carrying Danny with him, until Danny ends up in his lap, and they're fitting together almost as snug as a lock and a key.

Almost. Almost. Enough to blitz his brain like Steve tossed it in a blender and hit high. Enough that they're slick with sweat again, melting the tackiness of earlier off skin, slippery between stomachs, and making Danny groan. He hadn't meant for this, when he back-pedaled, when he told Steve to kiss him, after wanting to know. Needing Steve to see.

That it matters. One year. Three. Four. Every day they lied to each other about this, and how much longer it would have gone on if it weren't for a stupid sting operation, undercover at a gay bar like the start to some third-rate porn.

That Steve's feelings matter. Every time he pushed Danny towards Gabby, or Melissa, and away from him. Every time he held his own hand in the fire because he thought it would make Danny happy.

It matters. But he fucked up talking about it, somehow, and now Steve is dragging him into his lap, and Danny's hands are at either side of his head, because it is. A lot. It's a lot. It's everything. Everything Danny still wants to know, can't wrap his head around, needs to have accompanied by some solid proof, evidence, something he can hold up and examine in the light of day, that will mean this isn't just tonight, and it's not just another dream he'll hate himself for when he wakes up.

He wants to know everything. When it started. Why. How. What it is about him Steve wants so much it's been eating at him for four years, without him ever making a single peep, without any sign except for a few too-tight hugs and maybe a closer than usual interest in the boring, mundane details of Danny's life.

Leaning to press his forehead against Steve's, while trying to catch his breath, which is impossible, because they're almost in a dead sprint again, his hips nudging forward and sending hard shudders up his back. Eyes closing. Licking at dry lips. Caught between a kiss, and just...this. Forehead to forehead. Feeling almost close enough to sink straight into the joint of Steve's hips. "So I hear."

Except it still doesn't make sense. Doesn't seem real. After Steve said I just want you, and they've both been using those words, and Danny's not sure he'd be able to explain them, either, but they're piling up in his chest, trying to force their way out. Everything.

He wants to know everything, before he loses this chance. Before this all goes away.

[thebesteverseen]

The thing is maybe he doesn't want to talk about everything -- everyone -- he's thought about too much.

But it's not the same thing as wanting this to stop. It's not the same thing as wanting to scare or shove Danny into running, and he does know how to do that. He knows Danny better than anyone, maybe even Danny. He could delineate it, and it would be a fight. Words, cold and biting, words, more than fists. It would require the kind of cruelty that Steve was trained to dole out without flinching, but had never once used on Danny. Had never done except in insults that were never entirely meant.

Never could, unless that cost was so much higher than this. Higher like the price of keeping Danny alive.

When he already knew there was no law or rule or promise he wouldn't break to keep that truth a part of this world. His.

It's not that he wants Danny to be anywhere other than suddenly precariously balancing all of his weight on Steve's thighs in a way where it nearly makes it hard for Danny to balance or hold on to anything that isn't him. Because that. He doesn't hate that. He doesn't hate the way Danny's eyes keep rolling up and his eyelids flicker down. He doesn't hate the roll of Danny's hips. The shudder of muscles through his back under Steve's fingers. The way he can't stop moving, never stops moving.

Never. Not in the car. In the field. On Steve's couch, or the beach. Never, never, never. Not even known, with all of it on Steve.

"So you hear," Steve scoffs that one. A laugh that sounds rich, smug, rejecting, even burned black.

Thrusting between them in what has become a powder keg of sweltering body warmth and wet, caught between skin, buffeted by movement that wants to make his eyes unfocus he just keeps going. Broke is so far from here. So far from nearby when he can still laugh into Danny's skin, ghosting breath over his just-kissed mouth, caustic as explosion. "Like you ever hear anything. You're always talking, talking, talking."

[haole_cop]

"I don't hear anything?"

Comes out ragged, but he makes it, pushes it, because this is them, and apparently this is what they do, even like this, which makes sense. It's not like anything he ever thought about, any fantasy he ever had, wouldn't contain this, too, because it's part of what he wants, what he loves, what he needs about Steve, and this, and them. "I hear plenty. I hear you bitching, bitching, bitching, all the time, Steve, all the time."

It's probably even less believable than ever, with his body pressed up against Steve's, and his voice getting tighter and tighter and his fingers in Steve's hair, but he can't stop himself. It's like throwing a match on a pile of TNT, and hoping he can dodge the shrapnel. "I hear you mocking me, and bugging me every single day about what I'm wearing, what I'm eating, what I'm doing later. You are like this annoying fly that's always buzzing in my ear, that I can't get rid of."

As well as the voice of reason, on more than one occasion; his conscience, occasionally, his sounding board, often. He doesn't know what the world would look like, if Steve weren't there to narrate it with him.

He's pretty sure he doesn't want to know.

He's also pretty sure this isn't going to last much longer, especially once he drags one hand down from Steve's head to wrap around them both, punching a groan from so deep in his gut he's sure he'll be sore from it later, like getting hit, or doing too many sit-ups. "Fuck, just...you're terrible. The worst."

[thebesteverseen]

The world is stripping toward a live wire of frayed, sparking cords. All of them connected to the slide of their skin, sticky and hot, and Danny's fingers, in his hair, gripping tighter and tighter, to give his head a dull ache, that he couldn't give a damn about, because Danny's head is so close, his mouth, and his words get higher, and higher, messier and messier on Steve's skin. All those complaints he's always made, but like this.

Picking up the slack Steve can't find words to fill. The way to explain. How it is absolutely everything. It's all of these words. It's everything he's always needed to know, pushed and pushed and pushed for, waiting for Danny to tell him no, to shove him out, to show him the door and tell him he'd crossed the line, five hundred of them, and he had, now and then. But even then it just like this. Words, sharp and caustic in Steve's ears, yelling, and his hands everywhere, waving, instead of on Steve's skin, but giving in, too.

Always telling Steve the answer to everything he taunted, jibed, insulted, bullied for, like Danny had to present the proof. Show up Steve. Prove him wrong, even if every time, he gave Steve what he wanted to. Let Steve have those answers, steal that time, get in his space, into his life. Maybe further than he should have been. Until Danny just drug him into things, like it was given, until even that could confuse him, the givenness of it, the aboluste unquestioned expectation after a while, being wanted there, expected there, but his own finger were knotted knuckles that wouldn't, couldn't let go.

Until it was just them, too. Except that maybe it was this, too. This. Whatever it is. That Danny had been feeling, too. All along.

This thing, between them, boiling over, getting everywhere. While Danny is suddenly swearing, and Steve can't help that he just laughs. Voice gone all rough and dark, a blistered boil, when he shudders, too much weight and ability in the reaction when he suddenly shoves up into Danny's hand, the sudden tightness around him and even more friction, smoothness, caught between them, and Danny's fingers and Danny.

While Danny swears and complains, and Steve all but pushes Danny back into the bed, and himself into more of Danny. Instead catching Danny's mouth, and kissing him through it. That laugh gutting itself on every reaction in himself, in Danny. The blistering mania of it, charging through his veins, demanding more. Always more. Always more and more and more. That everything that Danny wants. The everything that was never enough no matter how many inches into not like everyone else this had ever and always gotten.

Wanting to burn up in his fingers, and dissolve on his tongue. Refusing anything short of abject madness, of everything.
When he's pushing up into those fingers, hips and thighs bouncing Danny on them, kissing Danny like air was only accelerant now.