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]

Steve's a little surprised to feel his belt loop tugged on again, the fabric getting tighter in Danny's grip on it.

But just as much he isn't, too. It's the location that makes it feel like he's got his hand over a flame, but not the touch itself. Not the fact Danny's hand is always moving even when touching his shoulder, his back, his arm. Little flickers of movement that are part of him, even if it makes things in the wrong places on Steve want to pay more attention than it deserves.

Which is proven a second later with how fluidly Danny just lets go of it. His belt loop. His pants.

The sudden, and undeniably familiar feeling, of feeling like his guts rip out through his skin, wrapped in those fingers.

While Danny is casually answering his question, and tugging on his jacket instead now. Everything above board. Above the flat of where hit clothes fall. Danny retreat to the safe area. The normal ones. The ones where he always is, and always will be. Which is better. It feels like an injection of air pushes itself sharp and cold into Steve's blood, running through him in seconds, while he's only raising his eyebrows, dubious bow of his mouth and dark glint to his eyes.

Can't smack at Danny's hand, like normal (hasn't actually touched him yet, shouldn't yet), so he goes about throwing himself right into the ice bath where he belongs. Making this normal. Making this the job, where they constantly cut each other apart in the car between locations, or in the office between needing to show up and run out. "I would have thought you could have five more seconds, or even a few minutes, before deciding to go jealous on the first guy you saw."

He's looks too smug even for his semblance of a frown. Like Danny's antics upset his plan. Like Danny is his favorite toy.

"You could have waited until I got my eighty dollar glass of wine at least. Do you even know how rarely those things come around?"

[haole_cop]

He hates how easily Steve starts jibing at him, prodding him, and that's got to be a sign that it's the better move, right?

Because this can't happen. Won't, and couldn't ever. Steve doesn't. He doesn't. It's nothing, and it's going to stay nothing, even as the skin of his fingers and palm burn like he removed them from dry ice, and not Steve's beltloop. "What, and have to spend time talking to someone else?"

He lets go of the lapel to tug at Steve's tie, sharp and possessive, before dropping his hand altogether, and leaning back on the bar, eyes sliding from Steve's face to the room behind him, because they're here on a job, not a date, and they'll both get their asses handed to them if their guy wanders in and out without either of them noticing. "You know I hate talking to people."

Which is true. It's even, probably, true of a place like this, if there's any reality in which he had the money or inclination to come to a place like this, but he doesn't. Not either. Call him a sap, but he's never been the guy for pick-up culture, to go to a bar just to bring someone home, get laid, never know their name or care about it. How could he? He's got a daughter. He's got a job that calls him out in the middle of the night. He's got a too-interested in his life, too-paranoid and too-dangerous Navy SEAL of a best friend, who thinks its his God-given right to burst in on Danny's life at any time of day or night without warning.

(And someone would find out. Some cop in HPD. Pass it along to Chin or Kono. And then Steve would know, and Danny would have to see what the rental situation is like for holes in the ground near Honolulu.)

But their guy isn't here, so he rolls his eyes at Steve, unimpressed, and feels immediately better for it. "Yeah, because you always make me buy you drinks, and I don't have the cash for an eighty dollar case of wine, let alone glass. I'm sorry, you want me to go grab your buddy? I've got a feeling he might be a little less pleasant after all that, but I'm sure he could be brought around."

He doesn't know why he says it, except he does. It's a reminder, right, that he can't have this, that Steve's as likely to want Mr. Panties-in-a-twist as he is to want Danny, and it comes out a little sharper than he intends, a little defensive, because he could have waited. Steve can handle himself. And he didn't have to make a thing out of it, could have just pulled Steve aside, like they planned for.

He just didn't like the guy, okay.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny looks away, making it feel, impossibly, like he can finally take a breath in for the first time since that hand settled fingers against his waist. Even three layers from his skin. More of Danny doing the right thing. The thing they shouldn't stop doing. Steve let his eyes follow Danny's, maybe like they'd been discussing Campbell walking off, and he was looking up to see where he'd gone instead of casing the room, again.

But it's only a quick skirt of faces he couldn't paint a second later if he wanted to, because suddenly his shoulders and head are being jerked down, muscles pulling back hard behind and around his breast bone, pressing that breath he got in just as quickly out. Only getting his eyes to his tie in Danny's hand as it's already being let go on. Tugging as he gives that inane response that's as false as anything. Danny could talk paint off a wall if he wanted to.

"And yet you get off on interrupting anytime you can," Steve smacks right into the middle of Danny's words.

Waiting for Danny to stop talking was like waiting for days it was clouding in Hawaii. It wasn't impossible, just a whole lot less than anything near likely. Not that he'd wanted to talk to the guy for long, or even cared about the guy coming back or going away empty handed and pissed off. But there were easier, cleaner, more precise ways to have made that happen than Danny's choice.

Which is what Steve tells himself he's thinking about, and not anything else, when he's reaching up to make sure his tie is still straight after that. Smoothing a hand down the long line of it, down to where it shifted inside his jacket. Already at wanting to not have it on, but fine about ignoring that impulse to the lowest, innocuous hum.

"Nah, he's not the type," Steve says, and he instantly wants to eat the words. Like they are too telling. About the guy. About Steve. Things he knows. Sees. Has done. Even if his brain screams it could have been completely nothing sound either. Making him shove more words out of his mouth, "So you definitely owe me a drink now."

[haole_cop]

"No?"

There's no reason to feel this flare of jealousy, but then, he never really needs a reason, it turns out. Not when it comes to Steve. "I had no idea you got to know him so well."

Which is...a stupid thing to say, because it sounds jealous, and he is jealous, but Steve's not supposed to know that. Not anymore than he normally picks up on it, and has, for years, like when he was so pleased that Danny was annoyed by Bull Frog, before Bull Frog turned out to be a cold-blooded murdering psychopath.

Still. He should cool it, because it's not like he's looking to come clean to Steve anytime soon, and especially not tonight, when they're in the middle of a job and their mark could come strolling in any second, while Steve's standing there, tracing his hand down his tie and along his own chest like all he really wants to do is test Danny's resolve.

Like he does every goddamn day. Being constantly underfoot, and annoyingly helpful, and illogically loyal, given how many of his close friends and family members have roundly and continually abused that same loyalty.

But he still is. Loyal. Still does. Trust. Danny, and Chin, and Kono, and now Max and Grover and even Jerry, and his pal in the D.A.'s office, what's her name, Ellie. Somehow, Steve keeps handing out his trust to people, even if the ones who earned it before, who were as close as Steve and any of the team members (even, yeah, maybe even Danny), only threw it right back in his face. Steve wouldn't say so. He'd say -- and Danny would agree, or say it for him -- that he has trust issues. And he does. But that doesn't mean he's cut it out of himself like he might have, five years ago.

So of course Steve hangs around, being distractingly attractive and frustratingly, continually, incredible, doing things like running his hand down the tie he never wears, apparently for the express purpose of trying to melt Danny's brain into sludge.

Making his voice a little gruff, when he half-turns to the bar to wave down the tender: "Same old, same old -- at least he had some kind of a return on a drink, me, I only get poorer."

[thebesteverseen]

Steve can pretend he's amused by Danny sounding entirely put out. Still grumbling and growling after he got his way, scared off the guy Steve could have gotten rid of just fine once he, or they, need him to. A junk yard dog still rattling his chain just in case anyone else got stupid enough to want to talk to Steve. Might consider the risk, or just want to give it a whirl. The way he used to.

Even if 'the way he used to,' seems so long ago and far away now. Like he got old without realizing it.

He hasn't really even wanted to consider it, with anyone, since Cath left. There were a few seconds where he'd considered Ellie, but he couldn't find it in him for anything longer than those seconds and their pasts were mixed up enough, in ways he couldn't entirely settle out his fingers on. She was better as a colleague, and Steve was better off figuring out that maybe he didn't have it in him to be any of those things everyone was looking for.

He was good at what he did. The best. But maybe the rest had gone the way of black marks and redacts, too.
Some men had what it took to be both of those, and some didn't. It was just the way of things.

It's too self-pitying even as a thought, blown off, when Steve shrugs, "You meet one of them, you've met them all."

He means the type. Rich, proud, and expecting the seas to part before and behind them. But he means the guy, too. Not that he's ever been paid for it. But he's done enough things he'd rather Danny never figured out. Things that get close to places like these, even if it hasn't been for a decade in the widest set of examples and just what's on offer specifically, the men (though, the ones here aren't anything like Steve's ever gone looking for), even in the years Danny's known him. If seldom and few enough to keep it quietly off the table. For several reasons.

Steve drug a stool closer to Danny. Close enough it's closer than he'd have normally considered natural or given even for them. Close enough it gives the appearance of there being a reason Steve chose this guy over the guy half around him, willing to shell unneeded money at him. He didn't really care. Neither of them did. Not when Danny's actually flagging down the bar tender without a real argument. The fuss and fire of grousing.

"You get my sterling company," Steve leaned toward Danny, even if his smirk was smugly pointed, "All to yourself now." Before he set a forearm easily on the front of the bar after considering the woodgrain and few stains. Even if these weren't any of his blues and whites. Old habits. Flicking in and out, between his words. "What else could you want?"

[haole_cop]

What else could he want. That list is too long, and too impossible, and too full of things he doesn't need Steve to ever know Danny's even thought about, let alone tried, or wanted.

Like how he could want this to be something like real, which would, first of all, take them out of this place entirely, and put them somewhere else. That dive bar they've been frequenting, down by the beach, a short drive or slightly longer walk from Steve's place. The office, where Steve always has a beer on offer, for days and weeks that are longer than they should be, considering they have a set amount of hours to them.

Or even Steve's own house, where they end up chewing the fat and drinking beers and watching the water or a movie or a game nine times out of ten, before Danny goes home because he's crashed with Steve too many times and it never gets any easier. And somehow it usually is at Steve's place, that house Danny could have sworn would be impossible to live in, the day he first walked in, the day Steve told him he'd be staying there, with his father's blood still splashed on the wall.

He likes his little house, the one he found, finally, back when Rachel was threatening Vegas and he needed to prove he could give Grace a decent style of living, but while Steve comes over, and pretty often, they tend to wind up, almost every week, in those chairs out by his little beach, watching the water.

Which makes sense. It's where it all began.

So he could wish them there, and while he's at it, he could want to be allowed to touch Steve the way he's "allowed" to touch Steve tonight, in these roles, that no one actually wants to be pushed too far, because that is not a thing you do fucking lightly, okay, even for a cover. It's not life or death, here.

But he'd settle for being able to stand right here, and, when Steve looks up at him from his new spot on the stool, slide his fingers along his jawline, lean in. Like they're pretending he would be able to do. Like would be allowed, even expected, here, even if this front room is pretty conservative, when it comes to bodily contact.

(The others, behind those doors -- those are where the gloves come off.)

But he settles for shifting his weight, slightly, so his hip and the elbow closest to Steve brush against him, and it's Danny's turn to lean in and down just a little, to talk low into his ear.

"How is that different from any other day?"

It's not. That's what he needs to remember. None of this is different, and it really, definitely, won't be different as soon as they make their collar and get the hell out of here, so he needs to keep a wrap on it. "At least it's not my cash, tonight. I'm going to enjoy putting in these reimbursement forms."

[thebesteverseen]

Danny's quiet for a long beat than normal, but it's normal in its own way, too. It's not the bad way. The bad silences have hundred of their own markers. This moment of silence he knows, too. This is the one where if he looked over his shoulder straight to Danny's face he'd be rolling his eyes, mouth agape, at a loss for words, even Danny's five million of them, coming from everywhere, with more vocabulary words than any adult needs, is still at a loss for how broken Steve's head it.

How much Steve does not listen in the slightest when Danny is bitching, especially about him.

But. Danny knows he does, too. Rarely misses anything. Or they wouldn't be here. They wouldn't take every case that needed taking, doing nearly anything the cases required of them to take in the bastard and keep people safe. Even, albeit, highly illegally, sex exploiting, organizations. So Steve will be a smug bastard, and Danny will bitch, and the night will go the way all of the other ones go.

They'll win, and then they'll go home, where Steve will continue to be smug and Danny bitchy. Rinse, repeat in the morning.

Danny leans in finally, bumping into him, filling the space next him, the way Danny does and Steve is used to, as highly attuned to it as generally accepting of it now. No one touches him the way Danny does. No one would even consider it. Not on cases and not casually during a day. So Danny bumps into him, still standing, and stays there, warmth pressed to his hip and his shoulder. Danny actually getting to lean down to speak to him.

Warm breath next to his ear, that sends tendrils of warmth straight through his skin and down his spine too fast. Yanking at that ache that isn't supposed to listen. That Steve stuffed in its own box, with it's own name, and own caution tape, and locked up with chains. Doesn't look at except for the days when he can't help it. It's just for a little while he tells himself. This game. This lie. Where they are both keeping up the pretense that everyone around them would assume is just them flirting, asking and promising all the normal things.

Making him tilt his face, a little toward Danny as he speaks. Habit to find his face. To listen when he needs to. To want to see the reactions that cross Danny's face while he's an ass, because they are always the best. Even if there are only seldom and few situations that put him this close to Danny's face. Most of them moment right after they almost died again, but managed not to. Or when someone is drunk and walking suddenly seems less a given.

"Too bad the big guy wouldn't be in for those glasses as a necessity of island security, huh."

[haole_cop]

He starts to say what? because he'd been paying attention, sure, and this conversation has mostly been making sense to him, but then Steve tipped his head just slightly, and Danny's lost for a second, a flick of his eyes to Steve's mouth that feels like staring even though it lasts for less than a second.

He's so close. And Steve's always close, thinks nothing of shoving his way into Danny's space, the way he's shoved his way into Danny's life and job, and Danny's used to it, but he's not used to this. When there's deliberation, however fictional, behind the way Steve's turning towards him, when Steve's not just railroading him, running him over like a tank and Danny is just an especially persistent ant. When he's. When it would be so easy, when it would be the most natural thing in the world, to lean in closer, see what happens.

Which all leaves him a little at sea when Steve's watching him and waiting for an answer, and Danny's wracking his brain -- was it something about Kamekona? -- when the bartender saves him by appearing, smoothly, at his elbow. "Gentlemen," he says, diplomatic, smiling like he hadn't been here five minutes ago to see Danny steal Steve right from under than other guy's nose, "what can I get for you?"

It's a reprieve Danny's grateful for, since it lets him regain his footing, half-turn back to Steve and push his eyebrows up in a challenge. "Hey, I told you, I'm not ordering for you. What's it gonna be?"

It feels familiar, and a little sour in its familiarity, but that's good, right? It's a reminder, that whatever looks Steve gives him tonight, however he gets in Danny's space or touches him (or doesn't), nothing has changed. None of what matters. Nothing in the real world, in their real life.

Which is good. Better. Even if he feels a little like he's just been punched, instead of saved.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny looks down, away from his eyes, hovers and flicks back up, and Steve has to wonder if he didn't actually speak up loud enough to be heard because of the way Danny's expression floundered suddenly. As though he was sure Steve said something, but he's not at all sure what it was. Even if it hadn't been important, Steve had started to lean in further to repeat it. It wasn't as if he could name the governor in this place, by name or title.

Except then came the bartender, again. The one with disastrous timing, who could have been a little earlier last time and gotten him that glass of wine. One, he supposed, he could actually buy for himself. It wasn't like he didn't have the funds. But he wouldn't. He didn't need it right now, and he'd probably forget about before the night even concluded. The smallest sacrifice of a game.

Steve couldn't fault Danny dropping right back into his same show he'd been putting on for Campbell, with the bartender, who'd been there earlier. Who would have seen and remembered it all, even if he was paid to see everything and look like he never had. As equally pleased and respectful of all patrons no matter what he saw happen between them.

"The same," Steve said, smooth and easy. Like he had no place to be and there could be nothing on his mind, as he caught the bartender's eyes and smirked, a little nodding between his empty glass and Danny, who he looked up at before back to the bartender.

All warmth in the words that rolled out next. Like he was sharing a secret with the man.

"I'll just have to deal with the fact my upgrade didn't come in the cup this time."

Completely willing to infer the higher compliment from Campbell to Danny to a stranger while he rarely ever gave out such comments to the man, himself. But it was there, too. Steve didn't understand Danny's rotten luck with women, honestly. The same with their surprising idiocy where it came to Danny. People got caught in the noise and fuss of him -- the noise and fuss that meant nothing; and everything -- and seemed not to realized what Steve knew at least as well as breathing.

Anyone would be fucking lucky to not drink anything for a year, if they could have the upgrade to Danny Williams.

[haole_cop]

He's not sure how to parse that look, but he's sure it's a joke, of some kind. Something Steve will hold onto, to mock him with for weeks after this, about upgrades and how Danny is demonstrably not one. It'll fit right in with all the other shit Steve says and doesn't mean, that usually makes it a little easier to just bypass all those things he needs to bypass, on a daily or weekly or monthly basis.

Things he's never really gotten good at shoving down, or away, because he's not Steve, and he never learned how to compartmentalize his feelings. Danny deals with his feelings in direct, blunt ways, or by avoiding them altogether, but neither tactic lets him do what he should, which is to box it all up and shove it in a very dark, forgotten corner, until it just goes away on its own.

It just doesn't come naturally to him. Neither does hiding anything from Steve, and there was a long while where he was sure it was going to come out, where he thought he'd had it, but even when he slips up now, cares a little too much, touches him a little too often, forces his way into Steve's life where he's not needed or even especially wanted, Steve just rolls with it. Calls it Danny being Danny, and doesn't look at it twice.

Like he would -- will -- if Danny doesn't get a grip on this situation. Leaving Danny to glance over at the bartender with eyebrows raised. "Make it two."

"Two it is," the man says, and busies himself with finding glasses, while Danny takes the opportunity to glance back over the room, scanning the slowly thickening crowd.

"Popular place," he says, which is both true, and annoying when it comes to needing to spot their mark. He shifts to drag a stool of his own over, and sits, facing Steve more than the bar, which grants him both a decent viewpoint of the room and a way to speak quietly into Steve's ear, while his hand lands on Steve's shoulder and slides down the fabric of his coat to the small of his back. "You finding anything?"

[thebesteverseen]

It isn't that he stiffens. It's not like with Campbell, when everything went rigid for a second. Being touched by someone he didn't specifically want to be, but needed to be, and let it bull forward because the need always outweighs the consideration of any personal reaction. He doesn't stiffen, but he doesn't move for the first second. Just still as Danny's hand makes a path from his shoulder to lower on his back than he really ever gets.

Occasionally. Very, very occasionally. Singular rarity.

Not like the slaps on the back or arm or tugging on his shirt that Steve could not count how many times happened in a week unless he was trying. But this isn't that. This is Danny, who drug his stool close to Steve's. Danny, speaking quiet next to his head, breath warm on his ear and high cheek. Danny, with his hand traveling down and resting on the small of his back, where it's not even a bother to him that other people shouldn't touch him there so much this is just a touch that isn't normal.

Making the words in his head and his mouth not the ones that should come of out his mouth.

Is he finding anything. He wants to snort at those words, even if the sound doesn't come out of him.

He was finding it hard to ignore Danny being this close. He was finding it hard to ignore the hand on his lower back not being there for support of some kind. He was finding it hard to not lean into it or lean away from it. The same with Danny talking close to his ear. He was finding it hard to concentrate on the room, even though he should never admit to that even in his own head. The mission was everything. All. Always.

He's silent a beat too long trying to figure out if he can ignore it for the first words, but even those are a little dangerous. It is popular. A good number of these people probably having no clue what goes on behind the back doors. Those without the knowledge of what the flowers, ribbons and door pertain to. Who are coming here to what they can't get elsewhere except with the greatest secrecy for most of them. It would be popular. It will be missed by some of them for the right reasons.

It's still not the kind of place Steve could have ever actually used. Being recognized even once would be a problem.

Which means it's back to the second words, even though he's probably been too quiet for too long, but he's scanning the crowd over Danny's shoulder and in the mirror, while he lists in the direction of Danny, because he should even if it's dangerously falling into other things, too. "Big crowd, but no one who fits the bill yet." At least no one who didn't look similarly engaged and pleased to be so.

No one who looked about to break into homicidal rage for stupid reasons they'd decided and kill someone here.

[haole_cop]

He wishes, not for the first time, and probably not for the last tonight, that this were Chin, or Kono. He wouldn't notice how much heat Chin or Kono was throwing off, or the scent of their cologne, or the glint of gray hair at their temple. He wouldn't feel like just putting his hand on the small of their back and leaning in is like standing in a room slowly filling with loose electrical current, tingling in his skin and lifting the tiny hairs on his arms, under this suit and shirt.

He would find it a little awkward and strange, maybe, if they turned toward him, the way Steve is, but awkward would be by far better than this terrible, traitorous want, that he shouldn't feel, that he should have trained out of himself years ago, that he has never going to be able to, because Danny's a fool when it comes to this. If he couldn't rage and argue and fight his way out of loving Rachel, he never had a chance, here.

Which is why he'll never understand Doris McGarrett. Or, to a lesser extent, Catherine, who had a chance, finally, a real one, and left anyway, becoming another in the long line of people Danny simply can't parse, because they keep choosing to leave Steve. Or Bull Frog, who betrayed him. John, who distanced himself so much Steve still has no idea what his own father thought or felt about him with any degree of certainty.

Danny doesn't get it, and he doesn't want to, even on the worst nights, when he's sitting in another cold hospital room, with his hands white at the knuckles, waiting for Steve to wake up, again. Or the ones worse than that, when Steve's nowhere to be found.

He cans barely remember a time when he wouldn't drop everything, to be there, to chase Steve down and find him, to be the one sitting there when he wakes up.

And he wouldn't choose to be anywhere but here, either, if there was a gun to his head. It's their job, and they're partners, and he'll have Steve's back, no matter how much it feels like someone's hooked into his gut and is slowly tugging it out of him with a winch and a rusty chain. "Well, it's early."

A slight motion at his elbow leaves two glasses of wine on the bar, and the tender nodding, graciously, which at least gives Danny an excuse to shift away, and take his hand off Steve's back to fish for his wallet, opening it to slide out a few bills and put them on the bar. "Thanks."

[thebesteverseen]

Danny's drop of his hand, fast, with the turn to start paying, is almost too fast.

Leaves Steve giving the edge of his a critical look for a moment, while he's finding his cash. Dedicatedly. Which could be Danny just taking care of it. Or it could be what Steve always knew it would get eventually. A little too much. A little too close. A little too weird. There's a big difference between pretending to be on a date with Kono, and this. Where they are. It being him. The assumption everywhere.

But it's too late to get cold feet. They're already here, and there's already a line of events stacking up. Ones very few people could recall, but well enough. The bartender would have it straight. Steve would be amazed if he didn't inform on some of the things he saw all the time. The process for getting places between here and there. Who, and what. He didn't have the space to handle some wounded awkwardness in the middle of this place. It'd just get washed out with the beers and the waves later. The way it always did.

But for now Danny would just have to deal. Learn to roll with what he'd thought would be a fine plan. Which is why Steve doesn't hesitate. He reached out a hand and tugged the line of Danny's waistcoat lapel to drag him back closer. Finger sliding between his shirt and it while he demanded Danny rather than waiting, or even speaking. Like Steve was impatient and reckless, didn't like sharing his new prize with anyone, even for the most sensible of reasons. He was supposed to be good at what he was here for, too.

Which meant he could suck it the fuck up, himself, too, and not flinch more than the first half second when his cheek brushed Danny's to be able to say more seriously into his ear than the low, fast insinuation of his movement would look from the outside, "We should check out the back." Beat. (Beat of time. Rattling, ratcheting beat of his pulse.) "In case."

He was there. They missed him, because he'd come earlier or at some point when they were looking. Or just shortly ago.

But definitely they should get up, before Steve's chest decided to stop working entirely as he looked at Danny.

[haole_cop]

For all he's used to dragging Steve by the scruff of his shirt, or an arm, or a wrist, it's not normally a mutual thing: Steve doesn't usually reach out to grab Danny, unless Danny's about to unbalance right off a cliff.

Which sort of feels like what's happening, here, except this time it's Steve's fingers gripping his vest that are sending him spiraling, instead of hauling him back from the brink. They yank him almost off balance, making Danny's hand land on Steve's back again, to keep himself upright and to keep from falling straight into Steve. Unexpected. The tug, and the slight brush against his cheek, where freshly-shaved skin turns out to be too sensitive, and goosebumps lift on his neck where Steve's breath is a puff of too-warm air, and his matter-of-fact tone that ought to be a bucket of ice water dumped over Danny's head just gives his over-active nervous system the tiniest of bumps.

It's just. Biological. Not unheard of for anyone to react, to the combination of selfish tug on their clothes and fingers against their chest and cheek brushing theirs and a suggestion breathed into their ear. Even among friends. Even when it's work.

Which is no excuse for the way his hand leaves Steve's back, to curl at the back of his neck, instead, where he's put it so many times, to shake Steve or give him a friendly congratulations or condolences, but it feels different. This time. His thumb lying against Steve's skin. How close -- too close -- he is. How sickeningly, idiotically impossible it is to hear those words and not let impossible images threaten to fill his mind, clog up his breathing, interrupt the job.

Except that's why they're here. The job. The one Steve's doing, and he's right, and Danny should have thought of it, and maybe would have, if it wasn't Steve he was here with.

He needs to stay sharp. He needs to focus. And then he needs to get the fuck out of here, and maybe away from Steve, for a few days. Take a much-deserved and deeply needed vacation, and exorcise every humiliating thing that just crossed his mind because Steve decided to be good at what he does. "Good idea."

He glances over the room, and speaks low, close enough to brush his lips against the shell of Steve's ear.

(He smells good. It's one more, aching, stupid thing to add to the list.)

"If he's around, we might be able to flush him out on the way."

[thebesteverseen]

He's glad his fingers are already fisted in Danny's vest.

At least when he can get there. But getting there is straight through a blast of inferno that has nothing like rational thought. It's not even parsing Danny's voice. Because Danny's lips brush the side of Steve's ear, and everything slants sideways, as his fingers grip the cloth tighter and he's already leaned into the touch, into that warmth, that friction, before he freezes.

Every single warning in his head suddenly flaring into life.

Or maybe it's been screaming the whole time and he can only just hear it.

Thundering in his head, when he's clenching his jaw, teeth pressed to shatter, muscle there trembling at the necessary force, against the battering knowledge and impulse hammering at him like the worst storm he ever withstood. Because it would be be less than half an inch, maybe less than a quarter of it, to press his own mouth to Danny's jaw, and follow it down. Taste the skin brushed against his, in his nose.

The want is explosive. A hunger he hasn't felt at the mercy of for years.

Years. Not since those idiotic first ones when it hit.

He makes himself hold his breath, ignoring the sudden galloping motion in his chest that won't stop as suddenly as the other. Makes himself put those words he couldn't hear together. Danny. Danny agreeing. Because they were doing the job. Going to the back because Steve said he might be back there already. But Danny made a point the rush in Steve couldn't -- didn't want -- to ignore.

That maybe they needed to make a spectacle of themselves before it.

That maybe he was in this room, but he needed an incentive.


Which made Steve draw back. Not far enough. Not by far. Because it's only far enough back that his forehead is only nearly not brushing Danny's. Because he must have jumped to wrong conclusion. Right? That's his brain trying to boil out of his ears, where his ear has not stopped feeling like it's been burnt. Like Danny is still touching it even now. When he's not. When it's his hand on Steve's neck. Keeping him from leaving. Wanting Danny to actually be doing that. Keeping him here. (To pull him in closer.)

There's something terrifying and dangerously exhilarating in the desperate need to know if that was what Danny meant. If that was just the jump-start of what Danny thinks they need to do still, right here, right now. Makes him find Danny's eyes, wander, a little wild, a little too fast, to fall down to his mouth, and come back to his eyes.

He's taken bullets and broken bones like nothing, and he doesn't want to know if he could take this like it was nothing, too. (He couldn't.) Has to. He's better than himself. He has to be. (He wants to go down in flames.)

[haole_cop]

He never signed up for this, and he wishes he could find whatever scrap of paper his name accidentally got scrawled on that said he was, and black it out with permanent ink, tear it to shreds, light those shreds on fire, because he doesn't want this. For Steve to freeze up, when he gets this close. For his fingers to go so tense in Danny's lapel it feels like the fabric's about to rip. For the way his jaw tenses, and Danny's sure he's about to hear the crack of Steve's teeth shattering.

He can't blame him. This is nothing like usual. It's too close, too uncomfortable, too exactly like everything they joked about it needing to look, while Kono laughed at them and said it wasn't gonna be a problem.

But it is. A problem. Danny's problem, and now Steve's, and he wishes he could pull back, when Steve does, but he can't, and they can't, and he wasn't wrong about trying to get attention. If he's here, he's more likely to follow them to the back if they catch his eye, first. If he's not...

Danny should make sure. They should. Look to see if he's here, if that step is even necessary, which is both a relief and a fist reaching to grab a hold of his stomach and squeeze, filtering a cold rush that's a welcome calm -- until it sparks, runs hot under his skin when Steve's eyes wander, drop, lift again, leaving Danny's mouth dry, dry tongue licking dry lips, everything sizzling. He didn't mean. Except he did, didn't he? Suggested they make a scene. Draw some attention. Right now -- he wrenches his eyes away from Steve's mouth to take a glance -- they don't look too different from any other paired off couple of patrons. Leaning a little too close. Talking a little too quietly.

He needs to get a hold of himself. It's the job. And Steve's face -- that cracked-open, startled expression -- they can't have that. Not for the job, and not for the sake of Danny's heart and sanity, because he knows, okay. That it's too much, and he's too much, and he doesn't want to do this any more than Steve does.

Even if it's for vastly different reasons, that largely boil down to self-preservation, and a distaste for taking advantage of his best friend, partner, boss.

It would be smarter to lean back, for a minute, go back to what would look like mild flirting but would in fact be a wet blanket tossed over Danny's head, a space for a breather. That would be the better idea, and then they can regroup, and head to the back.

It's a good idea, except two things happen at once:

First, his head clears enough to realize he's been staring over Steve's shoulder in one direction across the room, and someone's staring back.

Secondly, he knows that face. "Hold on."

His pulse, already kicked into overdrive, takes a hard sidestep, and he wants to swear, wants to kick himself, wants to travel back in time by thirty seconds to smack himself in the back of the head. "That's him, I got eyes on him. I got --"

Too much eyes on him. He can see the way the guy's eyebrows furrow, in the first shading of suspicion, and Danny wants to groan at his own idiocy. He was distracted. He shouldn't have been distracted. "New plan: I think we've got too much of his attention, and not in the good way."

Tipping his head back, eyes lowering to Steve's mouth, like Steve just said something to drag his attention back, while he's speaking low and intent through a smile. It might look good. He's not sure it's good enough. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the guy shift, to face them a little more fully.

He lifts his free hand to cover the one Steve's got at his vest, and it feels like covering the bullethole after getting shot, but it still calms a little of this sudden rushing, flailing panic in his chest, even if he can still hear it in his voice when he says, "Just remember, hitting me is not the look we're going for," before his hand tightens at the back of Steve's neck to drag him in, while Danny tips his, eyes closing, to kiss him.

[thebesteverseen]

He's holding Danny's eyes for too long. That dangerous curling, widening, tightening feeling inside of his chest pulling his ribs in like a void, when he still hasn't gotten to taking another breath. Doesn't want to. Needs to look away. Especially when Danny's eyes search his face. Follow his own line of sight. When Danny licks his lips -- making Steve sure something in his chest is about to snap -- and then he looks away.

Beyond Steve. Leaving him there. Unmoored. Still hovering inches from his face, Danny's fingers on his neck, while Danny is looking over his shoulder. While Danny is doing the fucking job. That Steve needs to be doing. That Steve maybe needs to deck his head into the bar top to remember is the only thing on the planet, on the island, in the room, that he should doing. Because it was nothing. Nothing. Nothing at all.

He can pretend it doesn't feel like someone socked their knife-tipped boot in his gut several times.

It was a fluke. That touch. The only insanity here was the one inside his head. Inside his skin. He said he'd be fine, they'd be fine. He'd make that happen. Danny hadn't probably even though anything about it. Especially since he was looking between Steve and over there. Looking at his eyes specifically, then his mouth specifically again, and subtly back over Steve's shoulder. Where the guy was. All part of the ploy. So specific. Made to look right. But nothing else. Nothing.

He should give Danny a raise.

He might if he didn't think he'd be busy standing in a cold shower the rest of the night.

Words haven't happened yet. Steve's mouth still feels like paste, even wired, with his stomach hollowed and every hair on the back of his neck prickled between the person Danny's talking about and the fingers of Danny's hand still holding on to him in this charade. But he's listening. His eyebrows going up when Danny says things are going south. Meaning he needs to shut down everything that isn't the job. Isn't keeping everyone else in this place safe. How many seconds to reach his gun.

Even when Danny looks back to him, putting a too careful hand over the one he has on Danny's chest, and saying that.
Reminding him, in one last puff of sanity, that this is his job and he's supposed to be able to fake this as well as he bragged.

Danny closes his eyes and leans in, but Steve doesn't. He was trained to walk into the halls of hell wide eyed and ready.

And he isn't ready; but he doesn't close his eyes. They're still open, when Danny's mouth presses against him -- light eyelashes and opposing shadow, haywire awareness, of Danny, of their guy, of Danny, sending everything in his center into a sudden riot. Because it's not supposed to be like this. It's not supposed to ever happen. Except it is. Except Danny's lips are soft, and Steve can't help that sudden, hitched, small gasp of air he sucks in from the surprise.

Or the way it snaps back inside of him, with that part of his lips.

How the fact he's supposed to hold stills, play nice, do this correctly, slides off his lap, and out of his head, or goads, chides, taunts, pleads that it could be, should be, isn't, because he pushes up suddenly, half off his stool and further into Danny's space, fingers tangling too hard into the hand that closed over his. His other one finding Danny's shoulder, while everything in him screamed he had to stop and he couldn't.

[haole_cop]

This is for their cover.

This is for their cover, and that's why Steve won't hit him, but it doesn't mean Danny isn't going to pay for this later, and it doesn't mean Danny isn't going to replay every single second, every angle, every sensation of it over and over and over again in his mind, for what will probably be years to come. Even if he tries to keep it short, chaste, as unlike a kiss as possible, it still would.

And he does try. He does. It's meant to be quick and clean and as close to painless as having a knife shoved into his chest could possibly be, but then Steve's lips part, and Steve's hand twists to clench his, and Steve lets out that soft, surprised noise that lands in Danny's chest like a grenade, burns itself into the walls of his chest. He'll be hearing that gasp for the rest of his natural life, he's sure: will be haunted by it, the way it falls like a quarter into an arcade game and lights him up.

But none of that, none of it, is insurmountable. Still. He could focus. He could do his fucking job. He could ignore the surprise and the tension and the sudden wire-tight thrill that runs through Steve's body, sharp enough that guilt's the only thing Danny can feel, and it should ruin this as a kiss, destroy anything even barely resembling a kiss, but then Steve pushes up, and grips Danny's shoulder with deadly force, and Danny's drowning, falling. Steve's mouth too hard and too impossible to resist. His own parting. A soft sound, like he's been punched, landing hard in the bottom of his throat.

It's impossible. A dream he'll hate himself for in the morning, except that in the dreams, he's never feeling tight-chested from a lack of air, or the discomfort of being pushed back against his stool and the bartop, and Steve doesn't usually taste like red wine, or thrum with desperate energy.

When Danny's trying to remember that this is an act, the job, and Steve's just giving the best he can, because Steve's a fucking SEAL and that's what he does, his best, no matter what, but he can't, because his hand is leaving the back of Steve's to palm the edge of Steve's jaw, and his mouth is parting, and his lungs are burning. There's some voice from far away screaming at him that this probably looks like too much, they should tone it down, but he can't, can't, any more than he could cut off his own leg.

It was never going to happen. It's still not. But his body isn't remembering that. All it knows is that Steve is here, and shoving into his space, and every single cell in Danny only wants to drag him in closer.

[thebesteverseen]

It's a madness without definition.

Or a madness with only one definition. Reinventing itself in a searing suddenness that flares louder than anything else. The shape of Danny's lips. The sudden feel of Danny's mouth. Wet, and warm, and just the hint of sharpness, layered over something he can't name. The touch of his tongue. The force with which he holds still and then suddenly surges up to meet a kiss Steve isn't even directing, demanding, but chases like it's the last breath of air in the world. The taste of scotch tangled up in this noise that comes from Danny and hits Steve like storm of bullets.

Leaving scars, and shrapnel under his skin. He'll hear it all night.

That should be enough. Disaster, and madness. But he wants it again. He wants it again, now.

When Danny feels like a tidal force against him, hand suddenly at his jaw, and Steve wants to drag that noise out again. He wants to storm through every warning turning into a whisper against this explosion burning through him, ripping up the floor and leaving the only points of reason, if anything could be called reason, and light, the points where Danny is touching him. Warm fingers on his jaw and his cheek, and Steve has to keep moving, keep up with him, take more.

While Danny's hands paint up and his own go down, along the side of this vest he's wanted to touch since that first case.

When he has to push closer into Danny, step between his legs, until a thigh is pushing into the too easily tipped stool and Danny is pushed into the very direct stop of the bar top, into everything so wrong. And explosively, selfishly, disastrously right. That betrays everything he swore he never would. Need. Do. Try to think about. Except in those moments. Those moments no one addressed and everyone and their brother saw and joked about. They joked about. Danny joked about. Before they were put away with back slaps and beers on the beach.

A thing that wasn't a thing. Moments that were but weren't moments.

Like this. A racing madness in overdrive that is chased by the fierce anger at any need to breathe aching in his lungs, not prepared in the slightest for the throat that clear next to them suddenly. Or the voice, familiar and close, making him want to swing back up with a violent snarl, and gritted teeth, vengeant threat in every inch of him, even when it is empty of anything but a professional, "Gentlemen."

Steve having to look, even if the movement, pulling back from Danny to look at the person right behind Danny now, feels like punching himself straight through everywhere. Everything still singed, running lightning, and on fire, while the man behind the bar, who has been behind the bar the whole time, only gives a deft nod toward the back of the room and Steve stares, eyes dark, throat dry and air shallow. Because. Because there were rules catches up with him like a someone dropped a bucket of ice on his head and shoved a knife in his stomach.

Making his eyes dart back to Danny, with the same dreadful reminder, in a completely different, devastating, way.




Because there were rules.

[haole_cop]

Danny's had a lot of nightmares, since he was a kid, about drowning. About the impossible, implacable force of water, the unstoppable grip of a riptide, closing around his ankle, dragging him under. About not being able to breathe, and waking up with a bursting chest and panicked gasps that for a long moment still feel more like swallowing water than air.

This is like that.

He shouldn't be surprised. Steve is a force of nature, and Steve's favorite problem-solving method is to go straight through whatever barrier has appeared, and Danny should not be surprised that Steve's competitive nature and hard-wired need to be the best are running the show here. He shouldn't be surprised at the way Steve surges up, or how he shoves Danny back, or even the way his leg slides between Danny's in a way Danny knows will be playing back in his head, in brilliant, ultra-saturated color, for the rest of the night. It's not surprising that Steve wants to make it look good, or that Steve goes for broke, because that's what Steve does, who he is. The one who goes the extra mile or hundred. The one who keeps moving, on broken bones and not enough blood, fueled by stupid jokes and an unshakeable, impenetrable, steel wall of willpower.

None of that should surprise Danny, and he might even be able to remember that, if it weren't for the way Steve's hands travel down his sides, palms heavy and possessive and nothing like Danny remembers ever seeing, against Catherine's dresses or tank tops or even the bare skin of her stomach in one of her many bikinis during one of their many days at the beach.

Like Steve wants to burn straight through this nice vest and this starched and tailored and too-expensive shirt, the way he's burning through Danny's skin. Drowning him, until all Danny can taste or see or feel is Steve, and how wrong he was when he thought he knew how heavy Steve is, how big, how terrifyingly strong, how delicate that trigger really is, like a mousetrap straining to spring at the slightest touch.

Danny's going to hate himself for this, and maybe Steve, a little, too, for being so good at it. Making it look good.

Making it look too good, maybe, because Steve drags away, sharp and sudden, and Danny's lost for a second in a swell of unexpected and dearly needed oxygen, and on Steve's face. Looking. Dangerous. Like he wants to snap someone's neck. Cracked, or cracking. Taken by surprise, which is never a good thing to do to Steve, and Danny would warn whoever it was, tell them to get lost, because it's him Steve should be taking it out on, but then Steve looks back at him, and his face is full of dread.

Or distaste, maybe. Sinking a rock in Danny's stomach, because maybe it looked good and maybe it felt too good, but Steve's just doing what he does, the job, being the best at it, and Danny's job is to make sure that doesn't take the floor right out from under him.

Which makes him swallow against a sandpaper throat, and turn a little, to the bartender, who gives him a polite, disinterested smile, while Danny shrugs, letting his hand drift back to Steve's waist, as casually as he can make it, before moving to the center of his chest and giving a little push, while Danny stands up from the stool, away from the bar, searching for cool, calm, level.

Everything Steve just obliterated, that they still need, because they're still on the job. "Listen, if you wanted to get out of here, you could have just said so."

[thebesteverseen]

I want to get out of here, he nearly says. It slams his teeth like a tank.

The thought is disastrous. The way it hits him hard, when Danny is shrugging smugly, like this is nothing. Like his mouth isn't slightly pink and wet in a way Steve has never, never, never seen it, and will never, never, never see again, and will never, never, never forget seeing now. Danny putting his hand on Steve's waist and making Steve's body give off every urge it shouldn't. The want to lean in even more, sick and twisted. Every bit every insult Danny has said of his head and never meant.

When he shoves it down. Shoves the fire, not even into ice, but into blackness. It's a box so deep. Trying to force himself as far from the bare inches from Danny he is. A thousand miles. A million leagues. Draws a breath in and with it a lazy, arrogant smirk out for the bartender when Danny's hand is on his chest, blistering through his shirt like a brand, and giving him a push.

That he moves away with. Like his steps are easy.

Like he wants to move away from Danny; like he doesn't want to run.

But he doesn't run. SEALs don't run. They make a strategic retreat only to better attack of the OA and only when there are no other options that won't eradicate all resources and man power on hand. So. He doesn't. Run. He doesn't freeze. He doesn't let himself feel everything running through him, scatter shot and battered, feeling cut and burned everywhere. Just lets himself smirk like the bartender is still in on it with him.

Like he's just won the establishment what he was supposed to.

A pleased patron, who can't keep their hands off him. Or pocketbook to himself.

He makes the hand on Danny's chest still release the cloth between his fingers, like it's a lever and pulley. A machine only barely attached to him. Smooth though. Like diffusing a bomb. Hand sliding up Danny's arm fast to catch the hand that just pushed him, and say, "I didn't think you needed things spelled out."

Beat. "Didn't feel like it."

His throat is made of ashes and glass shards as he doesn't wait for Danny's reaction. His fingers sliding around Danny's wrist as his feet swivel and he pulls Danny to follow him. The way he should. The spider to the fly. To take him where he should be wanting to go already. Somewhere more secluded. Somewhere that things are more acceptably loose. Hotter. Harder. Welcome.

Lets his eyes slide across the room, like he isn't looking at anyone, avoiding anyone behind him, looking for the right person of the handful watching them and decidedly not watching them at all. Some who approved of the spectacle, seeing either what they want to watch or wanted to be doing, being done to them, and even those who find it distasteful. And then him. The man watching them the way a wolf would. The one Steve wants to stare down, feels his muscles tremble with the wanting to tense and bull rush, put all of this insanity to something good, something right, something he's allowed, but he doesn't.

His eyes, laughing eyes, glide over him as fast as the rest of the room.

As though he is only focused on dragging away the quarry he already had.

[haole_cop]

He said, didn't he? He said he was going to pay for this. He knew it, five minutes ago, twenty, yesterday, when this plan got cooked up. How they'd wait for the weekend night, when the place was likely to be at its busiest. How they'd pair off. Launching jokes at each other, and taking them from Chin and Kono and Lou about what was likely to go down, whether either of them even knew how to flirt anymore, or make it look good.

Well, they do. Steve does. Makes it look real, makes it feel real, and he's good enough at it he managed to fool that unshakeable, implacable certainty Danny's been living on for the last few years.

That it could never happen. That Steve would never. Not even to catch a crook.

Up until a minute ago, Danny might have thought -- since it was never going to happen, and therefore the thought was harmless -- that a fake kiss would be better than nothing. That he would give anything just for one. Just to know what it would be like, to torture himself more with intimate knowledge of what he can't have, of being able to picture it, remember it, live it over and over again.

A minute ago, he was an idiot.

This is so much worse, and it's only going to go further south. Steve's hand on his wrist, tugging, and Steve's smug smirk, that's just a gloss, along with those words, that Danny's sure he knows the real meaning of. That didn't feel like it means that was too much, that the smirk is there, plastered on, but not solidly enough to hide the way Steve's face went blank and distant. The way it does when he's boxing something up, shoving it away, into the shadows. Something to never think about again. Something to willfully forget.

He fucked up. But there's no time and no way to apologize, until this is done, because Steve's dragging him through the room, heading for that back door, and Danny's supposed to be looking pleased with himself and more than a little turned on.

Needs to put on a show. Make sure that wasn't for nothing, that when Steve confronts him about it later, it will have turned out to be worth it.

He catches a glimpse of the mark, but doesn't allow his eyes to settle, just laughs and lets Steve tug him, like Danny's allowing it, like it's part of the game, until they're at that door and he gives the man next to it an impatient nod, breaks his wrist out of Steve's grip to push lightly at the center of his back. "This better be worth the fact I didn't get to have my drink."

[thebesteverseen]

Danny comes along, the way Danny's supposed to come along.

Half following and half jumping to his side, to be right there with him.

Excited to get into this part of the night. This thing he paid for, even if Danny didn't use it as the excuse. Steve not even remembering the paid for, but untouched, wine glasses until Danny's hand is finding the middle of his back and he's trying not tense up at all or look back to the next pair of wine glasses bought and lost here. But not important anymore. Not the glasses. Not the hand on his back, pushing him forward.

Only the man neither of them is looking at, whom Steve is positive is following their every move. Will follow them.

Steve wishes impossibly that he was already making his move, so Steve could take everything jangling in his veins, in his lengthening breaths, as breathing normally comes back, out on that man. He would love any excuse to take the man down, as physically as possible at this second. This exact one, when he grins down at Danny at his shoulder, and leans in, with what sounds like half a joke and half a smoldering promise, all covered in absolutely certainty. "I'm always worth it."

He says it like he buys it. He says like he always says it to Danny like it nothing in the world could be the truth. Like everyone else in the world agrees. And not like the words hit some sore spot he doesn't want to look at. That makes him feel too old, too settled into being one thing that can never be another thing, too certain that he's gotten all the proof he really ever needed about that now. Things he's not looking at. Things that are buried in other boxes. With other people.

Left behind as just a pressed on sore spot that's absolved to nothingness as the man at the door takes one look at the flower and ribbon on his lapel and opens the door for them. There is not 'gentleman' from this one. No smile. Just a nod, to let them in. He's not staff. He's security. He's broad and wide, and Steve has to wonder without casing him too obviously what branch of the military or something like it he might have come from. Or whether it's all appearance and he's rough under the collar, too.

He doesn't have time for that either, though, when they are walking through into the back area that Steve hadn't many specs for but a rather broad idea of what he'd fine. But that every single thing he could set his eyes on --

another wide room, full of wide booths, viewing area seating, a handful of stages, at least a dozen doors, some closed and some open, in the walls, people closer than shadows all over those places, in sets of two and even more than sets, some people still fully dressed to the nines and some decidedly gotten to a looser state even out in the open, jackets and shirt disarrayed or half lost, waiters with those same regimentally tailored tuxes carrying things to and fro, and half of those everywhere with the same flower and ribbon as him

-- was just that much more evidence that would make even one of their testimonies close this place in a single day.

[haole_cop]

It's basically the jackpot, the room through this door. They could arrest everyone in here, and the proprietor, and the security guard, on just Danny's initial scan of the area. Dubious ethics and non-existent legality, and part of him wants to do exactly that: pull out his piece and his badge and order every damn person in here up against the wall, no matter their state of undress. He wants to take it out on someone, or a crowd of someones, make their night as bad as his, make them as uncomfortable, as guilt-ridden, as frustrated. He wants the upper hand. He wants to ruin their night.

But it'll have to wait. All of this is bad, but it isn't sex trafficking, and it's not out and out prostitution. Every one here is here because they want to be, not because they've been kidnapped and sold into slavery, or drugged to the gills and manipulated. They might be scumbags, but they aren't killers.

Murderers. Like the guy he's sure will be following them in here. They haven't been able to pinpoint his tactics, so they'll have to be on their toes, which means Danny needs his brain to de-fog, now. He has to be able to think, react, keep watch, jump into action. They can't take any stupid chances with this guy.

What they have, though, is a head start, and a dim room, and Danny's hand leaves Steve's back, grips his upper arm in a more familiar motion, tugging him toward the side, to a little alcove with a good vantage point of both the door and the rest of the room, that will still afford them some cover. The mark will be able to see them when he comes in, but that's part of the point, right? And if he doesn't, he'll go for someone else, and they'll get him, then.

All of it easier to think about, than how he's pulling Steve into the shadows, until he feels his own back up against the wall, and Steve's close again. Too close. Or just close enough. To look right, because it still needs to look right, even while Danny's checking over his shoulder at the door that's still closed. "I don't see him."

He feels like he's just run a mile. Breath shallow, pulse racing, and Steve's so close, close enough that even when Danny lets go of his arm, he doesn't know where his hand should go, because there's not a lot of room left.

Just enough for him, and this growing sense of awkward trepidation, that doesn't get any better when he looks from over Steve's shoulder, to up at Steve. Apologies falling apart to dust in his mouth, uncertain and sick. It's not time yet. They aren't clear yet. He doesn't know what to say, only that he should be sorry.

Leaving him with only a pause, for a second too long, while his eyes flick away, before they come back. "I think we got his attention, yeah."

[thebesteverseen]

Steve is still casing this room, adding up which doors are likely meeting rooms, bed rooms, or potentially exits or entrances. Because the only way out in a rat hole is not the front door. It's always set up to scatter. Which is why he isn't entirely thinking it through when he follows where Danny tugs him. He always follows. Especially when he's busy. What he isn't expecting, is to look back and find himself catching a hand, then forearm on the wall slightly above Danny's head so he won't smack it straight into Danny's face. Chest. Something.

Because there is suddenly a wall. A very solid, very steady, very present wall, just behind Danny's back.

And Danny has drug him here. Into the shadows. Into this space where he's suddenly aware of something he's maybe always know but never needed proof of, that Danny is shorter than him. Enough that he can make a barricade right over him. That it's would be so easy. Just to lean back in. That this is almost like everything else. Like other people. Except it's not other people. Because Danny has never been other people. And Steve didn't need to know he fit right here.

It's another thing the cold water will never scrape clean. He'll end up standing in it all night. Forehead against the slick tile trying not to think about this right here. And how he could just. But he can't. Shouldn't. Needs to stop thinking. He's not supposed to think. Remember. Put it away. It's the case. It was just for the job. It didn't mean anything. Won't ever mean anything. It was just like every other bad cop, good cop routine they've ever pulled. A necessity of the case.

Danny isn't even looking at him, but over his shoulder, over toward the door, while he's stuck looking at Danny's face too close to his. The hair just below his jacket sleeve that is still perfectly domed for this outfit and at least absolutely, thank god, nothing like the way Steve likes it best. When it's soft and everywhere. A thing he almost never sees unless Danny ends up on the beach of gets drug out too early on a weekend morning to go some place Steve has badgered him into agreeing with.

That Danny will go, because Danny is the best friend he has.
Maybe the only real one who actually knows and gets everything.

Most of everything. Everything he's allowed to have. That Steve can give.
That demands everything, but without asking for more. Without needing more.

A thing Steve knows he's crushing between his fingers, because it's more important than the way his pulse is trying to hammer in his ears. Danny's voice so close to him. Dragging him down. Knowing he can't look stiff as a board, like he's trying to do anything but close the inches between them. Which means pushing in. Looking like he wants to eradicate every inch of the shadows around them from between their bodies.

Makes him have to ignore the glaring hate for everything being behind his back suddenly. All of these people, and that man when he does make his appearance. Because he'll follow, and he'll be looking for them. He might get dissuaded or distracted, might pick someone else. But for the moment they are marked, and that means it has to look anything but like a trap he's just going to open the door into.

Means Steve has to not roll his eyes or let out that black ache starting in his chest again, when he makes himself drop his head, back and posture shifting to be able to have his chin brush Danny's shoulder and shift, so that if his nose jut barely brushes the side of Danny's throat, just enough it will, could look like. While he says as evenly as he can force his voice, low and sharp, a caustic almost black laugh, like standing on burning metal and pretending his skin wasn't starting to peel.

"You think?"