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

[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?"

[haole_cop]

Steve hesitates, and then folds in on him, and Danny hates doing this to him, but not as much as he hates the way he shivers when Steve's nose brushes against his neck, and Steve's breath puffs against skin that feels wired to a clutch of explosives ticking somewhere beneath his ribs.

He hates his own body, for that shiver, and for the way it wants to press into Steve, and for how his hands -- somehow both now on Steve's coat, one at his arm and the other at his waist -- tighten, reflexive.

Maybe as much as he hates that laugh, and Steve's displeasure at the whole scenario, at needing to do this, at continuing the illusion instead of just barging through the wall and making the collar, taking the mark out with the maximum degree of efficient violence.

He knows Steve hates it, too, but they're stuck, at least for a few minutes, until whatever move their guy is going to make gets made, and Steve is pressed against him, all along him, in a way that makes him scramble to remember football plays, multiplication tables, anything that isn't Steve's long, lean bulk blanketing him. Walling him in. Focused on him in a wholly new and dangerous way, that he's never seen before, only briefly imagined, without ever getting it right.

How Steve blots out the whole rest of the room, and Danny wouldn't be able to move, if Steve decided he shouldn't. How it could be. How it would feel. Pressed between the wall and Steve. What it would be like with nowhere to retreat to, not even the edge of a stool, or the line of a bartop.

The hand at Steve's arm slides up his shoulder, and Danny cants his head to get a better look at the room, giving the impression he's just baring his neck more, for everything he's not actually getting, that will be seared onto the backs of his eyelids tonight in Technicolor.

Watching as one man leaves an alcove not unlike theirs, and makes his way to the other end of the room, to another door. The exit, maybe. The back way, out to the alley where the bodies were all piled.

The soft click of a latch calls Danny's attention back, and he glances the way they came, to see a line of light appear, only to be blotted out by one figure. Alone.

"Looks like he decided to come join the party."

[thebesteverseen]

People joke. They joke about everything they do, and don't do.

From the screaming and fighting, to the biting that's just normal, to the way they move in sync without thinking about it. They call it their partnership. Their friendship. They call it knowing each other for so long it's impossible not to. They been through the good and the bad. They back each other up on every single thing in the book.

If one gives, the other takes. If one steps, the other slides in. If one drops, the other covers.

And when Danny's hands are tightening on his side, somewhere in the far distance, but right next to him Danny tilts his head wide, Steve shifts and his mouth is moving against the skin of Danny's throat, a sideways line straight upward, before it's even a thought. Not a kiss. Just a shift. Just. As though it could be a just when his chest catches in a spasm. As though the warmth isn't an explosion against his mouth, when all he's doing is talking, can contain the just that turns everything in his stomach straight into steam and swallowing so hard it might as well contain a canon ball.

"Eyes on the prize," Steve forces himself to say. Even if it's right into Danny's skin. Even if he can't defend the tone of his voice, the way it's gone thick and dark. Even if he's not sure if he's telling Danny, or forcibly reminding himself out loud, where Danny will have it to beat him the hell over the head with. When everything and nothing in him wants to listen. Wanting to go rigid with awareness, even though he's already half plastered against Danny.

And there are reasons not to think about that word. Things he needs to stop trying to happen.

That being pressed against Danny, realizing the friction against the rise of his top lip is Danny's pulse, is not helping.

He makes himself push it forward, makes himself try to focus on anything but his mouth brushing Danny's skin in other places as he tries to straighten a little, without looking like he needs to be fifteen feet away, or a whole island, half the globe. "What's he doing?"

[haole_cop]

He's got one eye on the mark, and his mouth open to report back in a whisper, when Steve shifts, and everything just goes haywire. Drops a cannonball in his stomach. Floods his skin with hot blood, and flushes it out again with ice, while Steve's mouth moves straight up the side of his neck, and Danny can't stop the strangled noise that feels like something in his chest is dying.

His heart, presumably. The one that can't take this, that maybe wasn't content with what it had before, but can't be taunted like this, either. How close to real it is, and how far it still manages to be.

Because real isn't an option. He'll be lucky if Steve even talks to him after this, if Steve doesn't question that sound, or Danny's hands all over him, or how Danny kissed him in the middle of a room full of people.

Even while Steve's reminding him of the job, and trying to get information, because he's carrying out the fucking mission while Danny's still trying to figure out if the lower half of his legs are still attached to the rest of him. Only noticing now how his hand has left Steve's shoulder to cup the back of his head, and wanting, insanely, with obliterating heat, to just pull. Drag him in and shove him back into Danny's throat, where Danny's pulse is leaping and skidding. On purpose. For real.

Except Steve is already stiffening, drawing back, and Danny can't blame him, as much as he wants to, because Steve doesn't, can't know that it's wrecking him. Dangling in front of Danny everything he knows he shouldn't want, but does, because Steve is impossible and irresitable and he drives Danny crazy, but he's the one who's always been there. Who saved them all. Who keeps being left behind.

Which is why Danny can't, and why he relaxes his fingers a little, even if it feels like they need to be broken with pliers in order to be forced to let go. "He's casing the room."

He is. The guy. Walking in, like a predator. Eyes drifting from group to group. Looking for whoever might be unlucky enough to grab his attention, and ire. "Picking a target, would be my guess."

[thebesteverseen]

That sound. That sound is. Steve is going to die on that sound.

It's worse than being shot. It's worse than watching the machete that was coming for his throat. It's worse than moving blocks of stone to realize there was rebar sticking straight through Danny. Maybe just below that doorway, and the moment Danny walked out of that prison, limping and holding himself like his insides might fall out if he didn't. Moments Steve was sure he was going to snap and lose it.

Different ways, but all of them that. All of this that.

The sudden reddening madness threatening, and a spasm of something like hate, disgust.

When he can't tell if it's for Danny or for himself. For the overwhelming urge in his own skin, or the fact he has to force himself on Danny for the case, even if Danny did drag him over. That this has to look good. That Danny has the damned wherewithal to do that. To. Just. Fuck. Forget the shower. He was never going to sleep. Nothing would be loud enough. Cold enough. Nothing would drown out that noise in his ears. The way it vibrated through Danny's throat to his lips.

The way he can't even pull away, because Danny's fingers are suddenly on the back of his head. Pushing in on his skin, his skull, the bones in his neck, places only two people ever get to touch at all, and even then rarely. That hand shaking against him, and Steve doesn't want it to be this real. Doesn't want this close. Doesn't want to know how badly Danny might be keeping from shoving him away. It's going to chase every dream and nightmare. He's never going to want to sleep.

Or be awake. Maybe he'll just drink himself into an inability for all of the above.

Until he can't think. Until he can't remember. Until Danny's cologne isn't everywhere, and his skin.

His voice right next to Steve's ear, doing exactly what he told him to, asked him to relay. Because Steve hates not having eyes on him. Hates it. Because he can't focus. All he has is the hell that is Danny's skin and the wall that they are pressed against, and he needs something else. More words. Something to pulverize. Even if it's just slamming his head into the wall. Even though he can't. Even though he has to listen. And somehow not to the short, fast breaths in and out his nose.

"Stay on him," Steve says. Like Danny needs anyone to tell him his job. But Steve is always telling him his job. They're both always calling the shots. Apart. Together. He has to keep his fractured, and fracturing thoughts, from wobbling. From the desperate spike that makes him want those words to mean something else. Like the universe was messing with his mouth. When the idea of staying here, wanting to stay here, wanting to be here, shoved against this wall, to stay.

It's wrong. It's so wrong. He has to stop. They have a job. They have a job. They have a job.

He's racking his brain as hard as possible without actually hitting it on the wall.
Then. Because it means movement. Because it means attention.

Steve's hands slide up even as he takes a step back, hating and needing it so badly. Fingers catching on the buttons of that vest, and pulling at them, as he drags Danny out of the shadows and into the light. Eyes blown dark, but making himself try to effect that same smile from before. Maybe it works. Maybe it's been dipped in gasoline and shot through with a blow torch instead. But the words he says are clear for anyone nearby to hear, as he tips his head toward one of the earlier open doorways, "Hallway."

And starts pulling Danny by the undone parts of his far too nice suit toward just that. As though he needed Danny.

Here. Now. As though the room might be too open, but the hallway was far enough. Private enough. Public enough.

[haole_cop]

He hates everything about tonight, but he especially hates the way that Steve stepping back feels like he's slit Danny's stomach and all his guts have come spilling out, sudden and irreplaceable. It leaves him off-balance, his hands left in the air, where they got pulled from Steve's hair and his waist. He's a stumbling idiot, and gravity just flipped on its own head, and Steve is smiling at him.

Not at him. Or for him. It's for the perp. For the job. To make it look good, and Steve is doing a good job, a great job, too good a job at selling the world on thinking he wants Danny, which should be impossible, because it is. Would always be. Doesn't even work in Danny's head, when he lets himself wonder, sometimes, after Steve has given him too long a hug, or that unreadable but warmly affectionate look he gets sometimes, when they're out on the beach in the chairs and Steve is feeling especially content. The glances he sometimes catches through their office windows, that are only because Steve's desk faces his. Nights out, that got filled with more friendly back slaps and arms slung around Danny's neck than usual.

Everything Steve does, when Steve cares about a person, without wanting that person. But trusting them. Caring. Sure. Loving.

All of just Steve, being Steve. Probably how he was with his Navy buddies, back in the day. Comfortable in physical affection, without worrying about it being weird, or unwanted. Danny knows those looks, and those touches, and he's almost managed to stop being gutted by them, when they come by surprise.

It's these he's got no strategy for, because Steve's eyes are dark and his face is flushed and his hand in Danny's vest is insistent, even while he's reminding Danny of the reason they're here, confusing the biological, lizard-brain impulse deep in Danny's skull to pause in confusion, about how this feels and looks and what it really is. "I got him."

He does. Is keeping track of him, even as Steve's dragging him towards that open door, and the inside of Danny's skull is a roaring wash of white noise. "He's watching."

Waiting, maybe. To see what they'll do. If it's enough to pique his interest.

Danny hopes so. Fervently, maybe even to the point of prayer, because he's not sure he can take making it look any better.

[thebesteverseen]

He needs Danny to stop looking at him like this. Like he's been plugged into a light socket and blown. His edges all singed, and his face a riot of. Steve doesn't even know. He can't stare at it. He can't parse it. He can't stop and figure it out. He only knows certain seconds of it as it catches under his feet, while he's dragging Danny and Danny is following, relating more. Every single sign that Danny was wrong. That Danny is in over his head. That Danny takes it back.

This is why it was a lie, broad stroked. I would have gone with the gay thing.

He probably would have when there was a closed door, and no one had to see them. As the cover of words. When Steve didn't have to throw himself at Danny like a cheap suit -- even if this suit, and this place -- is nothing like cheap. Even if it feels it right now. When his hands are pulling on Danny by the now-unbuttoned sides of his vest. Like he's supposed to. Like he's allowed. Like nothing is wrong except that even this room has more going on in it than Steve wants.

Like he can't tell. That something is very, very, very wrong.

The way he knows, with one look, when everyone else just think Danny's being a miserable grump.
Which is the look Danny has right now. When he doesn't even pretend as they're walking. It's going to be bad.

"Good," he says, forcing himself to keep the loose, caustic smile he pulled out. Like Danny said something perfect to him.In another conversation, between two other people neither of them will ever be.

Like Danny isn't drifting further and further from him in this education he didn't need. This plan that they could have found some other way to go about handling. He should have stopped it. Shouldn't have taken Danny at his word. All bravado and jokes. Everyone laughing and saying it would be a walk in the park. When it was everything but. He's an asshole for enjoying any second of Danny's hands. Or that kiss. Not stopping himself when he should have. Before he fucked everything over without thinking. Like Danny is always screaming at him about.

The hallway isn't too long, but there's definitely less lighting, Steve can see, the closer they get. Even if Steve wants to drop his hands, wants to tell Danny something along the lines of you're doing good or it's fine, they're too far in now. They need him him to be interested in them, or to just choose a mark. One Steve would rather was them. Because it would be cleaner. Because he wants that now. Something to break for everything he's broken. Still breaking.

He hates himself. That guy. The night. The year, maybe. Especially when pulls Danny to one side to be able to see the guy, again before, he pushes Danny into the door frame like he'd gotten impatient, with not being able to touch him, pulling him across the room. Needing to not vanish in a puff of smoke entirely down the hallway, but keep the guys attention. On them. Over here. Give him something to chase down, already headed somewhere dark and private. Away from the crowd.

Steve feels sick with himself, for the way his chest is out of air and not gaining any back.

Remotely. "Only a little longer now." Maybe it's supposed to be an apology. Or a promise. He doesn't know if it's to Danny for hating him for tonight, or himself for that same thing. Especially when he leans in to kiss Danny again. Thinking it was never supposed to happen, but it was never supposed to be like this. He'll be pretending for weeks to Danny that this was nothing, nothing but doing the job, and he'll be trying to drown it every other second.

Because finding Danny's mouth again is like stepping into lava and expecting to somehow be able to keep standing.
Which he will. He has to. For Danny. For Danny he has to be better than even he'd be for the case. For Danny.

[haole_cop]

He hates this perp, he hates this place, he hates this night, he hates himself, and he hates the look on Steve's face, that's half a bandit smile and half wrapped in yellow CAUTION tape, shuttering in on itself in that way no one else in the world ever seems to see, except Danny, who can never understand why they don't.

Because it's not Steve. That easy-going, surfer-boy aloha waggle of his fingers and quirk of his mouth, lazy blue eyes, relaxed shoulders. It can be, at home, at the beach, with the team, with Grace and her friends. But not when it's out in the world. Not when Steve's smiling, but his eyes have gone distant.

Danny should check in with him, say, who knows. God. Something. Any one of the million words he always has at his fingertips that have always worked to relax Steve before, make him laugh, haul him back from teetering into the minefield of his own mind. Apologize, or make a joke about how Steve's so good at this he's almost got Danny fooled, which would make everyone laugh and relax a little and only burn off an inch or two of his own skin with turpentine.

But he can't, because they're still on the job, and he's trying to keep eyes on their guy, which is almost impossible to do when Steve's hauling him around like this. On any other day, he'd relieve the tension a little by bitching about it, complaining that Steve can't give him a task and then make it impossible for Danny to actually do that task, except he does it all the time, God forbid Danny spend a single day on this job jumping through zero hoops, but he can't do that, either. All he can do is let Steve pull him, like he would if he were the person he's pretending to be, and Steve were the person he's pretending to be, until Steve stops, and then gives Danny no time to question it, before he's being pushed, back, feet catching and his hands on Steve's wrists to steady himself, until his back hits something solid hard enough to push the breath out of his chest.

Or maybe that's just the look on Steve's face. This one he doesn't know, and can't parse: wild and a little desperate and cagey, as strange as his whispered words are, that Danny opens his mouth to respond to -- say it's fine, or something like it, anything to wipe that face off Steve's face, but then Steve leans in and it all goes up in flames.

Everything. Hits like a match to a bubble of gas, punched straight through him, from his feet right through the top of his head. He feels like a marshmallow left in a microwave: expanding in fast-forward and exploding everywhere, leaving sticky, messy bits of his heart all over this room.

Because it is his heart. This ache. This explosion. Not his brain, that's been strangled right out of existence, or even his instinct. His stupid, clumsy heart, that's making him push back into Steve, and shove stupid, clumsy fingers into Steve's hair to drag him down, while the other hand fists in his jacket, lets go, slides under the fabric along Steve's side.

Some alarm, somewhere beneath the drowning and the choking dust, screaming that this isn't making it look good, it's taking too much. Everything he can't have, shouldn't want. Nothing that's on offer.

Steve kissed him for the job, but Danny can't seem to convince his body of it, because all it wants to do is kiss Steve back.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve, who is admittedly, no matter how many times he rolls his eyes like Danny is exaggerating to the moon, a tank, went for gentle. Professional. The job. A thing he didn't do. Didn't even want to do. But he could do. This time. This time, for the guy watching, if he was ready for it. Knew it was coming. Could brace. He could make an effort to make it look good, without losing his head and forgetting entirely not to swarm Danny like he was actually asking for it. He can shut all the lights down and the heat off.

Just an action. Like cocking a gun and firing. Like breaking a bone. Leaping off twelve stories.
It can be the motions and the case. It's the reason he says the words. So Danny knows. It's almost over.
He won't have to put up with all of this too much longer. He can make it just show. Reinvent his skin as accessory.

It even works. For about three seconds. His eyes are actually closed this time. Because he doesn't want to see it. He doesn't want more of Danny's eyelashes, and his skin this close. He can't erase the rest, but he could choose not to over-inundate the moment. At least he could have before Danny decided that punching him in the teeth with his mouth was the answer to Steve actually making an effort. Because Danny doesn't just lean back and let it happen.

Danny pushes up into him suddenly. Solid bulk, and bumping chests. Hands, Steve can't even keep track of suddenly. In his hair, pulling him hard, down, in. Mouth open and kiss solid. Hands. Lips. Hard friction. Down his neck. Fisting his jacket. Suddenly pushing up under his jacket. Everywhere. Danny's hands are suddenly just everywhere, and everything else is just gone. Because Danny's is dragging him in, and he's leaning into the buck of Danny's body into him, like he could push Danny straight into the wall with his own.

Not even like that. Fuck. Like he was one of these people.

Like he wanted every inch between them gone. Wants to cover every inch of Danny's body with his own. Every scrap of cloth and lie. Because the lie burns more than the clothes or the touch. Than this kiss that is blistering the inside of his mouth, while he can't not meet Danny like Danny is the only source of air left anywhere. Like he hasn't dreamt of this, ached over this, like an idiot, like he hasn't caught every light kiss Danny ever gave out to girlfriend in his presence, for years.

He doesn't want more half-lies and half-truths in his head, in his bed, in his dreams that are always nightmares.

Not with Danny's face. Not like this. Danny is the one place he's safe.

Usually.

Except nothing about this is safe. Feels anything like it.

Nothing about the way he pushes, tries not to rutt, straight into the hand palming sharp warm straight through the thin dress shirt and the stomach pressed to him. When he's can't even form the lies he'll need to sell for everything his body is saying. Doing. Not stopping himself from doing. Because he isn't. Because somehow. He doesn't even remember. But his fingers are pushing into Danny's hair and he's kissing Danny's head into that wall, angry and apologetic and disgusted, and everything is falling out of his hands, because nothing else fits if Danny is in them.

[haole_cop]

There's not enough of his sanity or sense of self-preservation to wonder if he's gone too far, to try and figure out what he'll say about this, when Steve asks him later, and how he could possibly try to lie when the truth is so obvious. There's nothing in his head except a loud buzz, drowning out all thought, killing itself on the taste of Steve in his mouth, filling up his nose.

Steve, who curves into him like the tide, and the closest comparison Danny can come up with is that it's not unlike the times Steve has body-checked a perp into a brick wall, or oncoming traffic. He's never seen Steve kiss anyone like this. He has seen Steve hit people like this.

With everything he has. Throwing every ounce of effort into it, every pound of muscle and bone. Bending all his willpower into it.

Doing exactly what he would be doing, if Steve were the guy Steve demonstrably isn't. One who would come here.

But Danny can't even think that clearly, when Steve's kissing him into the doorframe, and Danny's hand is fisting in Steve's shirt, material too thin to not sear his hand on the heat radiating off his skin. He can't not feel it, and he won't be able to forget, not if he sticks his head in the sink and runs the cold water tap over it for the rest of the night, or stands in a cold shower, or dumps ice over his head. Steve's hot against his hand, and Danny wishes he didn't know it, almost as much as he's desperate to know what it would be like with no fabric in the way at all. Each contraction of the muscle his fingers are against like a kick to the chest.

It's madness. He needs to pull back, but there is no place to pull back too, because Steve's blanketing him, and the doorframe is at Danny's back. His lungs are burning. Heart hammering, fast enough to make him dizzy. Or it could be the lack of oxygen. Or it could be Steve.

He needs to get eyes on the perp, before he comes up and drugs one of them to drag off, or gets the drop on them. He needs to get his hands everywhere on Steve that he can. He needs to get his hands right the fuck off of Steve, before it's too late, before this stops being something they'll be able to work past, or ignore.

Before he ruins it. As if he hasn't, probably, already ruined it. Fear and longing mixing sour and sharp in his throat, while Steve's dedicatedly trying to melt Danny's brains out of his ears. Giving it all he's got. Maybe punishing Danny the only way he can, right now.

It's too much. It's not enough. It's so wrong. Everything he needs to stop.

But he can't take his hands off Steve. And pulling back feels like ripping duct tape off his own skin, even when there's no room to go.

[thebesteverseen]

It's pressure storm swelling and swelling behind his breastbone. A warning about the lack of air, or one about the fact he's finally going to just explode. Which Danny's hair against his palm, curled into his gripping fingers. He doesn't know. He doesn't want to know. Danny's hand hard and hesitating on him. He knows it somehow. Without looking. Without being able to focus. Somehow. In the way Danny's gripping the cloth under his jacket and against his stomach, side, like a lifeline, a rope off a cliff. So hard. Nearly shaking. With.

Steve might want it to be anything else--

A stutter step before those hands were just as reckless as they were a second ago. Shoving his jacket aside. His shirt. Maybe even his pants. Until Danny's fingers were on his skin, like a brand, like another tattoo he could never remove, and not a layer of cloth that seems so trivial that it being gone would make him burned even

-- but it's like having a ice shoved at him.

Because it's not. Danny's not. And he needs to take it for what it is. Pay attention. Stumble back from the brink of full out insanity. Like he can tell. Listens. Knows. The way he's seen Danny's hand clench the door frame when the car is going too fast. Shakes and holds hard. White knuckled. Loud. Refusing to give in, even when terrified. Pissed as fuck. Disgusted. And today Steve is the car. The car Danny always, and never, yells about Steve driving.

An today Steve is the car, and there is no always or never here. Because it's not real.
Because Danny needs him to stop, needs him to get off. Because Danny can play well, if he has to.
But doesn't want this. Not anymore than the car going over a hundred, Steve with a gun, instead of a seat belt.

Steve nearly groaned, teeth wanting to snap, shatter, melt, with the rest of him, black as the shame and anger that smacks through him, when he drags his face back. Half an inch. An inch at the most. Trying to find air. Trying to find sanity. Trying not to find Danny's eyes. And failing. Desperately trying not to be drown by the need to just tip his head and touch Danny's mouth again. Light. Once, or twice. Or not. Not, just back into the wall. He hates himself. He is the worst kind of man right now. Heart pounding, focus splintered, pants so much tighter, every inch of skin alive. Bad. Actively. Boss. Partner. Best friend.

The world is still burning around his eyes, around his voice. Around the small, thin, desperate pull of air in while his mouth is still all but right back against Danny. What does it say about him that he just wants to close his eye (to Danny, to the case) lean into it again. Take what he can. Demand it from the world. Put something into that ugly, jagged thing in his chest that has been there for months. That no one can touch. That leaves him alone, except at night, in that empty bed.

That's alive and screaming in his chest. Petulant and insane. A cajoling, tempted, whisper to invade every shred of sanity.

"Good enough?" He means for the guy, but he can barely get those words out. Tries to ignore for the both of them the freezing tension that threatens to snap, shivering through his body, at only garnered for seconds, when his lips brush Danny's for the words. He means the guy. He means. They have to. The case. His voice is black as he feels whatever's left of his soul probably looks. Low. Bottom of the barrel. Scraping for real, for sane, and finding only this. Liquified remains. Swallowing through a desert and having to nod, barely that way, shift his eyes without shifting his head. For back there. Back where he'd been.

That guy. The only reasons he was ever allowed to, required to, touch Danny. Taste him. Burning alive.

He has to believe Danny understands. Desperately needs him to. Because Danny always understand him. (Usually.)
Has to trust that Danny will understand this, too. Will believe him when he blows it off. When he blow off Danny when this ends.

[haole_cop]

Steve pulls back, but not far enough for Danny to do anything like breathe, or get his act together, or get a grip on his own rebelling mind, the rising, steel-plated bubble in his chest, because Steve is. Looking at him. Close enough to kiss. Close enough his lips still brush Danny's, when they move. Close enough that Danny would only have to tip his chin, and they'd be right back there.

Right back to exactly what he didn't need to know, which is how well Steve fits, when he shouldn't. When it should be impossible. Height. Breadth. Bumping chests and long arms. He's nothing like Rachel, Gabby, Melissa, all petite and tiny, fitting perfectly against him, delicate with soft curves. He could wrap his arms around them, and hold them close, and it never felt like trying to hold onto a plane as it takes off.

The way his arm is wrapped around Steve, now. Under his jacket. While Danny's just realizing how tightly his fingers are clenched in his shirt, at the same time as he's realizing that Steve's not pulling away from him, either. Leaned in. Pushed in. Pushed him back. Like. Except it's impossible. It's just Steve doing what he does. Maybe an extension of how he touches Danny anyway, fond and often. How he doesn't mind hugging Danny, or sitting next to him on the couch. Moments that were never, but were so close there were times when Danny drove himself into insomnia and the bottom of a bottle or his bloodied knuckles on some perp's jaw trying to convince himself that it wasn't, trying to remember it.

It's hard to remember right now, when Steve is so close, and looking at him like this, and it feels so real. Like he means it. Wants it. Like maybe it could be possible, after all, and Danny's fingers tighten a little further, when Steve's lips brush his, and his eyes go half-lidded, until that voice comes.

And those words. And everything they mean.

Washing out that lead balloon in his chest with a rush of dread, while he blinks, and feels like Steve just poured ice water over his head after a three-day bender. Like he's just remembering, now, where he is. What they're doing. Why.

Because maybe he is just remembering, and that's why his fingers let go, clench into a fist so tight he feels like the bones and tendons might snap, but it would be better. Preferable. To break his own hand, rather than put it back on Steve, who doesn't want it, who just reminded him. Good enough?

Because it was supposed to look good, but that was. It was. Too. And Steve doesn't want it. Is reminding Danny, maybe ordering Danny, to pull it back.

Except it comes out raw and hoarse in a way Danny hasn't heard, before, and Steve's face is blown wide open. Sounding like he's been gargling tar. Like each of two words had to be pried loose with pliers.

When Danny has never lied to Steve, and never wants to lie to Steve, but, in this moment, right now, cannot tell the truth to Steve. That it's too good. That Steve's selling it too well, because Danny's starting to believe it, let alone their perp. And Danny can't believe it, because it doesn't exist, and if Danny says he wants it, everything they've done and built and lived through in the last five years will be gone in a breath of dust.

Too many people lie to Steve. Danny won't. But he has to. But he can't.

Leaving him, tongue darting to lick his bottom lip, feeling like the smoking wreckage of a car, all twisted pieces of metal and the ghost of pain. Searching for what he should say, would say, if this weren't like willingly dousing himself in gasoline and setting himself on fire. "Yeah."

His voice isn't working right. His hands aren't. (They should be on Steve. He can't keep them on Steve.) Lungs aren't. Heart hasn't, in years. Nothing's working right, and he needs it to, can't lose it all, doesn't want to see as well as feel Steve's distaste. "Very convincing."

[thebesteverseen]

His eyes are blown black, with the thinnest rim of the brightest blue that Steve has ever seen in Danny's face. It's so electric he can't look away, and it feels like licking a socket just to look at it. While Danny licks his lips, and Steve can feel the shift in the air against his own lips, without actually getting the friction. Even when it feels like he's pulling his muscles off his bone, not to lean what can't be more than the whisper of a breath of space and catch Danny in the middle of that movent.

Danny, who is still staring at him with those eyes, but whose hand suddenly jerks off his shirt. Off of him. Like Danny couldn't get off him fast enough, at least in the only way he could. Since the rest was Steve pressed to him. Whose back tightens up as he wants to suddenly pull away. To get the hell off Danny who doesn't want him there. When he's invading Danny's space. Danny's skin. Danny's body. In a way that is so wrong he can't even quantify it. It's just a falling swoop.

When Danny says those words. Three of them. Short.

Like Danny would rather not say a single thing about this already.

Danny. Danny, who had a million words every single day and every single situation. Who had a hundred to throw at the guy at the bar throwing himself, actually, at Steve, rather than the one sentence that could just tell Campbell to take his hand off Danny's property. He gives Steve three words, with those wide dark eyes, and his fist that isn't touching Steve and has his jacket awkwardly out from his body to keep it that way.

Steve makes himself swallow every feeling, dry dust down his throat. Shattering cold seeping out from somewhere in the pit in his stomach and his ribs. Because those three words hit like high power ballbearings lodging in his skin. Too few, and reading as too much. Convincing. Like that was all it was, and Steve has to remind himself that's all it's supposed to be. Ever can be. That he should be grateful Danny is only saying he can lie and show off well.

(That it shouldn't feel like Danny stuck a night between his ribs and got his lung,
because it wasn't like Danny even knew. But still. There's a hollow, hungry pain, wide awake.

The one that knew Danny shouldn't know. Couldn't know. Didn't like. Had an operating line of beautiful girls.
That even Danny, of all people, couldn't, wouldn't want hm. A thousand logical answers, known, but it still stung.)

He makes it cold, himself, to be able to make more words word. Rusty voice. Even when he rolls his eyes, like he's not shoving his hands and his head in lye. "Not you." As though this is nothing. Somehow could ever be. Like all those moments. Except with every inch of his skin caught in Danny's teeth. But it's fine. Absolutely fine. If he can take nearly bleeding death, trekking through frozen cold, carrying two other people. He can take this. He can let Danny know he knows. It's nothing. It's just the job. Sometimes it pushes them too far. Often. But it's still that. Just the job.

His throat is raw. Like his skin. "We should split." Like every nerve ending, when he shifts, tilting his head like he might have dropped it to do what he thought of early. What he's thought of a million times. What he couldn't even think straight enough to consider two seconds ago. Let's his mouth whisper the words next to Danny's jaw, like he was busy there. "See if he'll follow you." Unless Danny had a better plan. Any plan.

Something that wasn't the world throbbing, edged in red, still begging for him to just let. Give in.

Find Danny's mouth, again, hard and heavy, and just ruin the only truly, reliably good thing left in his life.

[haole_cop]

There's something that shutters closed across Steve's face, but before Danny can amend his statement, say -- fuck, anything, anything at all that even remotely sounds like his usual self -- he's rolling his eyes, and insulting Danny. Like he always does. Like it's easy. Like Danny wasn't just breathing his air, or gripping his shirt so tightly it was about to rip between his knuckles, or hadn't dragged Steve down, like he definitely did not need to do to make it look good.

Which is all this is. Making it look good.

That's what Steve's doing, when he tips his head, and Danny's chin jerks between the instinct to tip his own and catch Steve's mouth, and the over-correction of not. Molars grinding down on each other, while Steve keeps going, soft breath into Danny's skin, making this suit, perfectly tailored to him, feel suddenly far too small.

Without his hand in Steve's shirt, he's got no handhold. It's not like the Camaro, when he can hold onto the frame of the car and yell his displeasure over the wail of the sire. He can barely even hear his own voice, or Steve's over the alarms going off now.

How dangerous this still is. How he desperately needs Steve to believe that wasn't convincing, because if it didn't convince Steve, Danny's still safe, and he doesn't need to keep lying. Not anymore than he has for months. Years. From whenever this started, that was probably a lot sooner than Danny has any real gauge for.

Nodding, and licking his lip, that feels too dry, and that tastes like Steve, which is something he's not allowed, but can't keep from reaching for. It's already a ghost. Already gone. Never happened, and never will. "Good."

It means getting away from Steve, which can only be a good idea, right now, so Danny is all for it, even if he hates it, too. One more thing to add to the burning pile. He tips his chin up, lets the hand at Steve's head slide carefully back to his shoulder. Careful, careful. Aware any second it might betray him, and try to bury itself in those short brown strands again. "There's a back door over that way. If he thinks you're headed back in, ten to one he'll follow me."

He needs to. It has to. Because Danny can't stand here and resist this, while Steve is pressed against him, for very much longer.