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]

Danny talks about a few years ago, making something in Steve's heart and his face soften against a fierce ache of confusion, but it's like someone sagging behind a set of bars, iron steel and artic cold, because it's not what he needs yet and he needs to know before he can let himself fall into it. He knows he's being an idiot. He knows he might be ruining this. He knows he shouldn't give a damn, because of Rachel and Gabby and Amber and Cath and anyone else he might have had for any of those 'just a moment, just a night' things that didn't matter and he'd never want to admit to Danny.

He should give that same benefit of the doubt and understanding to Danny. But he doesn't want to.

He can hear it in his voice, how flat and trying for empty of reaction it is when he prompts, "And before that?"
He adds it, like somehow he can say this without hit guts tightening even to acknowledge the lunacy. "Before me?"

Before he became part of this. Something Danny was interested in. Wanted to touch, kiss, avoided mentioning for years for that reason, too. He wants Danny's hands on him. He wants to kiss Danny through the door and burn any other persons hands off of him. Out of his own memory. Because it's suddenly violently, in such utter stillness, in his head, not okay with him. He doesn't want to understand. He doesn't want to be patient. He wants to know everything.

He wants it cut open and dissected on the floor in front of him. Even when Danny's hand on his waist and his collar. He wants to know, needs to know. Danny's never not told him anything this important. It was shock enough when he wouldn't walk into the cave. That Steve might have missed this even if annoying fear in his partner, that might effect any case. That they'd gone years. That was a surprise enough. Made him feel like a heel and an idiot. Unobservant. Bad at his job. Maybe at their friendship.

But this. This reigns a hairline fracture away from unsettling him entirely in a completely different way. Cut through his intenses, twining knives up into his lungs, wrapping in and out between each rib. Because he can handle this. Whatever Danny says. Whenever, however long, whoever else has been here, he'll know, okay. Because he needs to know. Because Doris is gone, and Cath is gone, and Danny can't be gone, or even only partially here, partially real, but not as much as Steve'd thought he was, kept relying on him to be every time something else broke in his hands.

Especially not when Steve's got him pressed between his own body and the door. A tower against the light.

[haole_cop]

"Before you?"

It's almost as much of a surprise as Steve's slip earlier had been, and Danny has to pause for a second to mull it over, eyebrows crawling together, taken aback. Not the answer, but how simple that answer is. Before Steve. A completely alien concept he hadn't really even considered, before. "There wasn't a before you."

He knows he might be shooting himself in the foot, here. It's not the kind of thing most people like to hear: that they are the only option, the only one, the first, the singular. A lack of experience can be a deal-breaker, and feeling that way towards only one person might seem like...who knows, deflected urges, or something.

But this is not that. Danny's always been this way. There was Rachel, and she was everything, the only person he wanted, the only one in his mind, heart, world. And then there was Steve. And it was the same damn thing, and that was when Danny knew he was really in trouble. "Just you."

When it might be too honest, but Steve's face looks like it's going to crack from the strain, and Steve's questions are too quick and too hard and it might be a little hypocritical of Steve, but Danny doesn't care. They're not the same kind of person. He tried, a couple of times, but it was never enough, never even enough to make a full night of.

It wasn't Steve, and that was a dealbreaker. "It was only ever you."

Which Steve should know, because Steve knows Danny. Knows how Danny operates. How he is when he falls for someone, which is nothing like how he is when he thinks he should probably try dating someone. There wasn't time to be nervous, or to second-guess it, or to worry over dates: it hit like lightning, like a car crash, like a bridge crumbling beneath his feet.

While Steve stares at him, looking like the last thread of his sanity is slowly snapping, and while Danny just realizes that they've been having entirely different conversations for the last few minutes.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve stares, long and hard, like he's not sure he heard right. Even when he did.

Like he's listening for something miles off. Staring that five thousand yard stare. Into Danny.

Because. That's impossible. Isn't it? Like entirely impossible. Like it made sense for him, okay? Even if it was backwards and misplaced. Falling for his partner. Wanting to suddenly push him against a crate or drag him upstairs from the beach. Feeling like his heart stopped every time Danny nearly died. Not the first time. Not the first guy. But maybe the first one who really stuck. Longer than a night. Longer than a desperate need to feel. Longer than not being real at all. Because his career was all.

Danny keeps saying it. Small, single sentences so certain. Reluctant. Almost embarrassed. Like this is the worse admission. Not that it's been years. Not that it was a lie. That it was Steve. Only Steve, only ever Steve. Who feels like the room is shrinking again. That can't be right. It can't be. No one would. Has ever. Except Danny isn't looking away, and he knows Danny's face. The one that can't lie to save itself. That has tic's that read bright as the moon at midnight to Steve at least.

Staring up at him, almost beseeching. Not to shove his fingers and holes into this. Don't laugh. Don't tear it apart. This is the look he had when Steve got out of Hawala. The look he had all the time after Matt left, especially when he admitted. Not being able to pull the trigger on his brother. For weeks and weeks after they saved Grace. Off and on the evening, then weekend, after Rachel gave birth to Charlie with him at her side. After Reyes, and the way he pretended he didn't look after Amber's ex stabbed him into another hospitalization.

That floundering, flopping thing, with absolutely no defense against itself: Danny's heart. The victim of everything it loved.

You're my best friend, and I love you, swims up from somewhere. Meeting, merging, diluting entirely into it was only ever you, and setting off an explosion that Steve can't tell if is in his heart or his head. All he knows is he has to kiss Danny now. He has to. Pushes into it like maybe he hasn't this whole night. Not when it was just about giving in, but not giving in. Not when it was about the sudden shattering insanity of Danny's mouth on his, hands wandering here in his house.

Danny. Danny loves him. More than -- maybe not like that, but more than they've been saying. Too. Maybe not world-ending. Not like Grace. Or Rachel. But more. Somehow. Someway. More than he thinks he should. Wants Steve so much more than he thinks he should. Enough to feel scared and embarrassed of the bare facts. That he has. That it all started with Steve, even if he never let Steve in on it. It's supposed to be making sense, but his brains cells are popping in a grand crescendo with too much power and too much light, and there are no words for this feeling. None. None at all.

He's got a hand on the side of Danny's face, but it's moving down his throat, to his shoulder and back up. Because he's joked that Danny was smaller than an average man more times than he can't count, but suddenly it's true in both ways. Suddenly he's too small in the scope of the world, too impossible, too nothing like anyone else in Steve's whole life or anyone's he's met, even five years later and he's, also, too large, and Steve's hands have to start somewhere before the rights to even touch it, no less map it, suddenly fade from his grip.

[haole_cop]

He's starting to wonder if he said the wrong thing, if maybe he should be concerned, because Steve is staring at him like he's aiming down the sights of a sniper rifle, laser-focused and intent, looking for, Christ, Danny doesn't know. If it's the truth, maybe. That would make sense, considering how many people Steve has trusted, who turned around and lied to him again and again.

Danny won't. Not now, even when he knows it's probably too much, too soon, too sensitive. Maybe ruining their friendship, or making Steve second-guess everything Danny's ever done for him or said to him. Possibly freaking him out, because feelings are heavy, even if there was that knife-edged thing in his voice earlier, bracing himself for Danny to tell him about someone else. Some mythical, impossible other man, or men.

As if Steve were not the catalyst and result, both.

He doesn't know what else he can say, how much more clear he can be, but he should say something, right, because Steve is still just staring, a whole new sequence of expressions flicking across his face, one by one, until they start blurring together and Danny's mouth opens just in time for Steve to lean in and capture it.

Drag a soft, surprise, wounded sound out of Danny, instead of words, that's all sore relief and longing so pure it shocks Danny himself, because it's only been a minute or two, and he'd lived years without it before ten minutes ago, but he'd missed it. Steve's mouth on his. Needed it, back.

Steve's mouth, and Steve's hand, where no one but Steve would be allowed to touch. Heavy against his throat, that should make him tense up, because it's such a vulnerable spot, easy to crush, easy to pin him -- but then it slides down to his shoulder, and back up again, like Steve doesn't know how to touch him, or how to keep his hand in one place.

While kissing him. Like. God. Like Danny is his first glass of water in a week. Or like he's sucking in fresh air after being nearly smothered. It's not trying to burn him down, or break him into pieces.

Just Steve, curving into him like the tide, and overwhelming him, until Danny's head is spinning and his fingers are tight in Steve's clothing, all over again.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny doesn't stop him.

It's still part of the first confused, consuming ground shaking effect through everything in him, when Danny's mouth is already open. That sound coming up out of him. Soft, almost painfully needful sounding. Socking Steve with a punch he wasn't expecting. Tightening his ribs and taking any air he had only seconds ago. When it's impossible, all of this is impossible. It can't be only ever him, when no one, no one at all has ever wanted only ever him, and this.

No one has ever stayed.

(No one except Danny.)

Making this sound Danny gives up splash into Steve's head like acid, burning through thoughts and walls alike. Like Danny wanted him, needed him, this, already. Kissing him like he understood. That somehow, without anyone telling them, this is the air and not the moment before hand when either of them was capable of drawing breath in. When Steve's clothes are suddenly tight in fisted fingers, again, pulling him closer, close as possible.

Danny too solid to be a shadow between Steve and door, not actually small enough to press into it, to cover him entirely, but it's like they're trying. When Danny is holding on tight, kissing him back, and Steve isn't leaning in so much as pushing in. To Danny, even if that means he's pushing Danny into the door. Them. The door could die. Burn. Vanish. As long as it wasn't right now, while they are crowded against it. He can fix the things in the house.

He doesn't know how to fix this, or even how to have it, but he can't stop. Doesn't want to. Is afraid he'll have to.

The taste of Danny, and the weight of his hands, telling Steve where to go, move, stay, screaming louder.

[haole_cop]

It was the right thing to say, maybe. Or the right thing to do. Inasmuch as there is a right or wrong in this situation he never expected and had no plan for, that could still explode beneath his fingertips without a second's warning. Steve staring at him, just then, feeling like the red light that was pinned to Danny's chest years ago. This kiss like the thing going off.

Except he wanted it to explode, this time. Didn't want any careful fingers or professional manipulation to dismantle it. He's not sure he wants to be safe, when
safe would mean this never happened, didn't exist. In a safe world, he and Steve went their separate ways tonight, and were awkward for a little while, and then moved past it, and it was never brought up, considered, bared.

An hour ago, he might have thought that was the better option. Now, he can't even stand the idea of it.

Missing this. Again. Like he's apparently been missing it for years. The way Steve curves into him. The door at his back. Steve's mouth hard on his. Steve's hands roaming over him, more than they ever have, and still not enough.

The giddy insanity that still hasn't sobered up, even after the last few minutes, because Danny's still stuck on the things Steve has said and done since they got in here, since Danny saw him at the club, since they met, in the garage, the first view of each other over the barrels of their guns.

Which feels sort of like it's happening all over again, now, when Danny's trying to haul himself back through the last ten, fifteen minutes, and make sense of it, while it's falling through his mind like flipping cards, and Steve is trying to burn him down.

"You know, I really don't think you've given this suit a fair shake."

[thebesteverseen]

Steve isn't certain Danny should be talking at all. Danny has always talked too much, and Steve has always yelled at him. Insulted him talking too much. Made fun of his words. While paying more attention than he thinks Danny, or any person in the rest of the world, has paid any attention to, too. Except when he asks Danny questions and watches the small surprise flicker past that Steve paid attention to some small detail. While he wasn't looking, or was acting like it was all crap.

Danny knows. He does. Even when it's not something they say. Never has been. It moves circles no one could draw.

The way Danny starts talking suddenly when Steve was busy over here. Danny had seemed to have been busy, too. Fingers in his clothes and just as adamant about what had replaced the talking. Like his breath wasn't coming faster while he started spouting words that Steve had to cobble his brain together to translate, even as they came through clearly, into his inability and unending order to never let himself fall apart.

When it catches. Danny is talking about his suit, again. Back to the topic that had started evening stopping. When Danny had froze and Steve had realized how far he overstepped. Idiotically. Betrayed. Misspoken. Even at the truth. Too far back. Too indicative. Danny swamped with it. Realizing. Pulling apart the more important, to him, part of it. That Steve had been 'hating' this suit for years. In ways that had nothing to do with hate.

Closing his eyes, pillow compressed to his face, until he gave in.

Until his eyes were still closed, but it wasn't a pillow in his hands, put himself.

Feverish with the thoughts of it. With every line of the soft gray and match of the crisp white. Every crease and seam. Every second a hand had laid against it, Danny's or someone else's. Letting his mind burn down when he let himself think, gasoline and oil, what it would be like if it was his. His business. Touching Danny's suit. Touching Danny himself.

When Steve pulls back a second at these words, and the direction they are not even drunkenly sauntering, but that Danny is shoving back at him. The inclination that Steve had. implied. Not, entirely informed a too good detective. That Danny could have avoided. Entirely. Danny does. Knows how to. Avoid things. He doesn't want. They hold each others secrets like that, too. They know which things not to ask about. Not to shove guns and fingers into while pointing and refusing blindness.

Danny could entirely blow off the entire topic which pointed to Steve thinking about Danny sans suit. Naked. Being had.

But he doesn't, and Steve thinks his hearing might be turning into some kind of bubble where nothing else is.

Danny doesn't want him to pretend he didn't say it, and he absolutely would have. Even if his hands are too heavy, too erratic. When Danny is complaining about his suit. Suddenly jumping back to its defense and Steve looks down. Glazed, dark eyes and sudden seriousness. At the perfect shoulders, the shirt that's starting to get rumpled from friction, the buttons, and those pants that fit his ass far too well, even if Steve can't see that vantage from this spot.

"No," Steve declared. No mercy and no apology. For the thick rust in his voice, or the heavy spectre of how he looked down Danny's body. Almost electric with the fact he could. Danny was putting it out there. Letting him look. Asking him to reconsider. Consider him. That way. This suit, and everything under it. Blistering Steve's thoughts and his skin. When want bubbled like lava fighting for the surface.

His gaze flicked back up to Danny. Jumping without looking. "It's a travesty."

He should know better. Danny takes an inch, Steve takes a mile. "You should get rid of it."

[haole_cop]

He'd always known, right, that giving Steve any kind of opening was playing with fire. That Steve has one single reaction to a challenge of any sort: to accept, and engage, and overwhelm.

Keep grenades in the car. Equipped Five-0 with military-grade tech and weaponry. Runs faster, farther. Hits harder. Will never allow anyone to think he'd shirk from any dare.

So Danny really should know better. Or maybe he did, and he wanted to see what would happen, anyway. If Steve would take the statement and run with it, or if he'd flip it back to Danny, like he does, sometimes. It's a thing. They do things all the time.

Except he doesn't, this time. Catches the hot potato Danny threw to him, and hands back a lit stick of dynamite. Pulling back, stepping back, not to move away, but to look Danny up and down. Assessing. Eyes tracking slow and specific in a way that makes Danny feel like he's being slowly dipped into a vat of boiling oil. "I don't know."

He's watching Steve's face, while Steve is looking him up and down, feels like an explosion someone muffled under a glass bowl when Steve looks up and meets his eyes again. "This is kind of making me think I should keep it forever."

Even if he, also, just sort of suggested it could come off. And Steve told him he should. Get rid of it. Leave it on the floor. Fulfill whatever images Steve had collected over the years, of how this suit distracted him when it was on and how he thought about it being off.

While Danny thinks about what it would be like. Taking it off. Losing his vest, shirt, pants, shoes, here at Steve's front door. Puddles of gray and white on the floor. What Steve's crisp jacket and dress shirt would feel like against his bare skin.

Watching Steve undo those buttons, all over again, but with meaning and intent behind it, this time. Because Danny will have told him to. Suggested. Offered. "If anyone's going to get rid of it, it oughta be you."

[thebesteverseen]

He puts it out there. Maybe for no other reason but to restate his point. It had already been out there. He'd already said it. It was a challenge that could have been one or not. Danny hadn't even answered anything he said about it this time, and he could say anything to this one. He could sidestep the thing entirely. Or even Steve. Entirely. Even with the pressure of the last kiss still pulsing against the muscles around Steve's mouth.

Which makes sense that Danny's response is almost something like casual, without actually being it. That first sentences. This insinuation that he should keep it. Forever. If it does this to Steve. Like he'd wear it for Steve, or if not for, like he didn't wear it tonight for Steve, wasn't wearing it for Steve right this second, he'd wear it knowing it did this to Steve. Liked that it did it. Wanted to evoke this response in Steve. This heat that couldn't simmer under his skin.

Before he says that. Before he's looking into Steve's eyes and kicks the bars off. Instead. Instead of playing it safe. Stepping back and making it a joke, even one that was scattering ashes and debris everywhere. When Steve's actually surprised for a beat, before everything rolls over. Impossibly fast, his fingers moving before his head is even catching up. Maybe won't anymore. Maybe it's been kicked clear to the moon, too.

"I hate your mouth, too." Not like it's new. Like it's always been that way. An endless complaint. A daily one.

Danny never knowing when to shut the hell up. Which is definitely why Steve is kissing him, again, right after saying them. Pressed back against that mouth. Where all those words come out, and madness has started exploding more from every twenty seconds. Kissing him back, and saying things like that. Things Steve can't even think clearly through, but he doesn't need want to think about it. Isn't.

Not when his mouth is on Danny and his hands shift. The whole world is upside down and he doesn't know how that happened. When. Where. Why. Danny is filling up everything that used to hold anything else. The smell of his cologne, and some hair product Steve fingers had mostly shoved apart in clumps. The hollow, breathless, dark, soldering need taking up a smoking, burning space in his lungs, that needed to kiss Danny a dozen more times anytime he just barely started another.

The only light in a world that wouldn't stop exploding, running downhill at the fastest space, when he knew what he was doing and that it was madness. Fingers finding the buttons at the top of his loose collar and pulling on them. Fast, and hard, like Danny might change his mind, like Steve had outrun a decade, himself, and anything like the need to tell himself to stop with Danny's own words telling him he should already be doing it.

[haole_cop]

There's a long beat where Steve just looks at him, and Danny wants to lick his lips, as they feel suddenly dry, or lift his hands, or say something else, anything else, because that stopped Steve like a record scratch. Leaving him just staring at Danny, who. Okay. He won't apologize. Maybe it's not what Steve expected, or what he expected, and maybe it's not what would be his go-to on a first...whatever this is.

But this isn't a first. Not really. It might be first kisses, first touched, first getting physical, but he's already been involved with Steve for so long they might as well be married. He doesn't need to pause, because he's already lost, already gone. Is already as deep into this, into wanting Steve, as he's ever been in any other relationship, and they've lost years, it turns out. Years.

So there's some lost time to be made up.

And Steve might mock him for being nervous, and he knows for certain that he'll spend too much time worrying all of this over later, but right now, he wants to see how far he can push it. Wants, insanely, to see how far he can push Steve, when he's never actually seen Steve hit a limit.

When he's normally the one trying to hold Steve back, and everything's flipped, sideways and upside down and leaving him dropping challenges, instead, daring him. As if that won't lead to explosions and rule-shattering and possible bodily harm, as if Steve can resist or ignore a challenge.

Steve, who leans in, ducks in, fast and aggressive, stealing Danny's breath like a punch, and saying those words, making Danny laugh, low and stupid, against his mouth, while Steve's fingers are busy at the buttons of his collar.

Undoing them. More of them. It's insane. It's impossible. It's happening, somehow, and Danny's a little afraid he might spontaneously combust, right on the spot, against Steve's door, just from the brush of Steve's fingertips against the skin at the hollow of his throat.

Sending sheets of fire wafting across his body, while his hands grip Steve's hips a little tighter. "That's such a lie, you love my mouth."

Obviously. In ways Danny had never even previously considered, before tonight, but has suddenly found a whole new realm of use for.

[thebesteverseen]

"Wrong," Steve says, an exacting rejection, like any other day -- but, with a strange, smothered note of hilarity under it.

That word. Again, that word, that keeps popping up. When he has to pull back far enough to be giving Danny a withering look through it. Like Danny is the one entirely off his rocker, and definitely it is not Steve. Lying. Or pulling buttons faster and faster, fingertips brushing starch cloth and hot skin. Not feeling Danny's heart racing against the side of his hand as they keep moving further down.

"I hate it." Steve leaned back in. Fast specific, but with a deviation. Finding the edge of Danny's jaw, and chasing a madness the welcome mat of the opening shirt made him remember. Want to reclaim. Claim, again. Claim, for the first time. "You never shut up--" Is pressed almost to the juncture of his jaw and the space beneath his ear. "--and you never say anything important."

Steve wants it back. That sounds Danny made earlier. The sudden dark note when he'd forgotten. Not to touch Danny like this, and it had slipped. A little more than half not for the case, when his lips had slid against the skin of Danny's neck, hovering like insanity against the race of his pulse. The way it isn't not. It's not for the case and he's not apologetic. When Danny will know that Steve wants it entirely. Is choosing to this time.

"It's just talk, talk, talk--" Steve fingers hadn't stumble even when they reached the vest, and had to start undoing one vest button and then the shirt buttons below it, so he doesn't stumble here, even if the words disjoint against his neck, his shoulder, nosing the shirt from his way. "--even though no one is listening to you."

When he's pulling up the thin skin between his lips, racing pulse against his teeth, while pulling Danny's white shirt with solid tugs from his pants, to push it back, toward the door, out of his way, put his hands on Danny's bare skin. When he wants to push into this feeling, this warmth, burning through him, boiling the world, his thoughts, words, his hands on Danny's skin. That he's seen enough to know all of it, but he's never touched it like this. Wants, needs, wants, needs. Has to touch all of it. Wants all of it against all of him. With his own suit already burned off.

[haole_cop]

Steve is, he thinks, trying to kill him.

Which Danny takes pretty personally, right, because he's damned if he's going to die before he gets to feel these things, see them, know them for real, and not just as a heated, imperfect, fuzzy fantasy, or Steve making it look good.

All ready with a retort, about how Steve's the one complaining, here, and talking too much, until Steve's mouth touches the spot beneath his jaw, and it all dissolves like a sand castle in a wave. Flipping him unceremoniously back to that dim back room, Steve pressed against him into a wall, his mouth on Danny's throat. That Danny had thought was just Steve playing the part, too well, and too accurately, that might have been -- must have been? -- the thing Danny himself kept trying to hide. That it wasn't making it look real. That he had to keep remembering to pull back so it didn't look, feel, too real. But kept forgetting, because Steve had never been that close and Steve had never touched him like that before, and Danny is only human.

Which. Maybe Steve is, too, and that thought alone is enough to nuke Danny's entire thought process, all over again, this whole evening fulls of starts and stops as confessions are made and connections are drawn, because the idea of Steve couldn't control himself because Danny was too tempting is crazy talk. Beyond crazy. No matter what Steve says about hating or loving this suit.

He slipped up. Did it by accident, because he wanted to so much.

And now he's doing it on purpose, burning strips into Danny's skin, while his fingers are at work on Danny's clothing, and all Danny can really do is hold on, and try to keep breathing, even while his own hands are slipping back under Steve's jacket to his sides.

Vest and shirt finally falling open, but without cooling him off. Only contacting another sheet of flame, when Steve's hands are on his bare skin, and Danny pushed him here, but he didn't know, couldn't have: suit and shirt in disarray, Steve's mouth on his neck, Steve's hands shoving at fabric and taking over his skin. Painting it into real life. Solid and heavy and possessive hands on his stomach, sides.

Less skin that's exposed even at the beach, but so much more intimate, because he's never this undone, never lets a button slip out of place or a hair, keeps his clothes pressed and neat.

But letting Steve take him apart, against Steve's front door, which is probably not the best place, because he's starting to remember that Steve only has one gear: forward, with no mercy and no breaks and no sideslipping or room for uncertainty.

Anything he might say strangled by a dark, needy, whine of a sound that he can't stop, when Steve's teeth are against his pulse, and Steve's mouth is driving it faster, harder, making him dizzy with it, while one hand lifts to cup the back of Steve's head and push his face harder into Danny's neck.

Or try not to, and fail, while Danny swears, helpless, feeling like a burning coal lodged in the wood of this door. "God, Steve."

[thebesteverseen]

He would say Danny isn't responding, but that would be like saying the waves didn't move at all all against the beach. Danny doesn't say a word, but his hands tighten and his body shudders all along Steve's, breath going erratic at a second notice. Danny not stopping him in the slightest, which might be almost smart at this point. When the warm salt on his tongue is only spurring on the explosive black glee and vicious hunger exponentially bigger, hotter, sharper, more necessary than air.

When his hands can't touch enough of Danny's skin. This skin he's seen all of. He's had his hands on, long ago, for surfing lessons, between himself and Kono. On this skin, far too recently, covering it in duct tape, trying to stop the bleeding of rebar. But not like this. Not like this, fingers digging into muscles when it feels like he can't even hold onto the skin of the earth while holding on to Danny's.

Yet he can't stop there.

Not when Danny's fingers suddenly find the back of his head, pushing him into Danny's skin, blackening Steve ears with this sound that is nothing like the one from earlier. An escape that lead to panic and freezing of everyone. But this time it doesn't. This time, Danny's body is pushing into his mouth, Danny's hand is crushing his head down, finger pressing into his scalp, just as hard. Saying that.

God is right. Profane and perfect in his ear after that sound.

Followed by his name said in a way Danny has never said his name, and how he'll never forget even if Danny forgets this. The want, or what's happening. Changes his mind, because this isn't. Isn't whatever it should be. It's a dark, black, gorgeous, perfect, Molotov cocktail dribbling insanity down into his ears, his throat, exploding in his gut. Danny is going to kill him. Not a international terrorist or a stray bullet. Torture gone wrong. Moving just a second too slow, with his reflexes not as good as it once was, because he's no longer living it every minute of every day. Just Danny, touching him like and saying two words.

Making his motions rough. Wanting to fist his fingers into Danny's hair and force him to stay there, kiss him as fast and hot as the universe is exploding out from inside him, but he can't. There aren't enough hands attached to enough arms, and he needs these two for pushing Danny's shirt. Hands off his skin only to give himself more of it, all of it. Pushing it down Danny's shoulders and off his elbows, even if it demands Danny's hands from him as well. Until nothing is left between them he doesn't have to think about it. There being anything left in the world to stop him.

[haole_cop]

Steve never does anything he can't over-do, has never met a limit he hasn't challenged and cracked and left in ashes on the sidelines, and Danny's not sure why he expected anything different, or even if he actually did.

Expect something other than this. Other than Steve's mouth running fire along his throat, and Steve's hands shoving at his clothes. Danny told him to get rid of them, didn't he? He put it out there. Waved that red flag in front of this bull, and somehow didn't consider what would happen when it charged.

When what is happening is that his arms are getting stuck, because Steve is impatient and trying to shove Danny's shirt and vest of arms that still need to move, over hands that are still lost in Steve's clothing, making Danny have to push him a little out of the way so he can get them back, arch his back to get some space, shoulders rolling against the door's wood. "Are you, seriously, going to strip me down, here? Right at your front door?"

Even his grumbles are breathless, sounding too high-pitched, like the hum in his ears that only vibrates louder, brighter, more dangerously, as he wrestles with the fabric and Steve pushes at it and then it's gone, leaving his back bare against the wood and chest and stomach bare against Steve's shirt and jacket lapels and hands.

Most importantly, his hands.

His hands that are all over Danny. That Danny would have already said he knew, intimately, because Steve doesn't touch people much, okay, but he touches Danny. Hand heavy on his shoulder. Bone-crushing, breath-stealing hugs. A hand at his back or arm. On his, in very specific, very short-lived situations involving hospital beds.

But Steve's never touched him like this.

Like he's skin-hungry. An addict let loose and relapsing. As if he could find his way back to sanity on Danny's skin, tracking the lines of muscle, making them contract and release under his palms and fingers.

Mouth on Danny's throat, while Danny's pulse redlines into a straight, continual hum, instead of the beats its supposed to hit. Leaving him gasping, and clutching at Steve again, who is wearing too much, but that's, it's, he can't think that far ahead, yet.

Not when Steve is ruining his ability to think at all. "I'm never gonna be able to look at your front door the same way again."

[thebesteverseen]

Steve does want the seconds it takes to be pushed half a step back, to give Danny that half step of space, but the thought doesn't even stay after the hungry animal in his veins snaps angrily about it, because he can't even focus on anything else. Not even his own head. Danny is half there, and it's going to be burned into his eyes forever. Tawny hair in swirls and skin that is more tanned after all these years that Danny ever cares to admit.

Steve knows. Steve has seen this all before. Steve's never seen this before. Never.

That's like saying he had any clue what a gun was, and what could be done with it, before he turned twenty-two.

When the muscles of Danny's body strain and straighten as the shirt and the vest come off, dropped by the floor, while Danny bitches and Steve's ears are the deafened ash of a round detonating right next to his head, or in the center of his chest. Without being able to miss it. Danny's voice. Danny's voice like even more oil thrown on a fire. Breathless, dark, and almost too high. Like he can't catch his breath, or figure out a way to regulate his voice. Danny, who always has it.

That he did that. This. All of this. How insane that it is, impossible, when Danny pulls him back in as much as he folds back in, reclaiming his half a foot, Danny. Because even half a minute is too long, and no matter what Danny bitches, he's not stopping Steve. He's spurring him, them, everything on. Wants this, which seems insane. Never stops being insane. When it feels like being able to touch Danny is going to make his hands bubble off.

These ribs and these muscles. He's touched them before. Rarely. But it happened. Not like this.

Even the memories are clinical, focused. Nothing he ever would have used. This isn't ever where he ended up in the moment when he was if Danny needed him to fix something, take care of it. But he's not now. Now he's getting his hands everywhere. The way his chest slides into his neck. The strain-snap of muscles against the gasps for air. The peak of a soft nipple under his thumb. The roughed up softness of the hair pressed flat by his suit. The way Steve wants to put his hands, his mouth, his self against all of it.

"If you're busy having a moment with the front door, I can stop."

No, no he can't. Won't. Doesn't want to. It's not a thing. Especially not when Danny's earlier complaint pops up. He knows it's all fuss and hot air. The way a lot of Danny's are. To him, Grace, the team. Sound put out there. A commentary clocked in a dagger. Not a real complaint, or an order. His hands aren't on Steve shoving him back, fisted in shirt angry with a side of scared, dragging him off someone. They aren't hard, while his voice is sharp or soft. Telling Steve to stop what he's doing, come back down, listen to him, and only him.

When he is. Listening to Danny and only Danny. The pulse under his lips. The body under his hands. The hands on him. All of it, a crescendo of madness, he wants to fall into and forget to breathe out, think, ever again. Sanity isn't welcome here. Only Danny. When he's looking up, past the soft red welt at the juncture of his shoulder, that exist smacks Steve in the face like slamming the ground and again, when he makes it back up.

Danny's eyes, dark, but thin blue, that blue again, and his hair a mess. Danny looking, like this, breathing thin and fast, pinked lips, hair a true mess. Every which way, from Steve's hand and the door. Looking. Like he wants this. Has no intention of letting or making Steve stop. Make good on anyone's threats and complaints. Electricity snapping through him, building so fast even in the half seconds of pausing, when he has to look like, too, doesn't he?

Like the world exploded and he can't stop running. Not even to breathe.

Danny's fingers in his hair, and eyes dark as the darkest want this ever brought up, chest a shuddering demand forgotten.

[haole_cop]

Their therapist is going to have a field day with this.

It's a thought that comes out of nowhere, but it's true. Their therapist, and Danny's own therapist, and Chin and Kono and Lou, and everyone who ever made a joke or assumption about him and Steve being together. Like it was obvious already.

And not one of those people had ever seen this, because this didn't exist, couldn't, would never. Steve staring at him like a predator. When Steve has seen him shirtless before, and touched Danny's bare skin, and this is nothing new, except in how it is everything new. Steve drinking him in like he's never seen Danny's skin before, until he gets pulled back in and pushes his way back in, and his hands are everywhere, drawing up groans from deep in Danny's chest, when he rubs a thumb over sensitive skin, spans his hands over Danny's ribs, and Danny's trying to push into them, into Steve, even when its impossible. When his two hands aren't enough and couldn't ever be enough, and Steve's hands are huge, but they aren't big enough, ether, because Danny wants him across all his skin, at once. He wants to be wrecked in it. Drowned in it. Every single touch that was never supposed to happen, when no one has ever touched him quite like this.

Like he's a liferaft, and a ship to be wrecked, all at the same time. Like Steve can't get enough, either. Like he's getting as drunk on Danny as Danny is on him, and that's never been true. Amber and Gabby were fun and sweet and fragile and they could fit right in the circle of Danny's arms, but they never stormed him like a beach to take.

Maybe no one would, except Steve.

Who is talking about stopping, without any indication that he would, or could. Doesn't pull back. Doesn't pause. Making fun of him with words that sound like they've been branded on the inside of Steve's chest, and are still smoking.

Clearly lying, but not enough for Danny not to say: "Do not stop."

He doesn't care about the front door, as long as it doesn't open behind him, and send them sprawling. He will care about the therapists, and the team, and other people (Grace, what will Grace think?), but not yet. They don't exist. Not in this space, that's rapidly shrinking, and still isn't close enough.

[thebesteverseen]

He's never going to ever be able to get these sounds out of his ears.

It would be there if he cut his ears off and weighted them down into the deepest part of the black, pressing sea. Danny's voice, moans and groan, he's only ever imagined and it was never like this. Never this good. He was nowhere close. It kicks whatever air is left in his lungs straight out and makes him want to draw more and more of them out.

He adds this to the top of the list of the reasons he hates Danny's mouth.

Hate. Hate that word. The word, that isn't the word, when he looks up because Danny is talking again. Words that the conversation hardly needed, Danny didn't need to say, but he says it and for a blinding moment things in Steve's head went haywire. While Danny told him not to stop. A serious answer to an anything but serious statement.

Do not stop, and like Danny put a gun to him and pulled the trigger.

Danny telling him not to stop. Danny wanting him not to stop. No. Ordering him. Instead of telling him anything about the door, or his forgotten clothes. Or. Anything. Anything at all. Telling Steve the thing he never tells Steve so directly. Do. Not. Stop. The air has to have turned into fumes at this point, and if it's a dream, he hopes he never wakes up. Or does. Right this second. Before he never can leave.

Which is a lie, when his hand on Danny's chest moves back up, finds the curve of his neck and then the nape of his hair, driving fingers up in the back and pulls him up to kiss again. And then again, and again, because Steve knows it is. It's already a lie. He can't. He'd only stop now if Danny made him. Shouted stop, and shoved him back. Said this was a mistake. They couldn't. Shouldn't. They were partners. Best friends. He wasn't this kind of person. He didn't. Was just wrong. Made a mistake. That sacred, embarrassed face from under the rubble of a whole building flickering up briefly.

[haole_cop]

Steve can't stop, because if Steve stops, one of them might start thinking, and Danny knows what will happen if he thinks about any of this too hard.

About what it will mean, past tonight. How it will change everything. Affect their partnership. Work. All the weekends, that somehow just became the norm, when he and Grace would come hang out with Steve, here at the house, ending with grease on Grace's nose from the engine of the Marquis, and Steve laughing as he steals Danny's beer, and all of them winding up out on the lanai, the grill going hot and slow and Grace swinging in the hammock or down by the water, while they relax.

It's a good life. Danny's not sure how it came about. The cookouts and holidays with the team. People at his back, who he would do anything for, die for. Who would do anything for him, in return. A house of his own. Grace, still never enough, but so much more than he ever thought he would get. Even Matt -- terrible as that ordeal was, terrible as it still is -- but home, found, safe.

And this. This thing he can't lose, and went into this house, tonight, sure that he would, desperate to do anything to keep it in one piece. Those weekends. The wild rides in the car. Bickering at each other over pancakes at some diner while the waitress looks on, amused.

So Danny can't think, because if he did, he might tell Steve to stop. Would need to talk about it, because Danny is a worrier and sensitive and everything Steve mocks him for being, and he'd give this up, in a second, if having it meant he lost all the rest.

He thinks he would. If he could think.

But Steve's fingers are in his hair, driving his head back, and Steve's mouth is on his, and instead of thinking, Danny's hands are at the lapels of Steve's coat, first gripping, and then pushing, and he's not thinking. He's not thinking about losing this. He's not thinking about losing Steve. He's not thinking about how lonely and empty those weekends would suddenly become, on the weeks when Grace is with Rachel. Isn't thinking about his job, and how he would have to find a new one.

Except how he's thinking about all of them at once, desperate and fearful, while Steve's hands run across his skin and Danny can't help thinking about how easily all of this could be destroyed. Anyway.

And how often both of them have stood and watched everything around them fall apart. How often is happens. And doesn't stop happening.

[thebesteverseen]

He doesn't know what it is, but he knows it's there.

The way he knows how many millimeters to shift his aim hundreds of feet out.

Danny's fingers press in more. Harder. Tighter. Something in him snapping, mercilessly, at his heels or his hands.

When he isn't stopping Steve. Pushes out, against Steve, only for a stab of confused fear to spike in Steve's chest, before Danny pulls him back in. Hands on his jacket, pulling and pushing at his lapels, scrabbling too far from him even now. When at least a good starting portion of Danny is laid out entirely beneath his hands, and he is suddenly beyond sure he needs Danny's hands on him. Not the lapels, jacket, shirt.

Wishes with a momentarily feverish annoyance, that might even brushing into this kiss, that it won't just burn off his limbs and be gone. Not even a scorch on the floor. Lit on fire and gone into the wind, ashes fallen apart entirely between them. But he's not twenty and he knows they have to go. Can go. He can handle another crazy fast minute of divesting more clothes. Dragging his hands off Danny reluctant in his head if not showing in his touch.

Just lifting his hands and pulling at the button on his jacket, and then the ones under it on his shirt. Not caring what condition his goes down in, if it will just get out of his way. Get his hands back on Danny and Danny's back on him -- no, not back, actually there, for once, for the first time, like this. Steve's head washing in and out. Like blinking lights in his vision. The kind that smack of concussion and blood loss. It's not. But it feels like it. Everything sideways, spotty, snapping, crackling, popping in his veins hungry and demanding. He was nearly going to ask Danny something a second ago.

Or was it a minute. Or five. He can't tell anymore. Time is as broken as thinking. Danny is here.

Hands on him. Letting Steve push him around. Undress him. Kiss him. It's amazing Steve can still think at all.

[haole_cop]

"How --"

It doesn't take long for Steve to cotton on, and start helping with his own buttons, which is maybe the only reason Danny would allow Steve to stop touching him, even if it means their fingers are bumping together when he goes for the same buttons Steve is, and he's laughing, breathless and stupid. "Seriously, you lose your shirt at the drop of a hat -- at work, in public -- weekly, sometimes daily, how, how is it not gone already, how is this taking so long, have you forgotten how to get rid of shirts with buttons, is that it?"

It's dumb. He knows it. Staying here at the front door, and stripping each other down like they're college kids on spring break, giddy on a one-night stand, but he doesn't want to stop. Doesn't want reality to assert itself. Reality is the world where this isn't even possible, let alone happening. Reality isn't anything he wants, right now, when the reality of this night involved too many reminders of how many people want Steve.

How they wanted to be here, where he is, doing what he's doing. Reaching the end of Steve's shirt buttons, tugging the fabric out of his pants, pushing it at his shoulders, like the whole get-up is personally insulting to him. Like he's allowed. Wanted.

Because it turns out he is allowed, wanted. Steve wants him to get rid of his clothes. Steve wants Danny's hands all over him. Wants to kiss him. Push him into the door. Get him naked.

Steve, who loves him. And says so, more often than Danny's ever heard him say so to anyone. Who Danny believes, and trusts, like he believes and trusts maybe no one else in the world. Steve doesn't lie to him any more than Danny lies to Steve, not about anything big. Even if it turns out they'd both been lying about this. One of the biggest.

Who is now shucking his shirt and jacket off, because he's a goddamn Boy Scout at heart, always prepared and always ready, and Danny's barely gotten to work at the buttons or free them all before his hands are chasing over bare, soft skin. Sun-gold and warm, like Steve just came in from the beach, or out of a hot shower. Velvety over hard, dense muscle. Every inch that Steve's showcased, uncaringly, over the years, that Danny has seen a million times, but never been allowed to touch like this.

He's so beautiful it's unfair. Impaling Danny on it. Making it hard to breathe for entirely different reasons than just because Steve's mouth is in the way. "Christ, Steve --"

Low and burned-out and disbelieving, while his hands can't figure out where to go, where to settle, how to learn this sudden new world to map. "Do you have any idea, the first clue, what you do to me?"

[thebesteverseen]

It's a swarm of hands and arms all doing the same thing, trying to get rid of these clothes, making Steve nearly swear at the buttons on his wrist that ends up having to do while the shirt is almost off of him, with the jacket is half caught in the crosshairs and Danny not helping in the slightest. There are hands on his skin, and his skin feels too thin, too vast, and like he can't even feel all of it anymore. As though none of him exists except the inches Danny is touching, through thin, fast gasps between nearly gritting teeth.

Remade in the waves of it bashing against the back of his teeth, when his body pushes into it, those hands, covering his body, traversing, painting paths of fire and attention and leaving them burned out and pulsing as they move on quickly. Danny still talking. Always talking. Saying more of those words Steve will never be able to forget, an he wants to say no. No, he never noticed this and no he has no clue in the slightest.

Danny hadn't known about him. He'd done a good job. Followed the rules and Danny hadn't known at all.

But Danny? Steve had seen someone of those looks over the last few years. They were in the folders that confused him. That once or twice made his chest and his consideration that maybe, just maybe, he wasn't insane and this wasn't just him. Broken. Stupid. Always wanting the only thing he couldn't have. Like it was a life vocation. He'd seen it. Lived on the short-lived high.

When Danny would suddenly look at him. While he was changing his shirt because of a case, Danny eyes would drop to his chest. When stabbing himself with an inoculation, Danny's eyes lingered on his hip even while yelling. Steve told himself, what he always told himself, while it smashed through him like a six footer. It was natural. Any person probably looked, just because it was going on. A new happening in the day. Something. Anything. He'd tell himself.

Because Danny would look. Swallow. Licked his lips once, or his expression pained for a flicker.

Before it was gone entirely. Before Danny was just yelling at him or talking about the case and it never happened.

Making Steve think he actually was insane, okay. Convincing himself just because it might have meant anything anywhere else didn't mean it meant anything to Danny. He told himself a lot of things for four years. Things that kept trying to reassert themselves into his brain with no hold. The force of tissue paper against the raging, brutalizing, burning storm that swept him away every time Danny looked at him, touching him, spoke to him like this.

This voice assailing him like a god damned weapon, like someone had blackened Danny's innards and then scooped them out and that person is somehow him. Leaving him in the red. Incapable of anything but forward, but Danny's voice and Danny's touch. Incapable of believing entirely, even when the proof is right there.

It's in his memories. It's the moments that drove him crazy with not understanding -- no one did that, no one okay, it was just part of the moments no one commented on -- and here, now. When Danny can't stop touching Steve's skin, or kissing him, or sounding like that any more than Steve can. Insane and impossible and happening all at once.

Steve trying for flippant and light, even if it goes out bottom, blacked barrel tar, mocking taunt and threat.
"I'm sure you're going to tell me, since it seems you can't even shut up when you are doing this."

Not that Steve wants him to. He wouldn't want Danny without his thousand words and his hands everywhere. God, everywhere. Using that voice and hands that moors Steve to the ground, keeps him coming home, no matter if he's physically or mentally half the world away, or has left his ability to be humane far behind. Danny's voice is what tells him where he is, how he is, and he's never wanted to hear it more than he has right now

(Except

Except when he was limping out of that prison.

Except when the building exploded, raining down on them.

Except when Danny sagged suddenly, after the bomb was diffused.

Except when Danny was in the hospital, so still it was like he was dead.)

But they aren't now. Now, feverous with Danny's touch, and every reminder slamming through him. That he's always felt this way. Everyday. Through everything. Shoved down. Like his Mom, and his Dad, and Wo Fat, and Joe, and every other thing that didn't make sense, didn't have to make sense. Because at least Danny was here, laughing, joking, yelling, at his side, at his back, calling him his best friend, his partner, his boss, with that smile at the end of most nights, even when it was worn thin with exhaustion at the ugliness of the world.

He wants this, too. This painful, gorgeous thing Danny is talking about. That somehow Steve does to him even a cent of what Danny had down to him for all those years. Left him yearning and burning, but unable to touch. Steve wanting to groan through the madness flaring it through him, when he shoves through, like he's always been trained through. Straight through the fire. His hands finding the top of his own pants, taking the button and zipper, and just not caring.

He wants to burn down the whole house around them. The door, the walls, the floor. Danny.

[haole_cop]

"I hate you so much."

As true now as the million other times he's said it: yelled into the cab of the Camaro, grumbled across his desk, muttered at too-fucking-early in the morning when Steve calls him, cheerful about catching a case. He hates Steve, and Steve's pathological need to be right about everything, and Steve's tendency to toss himself off buildings, and the way Steve drives his car, not to mention the things Steve keeps in his car. He's hated Steve since the very first day they met, and it's only grown through the years, because he was never supposed to feel this way again, and maybe he hates Steve a little for that, too.

For dragging Danny out of his miserable shell, out of his miserable rat-hole of an apartment. For hauling him around this island, and forcing him to interact with people, to see the outdoors and breathe fresh air even when not demanded by a case. For barging in and tossing Danny's life like a burglar, leaving it in pieces and then, suddenly, whole, and better than before.

He hates that Steve gets half-naked on a regular basis, making traffic stop and onlookers stare until Danny wants to cover him with a giant paper bag, sick to his stomach every time a pretty tourist girl wants Steve to teach her how to surf when he comes jogging in from the waves, lit up the way he gets. Shaking water all over Grace and making her shriek, while he grins like a maniac. Mocking Danny and Danny's dislike of water, but never pushing him into it, because Steve knows about Billy, and that's something to hate, too.

That Danny's told him everything. That Steve knows him better than maybe anyone else in the world, including his own mother. That he stormed his way into Danny's life and took charge of it is bad enough, but then he had to go and make Danny love him, too. "You're the worst person I know."

Who is currently half-bare against him, and aimed at getting rid of that other half, it seems like, because his fingers are busy at his own button and zipper, and panicked sirens are wailing in Danny's head, but the thought of trying to stop this is like planning to stop a freight train by tossing a penny on the tracks, and Steve, Steve has always been a runaway train, barreling down at Danny.

And somehow, Danny never does just jump out of the way. "You know, I feel pretty sure there are better places in your house to do this. Just as a concept, something to throw out there. There are options, is what I'm saying, that don't involve your front door."

[thebesteverseen]

Those words make him laugh, washing through him in a wave he recognizes so well. A call and response. A code. He knows they aren't true now any more than they ever are. Especially not now. When Danny, only a breath ago was shoving at his clothes, and pleading with Steve to admit he had the vaguest clue of knowing what he did to Danny. When it felt like being punched in the head to know he did anything at all to Danny. That every moment he'd collected like photographs and shoved away. Danny had meant it. In those seconds.

Made Steve want to know everything.

Did he collect those moments like photos? It wasn't possible he'd ever. After seeing it. Not like Steve.
It was hard picture. Danny with his perfect hair and little car and little house. But, suddenly, he wanted to know.

All the things he still had no words for, or not enough yet. He might be fine jumping out of a plane 3,000 up, but he wasn't entirely cool with fucking this over entirely by asking something like that. Maybe not now, or ever. If it would implied he had, too. Even when looking at Danny's face like this was all the start he needed. This face that was going to be etched in ash on the inside of his chest once Danny stopped proving he was Steve's only weakness. The one Steve couldn't root out. No, not couldn't. Never couldn't. Wouldn't. Won't.

When his hand gets free of his pants, letting them drop from one so it can find the center of Danny's chest and push him back again. Flat to the door. But not under Steve this time. It pushes him a foot away, while Steve leans the opposite direction, arm stretched nearly straight, and Danny should know to run. Just based on the expression on Steve's face. A grin, shining smile. Wild, and reckless, and utterly with a plan.

"Me?" Steve rolled his eyes, even as the smile, with slightly swollen, didn't pause a beat. Mimicking whining badly, very on purpose. "The door is a problem." Beat. "Forget the door, Steve." Which is not. It was Do not stop. Still a shiver in his blood, but not his bragging. "The door is not good enough now."

"I think-" Steve said, letting his hands fall, one from Danny's chest and from the only part of his pants being held out, even as his smile only darkened along with his gaze never wavering from Danny. "-you should go back to your other topic." The one that was Steve. Somehow. The one that Steve thrust back at Danny as Steve was pushing his briefs off over his thighs next, something of a challenge in his face. Even when he could read the hairline fracture in Danny's.

Like a kid at the edge of a Ferris wheel. Wide eyed and wanting, but trembling. A face he knew incredibly well on Danny. The one that said everything about what Danny wanted -- even if Steve still couldn't entirely parse that being himself, him, here, now, like this -- and everything he was afraid to give in to, to have explode and drag him down again. That Steve had been pushing him over for years. Into the arms of every other person on the otherside of it.

Except as much as Danny hated him, yelled at him, he was the one always there, too. Always stepping up to whatever it was. Yelling at Steve that he wasn't driving fast enough. Dragging Steve out of the red zone. A shoulder on the beach. An ear when Steve could manage words. And he always listened then, too. When Steve told his to go get that cup of coffee, or fly to another country and take care of his own family business, fight for and believe that he could fight for Grace, believe in himself. Believe in Five-0, and in Steve.

Steve can feel the tremble down his own spine, resolutely straight and still though it is, when the rest of the cloth hits the ground, making him have to find the way to step out of shoes, pants and all, while he can only briefly think, refusing to look away from Danny's face, that if it is a mistake, he's going to go down in the biggest bonfire of his life yet.

[haole_cop]

"You're complaining, but all I'm hearing..."

Insamuch as he's hearing anything, when Steve pushes him back, and looms there, smile dark, skin glowing faintly with sweat in the yellow lamplight, disheveled and dangerously close to naked. Suit pants hanging off narrow hips, so low Danny can see the V of muscle disappearing under them. Can see the waistband of his briefs, and the way they pull outward over Steve's thumb. The line of crisp dark curls, shadowing milky pale skin.

He wants to run his thumbs into that groove. Wants to follow them down with his mouth, and feel those curls against his cheek. Wants to be the fabric sliding slowly down Steve's hips, and then his legs.

He wants everything. He wants to beg Steve to stop, so he can slow this down, make sure he gets it right. Gets every part of it. So he can run his hand down Steve's stomach, and hear the sounds he makes when Danny's palm cups the bulge in his briefs. The heat and solidity of him. If he'd shake. If his moans would be anything like the ones Danny pretended for so long that he'd never imagined.

But Steve doesn't slow down, and he doesn't give Danny any mercy or reprieve: just shoves that fabric away, and the briefs, and then kicks them off, along with his shoes, while Danny's brain is still working its way back up to a hard reboot, because that is Steve.

Best friend. Partner. Boss. Steve. The untouchable, unattainable. Perfect. Beautiful. The rock Danny dashes himself against daily, because no matter what, he's always pulled helplessly back in.

And now naked.

For him. Because of him. Because Danny wants him, and Steve wants Danny to want him. Naked. And. Maybe more importantly, when Danny looks up at him, as bare across his face as he is, anywhere else.

Maybe more. Written clear and cracking. Steve doesn't do uncertainty, and he doesn't do easy, but Steve has lost more than Danny can imagine or forgive, and every other person Steve has ever trusted or loved has willfully left him behind. Never found him enough. Wanted something else, more.

They're all idiots. "-- is that you actually listen to me, after all."

Finally finishing his sentence, his thought, from the record-scratch of a second ago, when he's grabbing Steve's wrist to haul himself up along Steve's arm, towards him, so his hands can find skin, can land on Steve's waist, and then travel down the bare, smooth slope of his hips, push back to curve over his ass, as Danny's pushing in to him. Pressure against his stomach, that turns out to be internal as much as not, when one hand is lifting to drag Steve back down to kiss him, and the other is pushing between them to wrap around hot, smooth, hard skin.

It's too fast and he doesn't do too fast, but Steve doesn't do anything else, and it's not the first time he's taken Danny along for the ride, or needed him there, and too fast is still, will always be, a million times better than never at all.

[thebesteverseen]

The sudden pause where Danny's voice cuts off mid-sentence, that way Danny's voice never does, without the appearance of Grace or a shooter, makes Steve's muscles tighten without any request or warning. When Danny is looking at him. For the life of him, Steve having no clue what this face actually is. Danny staring at him. Maybe faintly in pain? Definitely in shock? Staring. Just staring.

The tension pulling Steve's ribs in over his lungs, a cage that never managed to contained anything before.

Before Danny suddenly there is sound and movement all at once, so much so it's like the seconds before a firecracker and then the explosion of the firecracker right after. It's almost disorienting. Suddenly, the sentence picks up like Danny never held that, and lost the words, at the same time while he runs into Steve, pushing Steve's arm out of the way and then his hands are back again.

Sliding suddenly. Warm, solid, heavy hands. Down his waist, his thighs, around back. Fast like maybe Danny feels it, too. This stupid feeling. That even though they've admitted this has been sitting, silent, under everything for a while, it feels like it's got the shortest sprint timer attached to it. A zero-hour clock that going to strike and this will all vanish back into perfect folded suits, and they'll wake up in their bed and --

A sound rockets its way out of Steve's chest, slashing hot against Danny kissing him, acid still burning as white light pummeling his inside and lacing itself with actual explosives, body shuddering for real this time as his hips jerked him forward in Danny's hand and his stomach. Steve's head dizzy with the thought about Danny's hands, Danny's hand's get everywhere, what was he expecting, but he can't even laugh yet.

Steve doesn't even know when his one hand found the round of Danny's shoulder and ended up squeezing this hard.
Focus isn't a thought, burning, his voice thicker and hoarser, even as he refused to give. "So much for the door."