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]

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."

[haole_cop]

That sound. That one. That one. It's going to be burned into Danny's ears forever. Sudden and sharp, like he shot Steve. Steve's whole body bucking into him, threatening collapse.

It's so perfect it's almost enough to completely quell the misgivings floating around in his head, in his chest, in the nervous clutch of his stomach that says this is too much, too fast, too soon, that neither of them are ready for this and they need to be, or it'll kill them both.

Not ruin. Not wreck. But destroy. Shatter. Murder.

There's too much riding on it, too much that can be lost. Everything he already couldn't stand losing, and this, now, too. That sound. Steve's body curling in to him, hips tipping, helpless. He's not used to Steve being helpless. He's not used to getting swept into Steve's momentum, and meeting him halfway. Steve isn't someone anyone meets halfway, chases after, keeps pace with. He's a hurricane, and Danny has always been only a tortoise.

He should stop. He doesn't want to stop. He should pause them, try to regain some sanity. But that would require letting go, and he hasn't yet quite had enough either of the strain in Steve's voice and fingers that's arcing through the rest of his body in hard shakes, or of the sensation of silky hot skin, smooth over searing hardness, under his fingers, in his palm. Making his groin ache, and the tension of holding back shake in his muscles, even as he experiments with slow strokes, pulling back enough to see Steve's face, to watch this, what it does, if Steve meant it, if he wants this, wants Danny, like he said. "I wanted to bust every finger on that guy's hand."

Fine. Going back to the old topic. One that feels too honest and too raw and too open, still, even when Steve's naked and shivering against him, and Steve's fingers are embedding themselves in Danny's shoulder, and Steve said. For years. "For thinking he could have any part of you, even for a night. And I couldn't."

[thebesteverseen]

Steve doesn't think there's a day of his training, or their partnership, that ever prepared him for this. The rusty few seconds when he's nearly, truly gathered his feet under him, again, and Danny fingers begin to slide along Steve's skin. Hands he's seen do a million things, but when he has to look, has to be sure, he's not dreaming this, not imagining it, Danny's fingers are wrapped around him, sliding slowly up and down his skin. Making it feel like a bomb goes off in his brain, in his vision, again. Everything so clear but blowing out everything else left that wasn't it.

Danny's hand on him. Shifting. Causing ripples of warmth to flood through his skin and the building itch, twining, tightening in the pit of his stomach at the base of his spine. But Danny, who has decided he's not a wall flower tonight, is still talking and Steve at least can hear it, now that the shock is starting to at least ebb back enough for him to start focusing everywhere else, too. At least. Slightly. Not that Danny's words help any.

Danny pulling back and staring up at him as he says it. Steve licking his lips, trying to plant his weight in his heels and control the small jerks of his hips already. Making an effort not to blink or let his eyelashes lower against the friction he can't ignore, doesn't want to, could never. Letting go of Danny's shoulder as his control settles more into his skin, a careful balance he'd carried worse with, even when it feels like his skin is more than ready to slide off his muscles at a twitch's notice. The urge is to kiss Danny, when these words are falling out impossibly, is strong.

Danny jealous of that guy. It's half a question and half a rush that just suddenly sprints through him.
Honest to god jealousy of someone just touching Steve. Someone thinking they could have him.

Even when Danny knew he'd be in the Camaro after. With him. Headed to HQ, and then home.

"So that's why you went off script," Steve said, as though there were a script. As though he gave a damn about any non-existant script. Or understood how this was possible. Any of it. Danny half-dressed in the first few feet of his house, fingers curled around his dick, moving slowly. So slowly. How Danny even could be jealous of someone who didn't matter touching him. When Steve couldn't have cared a rat ass about Campbell. But somehow Danny was thinking about it. Which is a boiling point.

Somehow it flashes through him, as though Danny's hand isn't on him, right now, trying to liquefy his focus, Danny wanting him. Not wanting anyone else to touch Steve if Danny couldn't be touching him. Wanting to break someone's hand even for the false assumption. That was, somehow, how much Danny wanted him.

[haole_cop]

"Like there was a script," he says, but he can hear the defensiveness in his own voice. Even like this, with Steve naked and pressed against him and every wild dream he'd ever entertained suddenly looking like it might come true.

There hadn't been a script, but he had gone off it. What Steve expected. What they loosely planned. When they probably should have had a script, precisely for that sort of situation, if for no other reason than to make sure Danny didn't lose his cool, make too large a scene.

Not that they would have planned for that. He was never supposed to say anything about that. They're so far off script now that the things he would say sound strange and clunky and ferociously untrue.

He had gone off script, and it was because he was jealous, but it wasn't only jealousy. It was something like this, too. Wanting Steve to pick him, even if Steve had no other real choice. Wanting to be chosen. Wanting to be the one Steve wanted to go home with, even if going home meant only a friendly argument in the car and then a couple of hours either sitting out in the chairs watching the water, or sitting in here watching a dumb movie.

He wanted Steve to pick him anyway. Which was stupid. Pointless. A hollow victory he added to the pile he keeps like a magpie's nest, possessive of each moment, each time Steve called him instead of someone else, spent the weekend with him and Grace, trusted him with another secret or confession.

Everything that meant he'd pick Danny first, at least for almost everything else. Which helped, but never quite unsoured, the fact that he wasn't going to be picking Danny for this.

Except he is. Except he's here, stripped down and forging ahead, because Steve's been wanting all those things, too. Except he has Steve in his hand and Steve shuddering against him and Steve's taste on his lips and Steve staring at him through a haze of pure want, and Danny keeps expecting to wake up, but it just keeps not happening.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve doesn't want to think, and absolutely can't breathe, when Danny's voice goes sharper with defensive disagreement and his hand, because his hands talk as much as his mouth and so much more, tightens possessively. Nearly making that sound crawl right back up Steve's throat, teeth meeting, as a haze shifts his eyelids almost closed for that second and his hips made abortive pushes into that sudden constriction of a warm hand and the friction of the muscles and softness of the stomach at the end. Helpless and nearly shameless.

When he's never pictured it like this. Not ever. With Danny holding the most delicate part of him, that isn't a vital organ inside the thin barriers of his skin and muscle, possessively. Like Steve is the one on dangerous ground making that comment, and it's not supposed to go to his head. Danny snapping. Arguing. Making his comment right. Inflating his head like helium had been blown in.

"Not for you, apparently," Steve said, once he could make his teeth unkit from each other and all of the muscles in his jaw. Refusing to let even his body keep him back, no matter how much he wanted to push in, lean in, let it be everything he's pictured more than a hundred ways or times and known the whole time wasn't real or wanted.

Except it is, and Danny's hand is there. His blue eyes dark and his mouth pink.

When all Steve wants to do is punch this straight over the red line, until everyone of Danny's muscles in shivering with the need that is creeping through Steve's whole body, replacing his own muscles, with this desperate want to move more inside his hand. To make him see how true it was, even when Steve made his words rejecting and flippant. Like he couldn't see Danny's problem in the slightest, even when his voice was rougher and thicker. "He wasn't my type anyway."

Like it was Campbell, himself, and not Danny was the bigger thing.

Like Danny hadn't been every single thing he looked for in a person in years.

[haole_cop]

That sound, and the way Steve is shivering with the force of holding himself back, are all the reasons Danny needs to push it further.

Straight past the panic, and the worry, and the fear. Past everything that could and almost certainly will go wrong, because everything goes wrong eventually, and just like he told Steve there in the rubble of that building, everything good inevitably blows up in his face.

And even if Steve convinced him to accept that maybe a good thing was just a good thing, Danny turned out to be right, in the end, right? Because Amber lied, and turned out to have the kind of past that got Danny hospitalized and could have gotten Grace killed. Another bust.

Even one he didn't care much about, but he was right to be wary, and right to be anxious, and he had been right about Gabby, too.

He doesn't want to be right, this time. This time, it matters. This time, it would be so much worse than introducing someone to Grace, only to have to explain a few weeks or months later that she wouldn't be around, anymore. It would be so much worse than just another bruise on his heart and notch chalked up to the many ways in which the world hates Danny Williams and doesn't want him to be happy.

If this goes, so does everything else.

So it's easier to just tighten his fingers, and run the pad of his thumb mercilessly up over the head, and start stroking faster, harder, while watching Steve's face try to keep from cracking right open. "No?"

Leaving Danny some room to study him, too, when his voice isn't as light and mocking as he meant it to be. "But I am, huh?"

It feels dangerous to even say. So much more so to believe. He's not Steve's type. He's seen Steve's type. Right? Beautiful, strong, smart women with quick wits and the kind of skills that would allow them to survive in the jungle overnight.

He hadn't thought the guy was Steve's type. He hadn't thought any guy was.

[thebesteverseen]

There's something dark and hooded, with too many thoughts, that keeps flashing in and out of Danny's face, his dark eyes, because Danny is always thinking too much. But Steve can't even focus to try and figure what it is, no matter whether it's good or not, because Danny is trying to beat his brain out of his ears with only the curl of his voice and his fingers, both hitting him at the same time and doubling their concussive force.

He can't even answer at first. Crackling sparks of electricity shoved into veins and his bones against Danny's thumb, and then exploded into a wall of black, somehow foreign and blinding as white and red behind his eyelids, when his body shuddered and shoved into the sudden fast movement before his head even had a chance to do anything except emulating being punched to the temple with a brick made of steel.

Everything heat and hunger, when his eyes get back open and his chest, his breathing fast, is going without him, dragging him along after it, the same as his hips. When he can't stop the fast tense and release going on with the muscles burning through his upper thighs, ass, and lower back as they kept meeting Danny's movement. Yet he had to try. Because he was for sure as shit not losing everything right here, in Danny's hand, on his doorstep, this few seconds into even being touched.

He didn't care how long it had been since he'd rubbed one out even to make sleep come faster, or that it'd been months and months since Cath, and there hadn't been anyone iafter, and years since another guy. Which wasn't the same by any measure to, Danny. Danny. For the first time, Danny. When he's losing it on that thought and those fingers, has to drag Danny closer and kiss him.

Bury this into his mouth. Flames licking up his spine, melting and pooling and winding tight in his center. That it's Danny.

But. It's Danny, and it's him, and neither of them go gentle into the dark. Neither of them give up. Give in. Let the other have the last word. Not when they can be bastards. Making Steve drive fingers into the brick walls and chains of his head, and pull out. Talking against the rush, voice getting as ruined on Danny's hands as the rest of Steve. "Midgets with an obsession over smog is in. You didn't get the memo?"

Except he doesn't stop or wait for the answer to what isn't a real question. Like grabbing a ball or a bomb in midair, you keep the momentum going. His fingers in Danny's hair, pulling down to a shoulder, giving Danny an approximation of a withering look.

"How do you still have your pants?" With a small look down, past Danny's hand on him, which makes the world spin, tilt, everything his harder in those strokes. "Fuck-" Rolls into, in the same breath. "And shoes." That Steve sounds deeply bitterly offended by. The ones he still makes fun of all the time, but would silence anyone with his darkest warning look if they tried. When it's still riding him. Having looked down, and he has to kiss Danny again, pushing into his fingers. Greedy, in wanting too many things at once.

Forcing himself to say words into it, because he wants, can't, needs all of it. "God, Danny, just pick one already. The couch or the bed." Even though he just kisses Danny after that, too. Like he can't stop. Because he can't. Doesn't ever want to. Stop. Wake up. Think. "Or I will take you against the door right now." Beat. "Or the floor. Or-" Anything solid.

[haole_cop]

He might love this, if he had the time to properly process it. How Steve shudders like ground breaking in an earthquake, and then dragging him into a kiss, instead of answering him. Steve barely able to keep his eyes open. Steve barely hanging on.

It makes Danny want to push him faster, harder. See what happens when Steve finally breaks, all over him, because of him. His hand. His mouth. His skin. Because Steve can't stop, even to mock him, even while insulting him directly into his mouth with a voice that sounds like it was tarred with a brush and left out in the sun to bake all day in the Hawaiian heat. "Seems like it's working for you."

Which hasn't yet stopped being astounding, or suspicious, in equal measure, flipping back and forth into each other. Because it is working for Steve. Steve likes it. Him. Wants, somehow, ludicrously, him. Short and loud and opinionated and a thorn in Steve's side for years, and Steve -- the one who looks like Bond, the one people always stare at and want -- has wanted him. For years.

Is looking down his body, and asking those questions, and swearing into Danny's mouth, because he keeps crushing any words Danny would toss back out with another kiss. And another. Another. While complaining about Danny having too many clothes. "How do I still have pants? How?"

His hand never stops moving, but he does have to be careful, slow it down, as Steve shifts, and Danny has to shift, too, back towards the door under Steve's weight and the force of being run down like a wooden fence crumpling beneath a tank. "Maybe if you'd gone for mine instead of yours, that wouldn't be a problem."

And then they'd both be. Naked. And he tries not to think about how that's far too fast, except, is it? It's been years. For them both. Secretly. And Danny's imagined this so many hundreds of times. This isn't like sleeping with someone on a first date, they've been here for years. Maybe they've been moving too slow, and need to make up for lost time.

Maybe he'll freak out in the middle of sex with Steve for the very first time and then this house will burn down, who knows. Anything could happen.

Especially when Steve says, dark and dangerous, those words, and Danny can hear the fizz of the fuse burning down to a stick of dynamite, in his head.

Asking him to pick. Couch. Or.

Or. Or. Clutching his stomach suddenly into a painful ball of nerves, because. That would be. Real. Sudden. Way too fast, and not fast enough, and two options are, it turns out, two options too many.

So he stalls. Even if he'd never say it, out loud, admit to it: he stalls. "Oh, now you want to move away from the door, huh?"

[thebesteverseen]

Danny doesn't stop, or even slow down. Not even from Steve kissing him like he's trying to take out the perfect madness expanding threateningly inside his skin and find a way to push it back into Danny, or drag Danny with him. He needs all of it, with Danny, right there with him. Which he isn't. When he's laughing at Steve's questions and throwing it back at Steve like it's his own fault. He chose wrong when he did. He should have gone for undressing Danny instead of himself.

He hadn't. He could have. Hadn't. Because he was busy with his own clothes, is a damn lie, and so is that he didn't think about it, when the fire of Danny's hand is making it impossible to hide anything behind, stripping all the muscle down to a single bone. It was easier if it was him. Wasn't it. Hadn't it been. If Danny just told him to stop when he was undressing himself, that would have been easier. To watch it crash and burn on.

If it'd been Danny. Danny who had lost his shirt, moaning and groaning. If Danny had stopped him then.

Hands on Danny. Undressing Danny entirely. Like they were allowed to be there. To take everything, demand everything. The way he did every day with Danny, except more. Like this now, pertaining to every part of his body. An evasion he hadn't even thought of or acknowledged as one. One he didn't even need, right, if Danny was standing here, trying to liquefy his bones. Hadn't even taken more than a second to run into him, drag him back, start jacking him off like Steve needed none of his brain cells.

All of it sliding through his fingers, caustic, like sands he could barely acknowledge, lest think about. There, but not.

Especially when Danny does it again. Another joke. Another reminder they are right here, with the clothes and the door, because Steve didn't choose something else earlier. When it's all gravel and grit, looking up at Danny's eyes, snap fast and the words are falling out too fast, too bare, more bare than he's got no clothes and Danny is stripping his skin with one set of fingers, bare. "No, I want you."

He couldn't give a damn about the door or the floor, or the couch or the bed. But he's supposed to.

Somewhere in the back that's wrong, too, isn't it. It worries like the broke part of a tooth after a too hard fight. He does. It says everything. About whether he gives a damn. About how he's felt about anyone he ever brought into this house. What they could have. Or see. What they couldn't see, and what parts of him he didn't want known. Whether he wanted to remember if this was real in the light of day.

It's not even that he's never been ashamed of Danny that strikes into his gut, but that something wholly not a part of this. That he wants it to be real, right now, right here, but later, too, because he wants to wake up tomorrow morning and still know it was. He wants Danny to be there, on the other side of him, his bed, still. It's not even a complex thought, it's a flash. That he wants more than this. More than just the sex. He wants Danny not to leave. Escape. Think he has to, or to want to.

Danny's hasn't been a guest in years, and Danny could never be just a fuck, which means it all very stupid, isn't it?.

Making it all zero in on him, like the world has a scope on him. His face. Hands. That thing in his chest.

"Get with the program already." Steve barked, a mocking smoking sound. Derision, like Danny has been standing here doing absolutely nothing, holding up the party the whole time. While Steve moves. Dragging Danny in to kiss him, again, and then even more. Taking all momentum and charge with it, stepping backward and taking Danny with him. Headed for the stairs behind him. It's not the first time he's tried them without seeing.

[haole_cop]

He's not ready for it. Either. The way Steve looks at him, like a mask just peeled away and burnt up before hitting the ground, like a meteor, and said that. No. Stopping up everything in Danny's chest, setting a match to the gas bubble in his head. I want you.

Refusing to go along with the jokes, even when he's the one who started them -- except then he'd been groaning into Danny's mouth, and threatening him with not being able to wait, with right here, right now, because somehow, impossibly, that is a thing that is true. That Steve wants Danny so much it's an effort not to have him right here, against the door. On the floor. Even the couch, less than ten steps away, too far.

Three words that maybe shouldn't mean anything, that are tossed around every day. Want such a nebulous, tame thing. He wants coffee. Wants to see Grace. Wants to do a good job. Wants to make it through another day without taking a bullet or wrecking the car. There are a lot of things both of them want.

But Danny's never heard Steve say it like this. Like how he said Danny's name, earlier. Like the word itself is a match striking, or the tick-tick-tick of a cartoon time bomb. He knows Steve is dangerous. He just never thought, could have imagined, he'd see it like this.

When Steve's crushing him into a kiss, and destroying Danny's air, and then stepping back, with that growled, snapped order, like Danny's pissing him off. Maybe he is. Stumbling forward, releasing the cuff of his fingers to find Steve's side, instead, someplace he can grip to try and keep his balance as Steve drags him, them, both, towards the stairs. Through this room he's walked across so many times.

Hauling Danny bodily across it like Danny is not a grown man and doesn't know where the goddamn stairs are. "Hey!"

When he can catch a breath, smacking at Steve's shoulder even as they're stumbling towards the stairs, his shoes catching on carpet and hardwood and making him consider just how much harder it is to try and get to a place when a six foot something SEAL is both in his way and refusing to let go. "Traditionally, stairs are meant to be walked up, not crashed into, Steven. You want me to break my neck, tripping over your stupid giant feet, or do you want to get up there in one piece, huh?"

[thebesteverseen]

The face happens, again. The one Steve isn't sure of. Where Danny almost looks pained, out of breath, blown away by the words that fell out of Steve's mouth and Steve has to pretend. His guts don't twinge. He's not watching Danny for his own signs. That he's about to run. That it was too much. That he's a damn asshole and he never should have opened his mouth and shoved that at Danny, wanting to burn him down, trip him up, make it impossible to think, make him understand.

That it's too much, and he's known that for years. He always has been. Too much. A sinkhole circling Danny. But not like this.

He forgets on Danny's lips, without forgetting. Like he can fight and run, as far as he needs, as long as he has to, ignoring whatever might be wrong with him, but he never forgets. Not entirely. It's not allowed. They aren't allowed to have weaknesses that they don't look in the eye, even if they carry them on their back, in the rest of their pack, without looking toward it. The way it hovers even when he's kissing Danny.

Wanting to forget. Wanting Danny to forget it. Wanting Danny to never ever forget it.

Even when his body gives a shudder, everything rushing in to fill the vacuum, as a sound comes out of his mouth, unbidden and unstoppable, a needy smothered whimper caught in teeth and lips, drug up from the bottom of his spine, when Danny's fingers suddenly come off of him. Finding some other part of him. Every dazed, slipped sideways, his weight foreign for a second. The burn of absence entirely upsetting the balance he'd haphazardly worked out with the onslaught. Scalding at his skin in its absence, all of his skin crawling with want, even as Danny's hand caught his side.

Fingers curling his side, while Danny yells through the din in his skin, and then is smacking his arm, making Steve frown and then wither a look at him, though it never does get anywhere near his eyes. "You can't walk on any other normal day. What makes you think I'd believe you could manage any better now?" There's no hesitation in Steve's still pulling him that way, and Steve's smirk dragging itself out warm and sharp. "I can carry you, if you're going to keep holding up the rear."

It's insane. They are insane. Certifiable. While Danny is flushed and yelling, and Steve wants all of it back on him already.

[haole_cop]

That sounds is going to be the death of him. Nothing about Steve has ever been needy, aside from his pathological need to be right, be the best, and take the shortest route to any destination, even if means going through a wall, but that was. Needy. Greedy. Wanting more.

It's like nothing Danny's ever heard before, and it goes to his head like champagne, if the bottle wasn't opened and instead just smacked to shatter against his temple.

Steve wants him. This much. So much he's bodily dragging Danny up the stairs, which Danny almost trips on, as they start heading up. So much that he makes that noise when Danny stops touching him. So much that he shoved Danny against the door and kissed him, even though every rule of logic and law says he shouldn't have. That none of this should, can, happen.

But it is. And Steve's still mocking him, vicious and dark and anything but real, while Danny's stumbling to find the steps, as they keep coming, until they hit the first landing and he finds purchase to shove Steve into the wall, just for payback.

Payback, because it's definitely not slowing things down, and it's definitely not going to help them get up the stairs any faster. "You really think that now is the time to mock me, Steven?"

Sharp and annoyed, because it's easy to be annoyed with Steve, far easier than to accept everything else he's feeling, that seem like they'll crack him into spiderwebbed glass shards in any second. "Right now? When you're naked? And -- I'm pretty sure, give the circumstances -- you'd really like me to get my hand back on your dick in the near future? Now, you make fun of me? Is that smart?"

Is any of this? Is pushing Steve into the wall and knocking a picture askew, smart, is pushing in to grip the back of his head with one hand so he can lay his mouth against the pulse that's sprinting in Steve's neck smart?

It's not. But he does it anyway, because people have called him a lot of things in his life, but smart wasn't usually one of them.