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]

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.

[thebesteverseen]

It's going to his head as more air gets in, from being able to breathe, while he's laughing on the stairs, but Danny doesn't have his hand splintering Steve's body or his mouth making it impossible to breathe in. The insanity is spreading, because it's nothing but amusing. The stumbling of feet, and the sliding of shoes. Attempting to, and then finding stairs, sometimes while smacking into the rise before the stair first, while Danny follows but get noisy, annoyed, like he isn't.

Making Steve's smile even more smug and sunk in, mouth curved in a press that feels impossible to fight against. Even while Danny is throwing those words at him. Feet landing solidly on the mid rise. Half-way. The thought relieving and exhilarating. Insane. Halfway up and he can stop thinking about it at all. Halfway up the stairs to his room. His bed. Where Danny isn't fighting him on being drug to.

Which he can't think about how can be true. Both at all, and because Danny is saying that suddenly.

Danny is talking about him, naked. Him and his dick, and actually using the word dick, not swearing at some low life he wants to punch for being the worst kind of scum doing something to children, and it slams into Steve like he downed half a bottle of scotch on a dare. Both Danny talking about it, and Danny saying it. Danny, who never. It's not like he's got an entirely clean mouth. But never. He'd never pictured this as part of it either.

It feels like glass is shattering in his head, chain links snapping, when he laughs, against Danny's unspoken threat, even while Danny lunges. Absolutely the reverse of it. Steve's shoulders slamming the wall, and his head hitting a photo, unable to even parse the pain because Danny is suddenly against him, hand dragging him down that he moves to fluidly. Even if only to tense everywhere and shiver at the sensation when Danny is suddenly attached to his throat like a leech.

Talking to every part of his body with it. Every part of his air. Warm and wet. One of Steve's hands finding the back of Danny's head, even as he was shifting down the wall to make it easier, get him closer, and leaning his head away to give Danny more room. Would give Danny anything if he didn't stop. They didn't. None of this did. Even if he really must be insane, because it's popping back inside his head even as he does that. As Danny's mouth pulling on his skin, ratching his pulse even higher, into something that makes Steve's eyes almost roll to a close but doesn't stop him.

"What?" He says, voice caught and tone tense for focusing, when his other hand finally moves.
Rolling with the red, the best way he knows how to. Absolutely. From the bottom to the hilt entirely.

Dropping him further into the boiling oil, when his hand slides deftly straight down to the front of Danny's pants and cup around the -- insane, impossible, but actually presently happening, has been, hasn't stopped being -- bulge there, inside the far too, and hate-able for even more reasons now, nice grey pants. His thumb rubbing up and down fabric heavy along it. "Like this? Is this what you're saying is holding us up?"

[haole_cop]

Steve could push him off, or redirect him and drag him around, take that turn and haul him up the second half of the flight of stairs, but he doesn't, because Danny has never known Steve to back down to a challenge.

Even if he's also never seen Steve give in to one like this, either. Steve doesn't push himself down to make it easier for someone to reach him. Steve doesn't bare his throat to give someone better access. Steve protects, at all times.

Except, apparently, not, because one of Steve's hands is sunk into Danny's hair and pushing Danny's mouth harder against his throat, and Danny can feel the machine gun rapid-fire of Steve's pulse against the flat of his tongue, runs the edge of his teeth along the cord of muscle straining in Steve's neck, and then has to windmill back from the instinctive want to bite down, as Steve's other hand slips down the front of his pants, and paints his world into sudden, brilliant light.

Like he hasn't been touched in a long time, since Melissa, and even that was nothing like this. When it's as much revenge as anything else. Steve, insane and upping the ante, making Danny's body shake so hard he worries for a second that he might black out, or his legs might give out, or he'll come in his pants like a teenager who's never been touching before, just from pure anticipation.

And this whole night. It feels like he's been on the edge this whole night, from back in the club when he hoped to God and St. Michael and any one else who might be able to help that Steve wouldn't notice, to the second after Steve shoved him into the door and kissed him, instead of hit him.

Making him groan, right into Steve's skin, long and helpless, pushing into that hand. He should. He shouldn't. The stairs are right there. They can't, here. They're so close. But all he wants is more, more of that hand, more of Steve against him. All of him. Nothing more in the way.

Voice strangled and thin, like he's at the top of a too-tall mountain. "You think that's gonna help?"

[thebesteverseen]

It's perfect. He could die on that noise and never --

No. That's not true. Not in the slightest. He doesn't want to die on that noise. He has so much more he wants to do. To Danny. For the rest of this night. He wants to make that noise shoving under his skin, like jagged shards of glass, happen over and over and over, until it's the only noise the entire top floor of his house even remembers.

This sound, the way it just keeps going on, and Danny shaking, then pushing, himself into Steve even harder and more forcefully than he'd been when he was just attacking Steve's skin. Grinding into his hand, and Steve's hand into himself along with the rest of the flat of Danny, due to the lack of any room between them.

There's something like manic glee evoked by the tone of Danny's voice when he finally speaks again. Thin and so high that Steve wants this recorded, too. Painted on his skin, in his ears. The tone of the voice and exactly what he asks. Tossing it back at Steve, like he's holding them up, causing more problems. Like he's the one that punched them into the wall and started this.

"It's helping me," Steve shot right back, caustic amusement, as his hands tightened just enough to squeeze gentle, but serious, around the whole of where his hand was cupped. Because. It was, and god, but it wasn't. Because all it made him certain of was the fact he wanted Danny out of these pants, and up those stairs, and to go wherever the rest of this could.

Which should mean he'd stop. But when had logic ever really dictated anything when they were shoving at each other?

[haole_cop]

"No."

Gritted out, against a blaze of heat and light, as Steve squeezes, and stars burst in Danny's skull, threatening to send the world tipping right out from under him. "Wrong. You are not helping anyone."

Not Steve. Definitely not Danny. Who maybe is worried about this going too fast and slamming like a car hitting a cement wall right off the freeway, but who also isn't willing to stop the train right now.

It's too much. It's not enough. Sending him ripping himself backwards, and gripping Steve's arm, for lack of a shirt to haul him around by. "But I am."

Helping Steve, and maybe, by proxy, helping himself, by a mixture of pushing and pulling and this almost does feel familiar, right, hauling Steve along after himself, even if it's normally not on the stairs, and Steve is normally wearing clothes, and it's not normally because Danny is dragging him up to Steve's bed but --

The gravitational forces, at least, feel right. Like the world is coming back into alignment, even if his whole body feels sore and throbbing without Steve's hands anywhere on him. "Will you hurry up, please? Aren't you the one who just said there was a deadline, huh?"

[thebesteverseen]

It's hard to want to move. Now and ever, again, when he can move his fingers so marginally and the whole world reinvents what he knows of it, again. Danny's face shuttering up and shivering outward, beyond his control, beyond his ability to talk straight through. Expressions blurring into and fading out of each other that Steve's never seen and needs to memorize so he can never forget them again.

Which makes it insane that he smiles, grim and pleased, to watch Danny shove through it, too. Drag himself away, out of Steve's hands, and bodily attempt to drag Steve by an arm. There's a momentary consideration of digging his heels in and making it nearly impossible for Danny to move him, but -- what would be the point, right? when he wants what Danny wants? And has for so long -- he doesn't instead, letting himself be dragged like a tug boat.

"For you," Steve corrected, arrogant like he was somehow unaffected, or just as good either way the chips fell in that.

Yet he doesn't fight it, taking the steps with Danny, and not tugging back his arm. The landing is even fewer seconds from the middle stop when they aren't navigating each other's feet and the inability to see. Putting them on the hallway and right next to his room, door already mostly open from when he left this morning, in the middle of thoughts that had nothing to do with this.

The person he was this morning would have laughed, and then broken someone, for implying this would happen tonight.

When it's easy to keep up the motion and propel Danny toward the inside of the room, even in the dark, leaving what little light is being thrown upward by the scant light turned on and left on in the living room. He didn't even reach for the light switch, not even though he wanted to remember everything about this. There was something different to that, wasn't there? Turning on the light and pushing forward through it, glaring light and every inch of exposure.

It's not the same as suddenly snapping his arm in toward himself, fast enough to drag Danny off course and pull him back into Steve's arms. Too long already. When he needs his hands back on Danny's shoulders, and arms. His chest. To find his mouth again, somewhere against the thoughts about the light, and drag Danny right into the places he's always been in this room, already, too. Part of Steve and shadows that Steve keeps here. In his head and his bed.

[haole_cop]

Steve doesn't argue, except to toss that smug comment back at him, and he doesn't fight Danny's grip or direction. He actually takes the stairs quickly, and then stiff-arms Danny into the bedroom, before Danny can really think about what it is they;re doing, only to drag him back once they're inside. In the dark. Where Danny's momentum sends him crashing into Steve, but Steve seems ready for him, and then there are hands all over him, lighting his skin on fire. Running over his shoulders. Down his arms. Along his sides. Flat against his chest. Pulling out tiny sounds, while he's catching Danny's mouth with his, and setting off little muted explosions all the way through his body.

There's no time to think. No time to think about how they're in Steve's bedroom, and Steve's bed is right there, or how Steve is naked and Danny is getting there. It's all just flashes, while his hands reach back for Steve, again, for his hips, sides, to run down the slope at the small of his back. Everywhere he was never supposed to touch Steve, before, and now can.

Live out every one of those fantasies, by letting his hands track over smooth planes of muscle and the dip of his back, amazed because Steve's skin is so much softer than he would ever have expected, more sensitive. And warmer.

He could be happy, more than happy, completely satisfied, just with this. Just getting to put his hands on Steve, and kiss him, here in the dark, and have it be real. While Steve wants this. While Steve wants him. Said so, against the door, downstairs. Almost lost it during a job, because of it.

There's no chance of getting enough. There's no such thing, there's too much of Steve to learn and memorize, to have to torture himself with when this inevitably tosses him off a cliff, blows up in his face.

But it hasn't, yet, which is as surprising as anything else, tonight. Somehow, they made it all the way up here, to this quiet, dark, warm room, where the ocean is murmurming outside and the breeze is slipping through the windows and Steve has brought him up here, because he wants Danny in his room, his space, his bed.

That they aren't actually moving towards, but that's fine, too. Danny's not sure he's done here, yet.

[thebesteverseen]

It was never long winded thoughts, about how it would happen. He spent so long trying not to think about anything happening. Which worked better in the last few years, but worked for absolute shit that first year. While Danny was a wreck, angry and sad, often at his place after Rachel left him a wreck again. Then, staying at his place, sleeping on that couch. And when Gabby happened, and Danny needed him, needed him to help him with every agonizing step forward.

Yeah. It was hell through that year. Like every time he looked at Danny was designed as his own personal superweapon.

It got better. That's another lie, isn't it? It's such a lie. When Danny folds into him, without hesitation, hands finding his skin and Danny's mouth just as responsive, even here, in this room, in the dark. Maybe not better. Maybe livable. Just as livable as his dad being dead and his mother being alive. The way certain scars tensed to a small ache right before they got a real squall in that had come across the sea. He learned to live with it, because he could, as long as he was still basically living next to Danny.

He never thought about it like this. With the door, and the stairs. With his clothes in piles on his living room floor, and Danny looking terrified or thinking he'd punch him. Never with him here, making small, dark, hot noises that, even more than those looks in that year, too close and always meaning absolutely nothing, are actually made to destroy him. Thumbs and fingers dragging down ribs with his hands curved on Danny's sides.

It's this, and not that. This that he couldn't imagine. This. Every step, and every sound.

This would kill him to have left in his head. The knowing so much worse than any hazy given into image. Feeling.

It would help if he cared. Any other day, with any other person, Danny would be the one telling him to care. To give a damn. Think about himself. Not rush into the house that's on fire, or full of gang with guns, or explosives. Not even if he was trained for just that. Danny who cares more about Steve's life on a daily basis, and his heart getting shoved in a grinder constantly, than anyone in Steve's life ever has. Including Steve.

But he can't. He can't slow down and he can't stop. Doesn't want to rethink or overthink this, or let Danny do both, that he's, also, better at doing than Steve. Danny who, also, isn't slowing down. Hasn't made him, and he could, couldn't he? Steve's hands would stop and he'd pull back entirely if Danny told him to, or got a hand flat on his chest and shoved him back. He'd go. Wouldn't he. Without thinking. Without much surprise even.

Which only makes his grip a little harder on Danny's skin as that spans through him. A spike of fear in a wave of absolute possessive necessity against the brush of reality, with Danny still kissing him back, making these noises and Danny's skin under his hands. At least until his fingers run into the top of his pants, again, and Steve, breathless and torn between a groan of the impatience and a laugh, shoved more out, baiting, biting. "I have to do everything for you, don't I?"

Hands sliding in and starting on Danny's pants, while Steve started stepping forward into him.

Pushing Danny back toward his bed, and on toward being finally totally done with these pants that could go.

[haole_cop]

He wants to drown in the sensation of hands on his skin, body pressed against his, mouth owning his, lighting every nerve in his body into life and then setting them on fire all at once with that laugh that's half a groan, and a sound Danny's never heard him make before, wants to hear so many more times. "Are you saying you don't want to undress me?"

He's never been intimidated by Steve, and he's never backed away from taunting Steve, but it comes out dark and edged in flame and humor that's less a laugh and more a challenge, while he pulls back far enough to hit the bed with the back of his legs. Making himself watch Steve's face, instead of glancing down, the way he wants to. "Because you had me pretty much convinced otherwise, downstairs."

Back when Steve was peeling clothes off Danny like plastic wrap off a toy he couldn't wait to take out of the box, before he stopped, and went for his own clothes, instead.

Not that Danny's complaining, even if he hasn't had much of a chance to step back, and look, and try to hammer home the reality of this: that Steve is naked, that Steve wants him to be naked, that all of this is actually happening, and he's not going to wake up in a puddle of sweat, painfully hard and feeling dirty all over for another dream about his best friend. "I can't believe a control freak like you doesn't want to be the one in charge of getting me out of my clothes."

Which is definitely not the case, as Steve's fingers work at his pants button and the zipper and Danny's breath catches as Steve brushes against him, through fabric that is too thin and too thick all at once, leaving him reaching to set his hands at Steve's hips to steady himself, and keep from losing his balance, falling back onto the mattress.

"Listen, I'm sure buttons can be very confusing to a Neanderthal like yourself, but I have every faith you can manage it, Steve."

[thebesteverseen]

Danny isn't wrong, even when he's laughing, taunting, goading with those words. Having no clue. Not the faintest concept. How many times and how many ways Steve has wanted it. Consider it. Seen it flash across his mind, and have to be shoved back, like somehow it was painted on his face. Startling and too true in that moment than it had ever been before it, until this newest one was missed, too.

Wanting to shove Danny into a wall. Or a crate. Hugging him too tight while other urged ran rampant in the swell of relief and success that felt sharper than a hair split by a knife from everything going the opposite way, and losing Danny entirely. The madness of the days when only one of Danny's button's would stay, while out on the beach or the water, constantly dragging in Steve's attention and his want to at least undo it and stop the madness from wanting to undo. Just to set it looking normal.

Somehow it worse then. Somewhere in between. The tight pressed shirt and the absolute nothing. A burn worse than either.

Like this one right here -- Danny's bare chest bumping into his, Danny's bare hands on his own bare skin, and the cloth that feels too thick and too wrong in contrast -- except this one is nothing like it. While Danny is talking about him wanting to undress Danny. That he has. That he was. Like his hands aren't on Danny now, while Danny's breath was not catching, his body not shivering or straining toward Steve.

Steve looked up at Danny's face, appraising for one steady blink. The faint narrow of his eyes, press at the edge of his mouth, the meant a ledge was about to be lept. A roof climb. A door blown off. The car was going to go through a gate. On a boat. A wall scaled when already ten floors up. A leap, even once he'd run out of ammo two minutes back. Before his mouth twists a little crooked, and he's pushing down Danny's pants and boxers with one hand, and shoves Danny in the opposite direction of Danny's obvious attempt to remain standing and holding on to him with other.

"At least I'll finally know if this will finally make you stop talking."

It's said already in movement. Steve dropping, fingers sliding to Danny's hips, stomach, groin. Hard to say, really, if it's Steve's right knee that finds that ground or Steve's mouth suddenly shoving straight down around all of Danny, fast and cheeks pulled in tight. Only one of them matters to Steve anyway, and it isn't the ground. He can manage even the ground forgets to exist. If Danny falls back on the bed, or sits, or refuses, clinging to standing. Everything is details against the scent and texture and taste filling his mind, nose, mouth.

[haole_cop]

It all happens in a second: Steve's on him like a landslide, shoving Danny back, and pushing Danny's clothes down off his hips, and dropping like a stone at the same time as Danny's ass hits the mattress and bounces him up just enough for it to be a shock like smacking water at speed when Steve's pushing into his lap, and then --

And then it's his mouth, and his tongue, and Danny feels like he's being swallowed, the world gone hot and wet and narrowing down to nothing but Steve's mouth on him, while Steve attacks with the kind of dedication Danny would normally admire from a career soldier but which is currently dismantling his ability to do so much as breathe with a sledgehammer.

The only breath he can take, sharp and painful, and expulsed again in a "Christ, Steve," that sounds more like a swear than prayer.

One hand balancing himself, the other going to Steve's head, shaky with adrenaline and nerves, and it's too much for him, when his eyes open again, and he looks.

It's dark in this room, but there's enough dim starlight from the windows to illuminate it: the silhouette of Steve bent over him, between his legs. Outlining the edge of his shoulders, the back of his neck. And his mouth. His. Explosions chase their way up Danny's spine in a chain reaction. Steve's lips wrapped around him. Steve's tongue dragging against the most sensitive part of him. Steve, swallowing him. Steve, kneeling between his legs. Steve. Steve.

Striking a hard shudder that rolls through his body. Followed by another. Another. Every muscle now shaking like his fingers just were, from the strain of trying to keep it together when just the thought of what's happening right now, the thought of Steve's mouth on him, is enough to send him over the edge, embarrassingly quickly. It's Steve. It's Steve. The name, face, person he knows as well as himself. The name that's getting breathed out in stuttered groans now, ragged as his pulse.

He needs it to stop. He wants it to never stop.

[thebesteverseen]

A lot of what they say is lies, insults, and over exaggerations. It's who they are, how they roll, what they do.

A lot of people outside of Five-0 think every bit of it is real. Never understand how they could still be working together six years later if they hate each other this much. But they've never hated each other. No matter how many times Danny has said it. Not the first day, trying to bulldoze each other, and not even the first time disappeared to Asia and Danny called almost every day saying I hate you as often as he said come back.

Not now, when they still constantly disrespect each others skills like breathing. When Steve doesn't even have to say and Danny doesn't have to hear that no part of Steve wants Danny to be dead silent. That every cell in him wants to shudder and push harder, pull deeper, hold longer when Danny's voice takes his name and swears like Steve dropped Danny on frying pan instead of his bed, and it goes to his head, expanding fast and hot through his chest, like nothing else in the world.

Danny's fingers finding his head. The side of his face and over his hair. Shaking enough -- just like the rest of Danny's body -- that Steve can feel it. Wants to laugh. Dizzying madness shooting through were his blood is supposed to be, but has no room to be, when this is shoving through, ballooning the space of his veins to twice their size. Because he's doing this to Danny. Him. To Danny. That Danny is holding on, and can't stop saying his name.

When Danny has never said his name this many times in a row when he wasn't trying to get Steve's attention to keep him from making an example of someone, or when he was drunk and he had found the newest thing he absolutely needed Steve to pay attention to. This third one, dribbling into his ears like acid, when he doesn't want to stop. He wants to keep going. Wants every single shudder that smacks Danny's body so hard, Steve's name following it like an echo. A warning trampled.

A double spur pushing into Steve along with all of Danny. Warm and solid in his mouth, pushing up into him with every shudder and buck of his body that Steve doesn't even try to stop. Not really. He could pin Danny's hips or his thighs. But he doesn't. It's electric. He wants this. He wants whatever Danny gives, pushes at him. All of Danny. Wants to hear his voice as it gets more and more wrecked with each solid shake, turning from profane to something like begging.

He's never heard Danny like this. This isn't even what it's like when Danny is miserable, or angry, or desperate.

This is perfect. The cracks in his almost never crackable voice. All of Steve's name. In a dozen ways Steve will never be able to wash out of his mind or his skin. Ragged and cracking, with such an audible promise. That Steve could just shove throught the whole damn thing and show Danny. Take him here and now, in less than half a dozen minutes. That Steve could do that. Have him coming in minutes, maybe even the next one if he put his back into it, when Steve's barely taken a single breath in again.

It's tempting. Red and warm, burning under his skin. But not winning. Shoved at. Because, and Steve wonders if he's an idiot, too old and gone soft -- or if it's that other thing, that he can't look at, not tonight, not this and that, and still manage -- because he doesn't want that. He doesn't want a wham, bam, thank you ma'am here on his bed in form of Danny Williams.

He doesn't want Danny done in the next forty seconds, capable of falling asleep or leaving. Doesn't want Danny's hand off of him and his name not in Danny's mouth, garbled with marbles and written in boiling oil, being torn out of his chest while Danny is incapable of control his own mouth. Steve wants everything, but he doesn't want to be done. Not yet. Not now. He'd kill anyone who called and needed them now. Just. Kill them. Fast. Silent. Even if a part of him whines at the concept, more important thing. But, nothing in the world is this.

It's pulling bones from sockets, to pull back. Tongue licking the ridge of Danny's head, before it's playing at his own shiny bottom lip for a second in the stretch of his jaw, before he laughs. A crackling sound in the dark that is anything but silent. "Guess we're going to go with no on that one, too."