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]

The world is a shell of itself. Inverted and decimated. The hollow, white noise, rushing noise that is water flooding in a hole too far down or air escaping one too far up. Steve's head and his body aren't even making that much of one. Not when his body feels like it only narrowly managed to even contain the explosion inside of it. Everything else that hollow screaming white noise. Not screaming. Just layered. Hard and heavy and huge. Between every cell, muscle, and bone.

Thinking is not something his head wants to do. Can't do. Can. He can force it, but it feels gloriously empty and he's not even sure the last time anything, that wasn't the rush of a good rough fight with someone, felt this intense. He doesn't even want to open his eyes, forcing them from their exodus for duty and ability.

Danny shifts, fingers and palms suddenly finding Steve's back, pulling and pushing, some lever, warm and wide, that paints his back into existing, and he makes a noise. Someone to the side of Steve's gead. Both together making Steve have to pry up his eyelids to the flat of a shoulder and Danny's head to his side. Some noise he couldn't entirely remember or piece together, but there were other things he was. Danny made some noise. Danny's hand were on his back.

Because he hadn't thought. He'd. He was an idiot.

Clarity of that fact, smashing into the mirror, even while the clouds clung.

"Oh, hey, sorry-" Steve was pushing up, only catching up with mess that didn't matter when it clashed with not collapsing on Danny by way of having absolutely collapsed on Danny. The way he never would have collapsed on top of Cath. Or anyone. Ever. Not at his height. Not at his weight. That he should have been more careful. Earlier. Should have even thought about Danny's knee, like he hadn't even remembered the man had knees at all until this second, even when he'd had his head next to one, and whatever the hell else he had forgotten, too.

[haole_cop]

He doesn't even register words, it takes a second, where his hands go flat and hard on Steve's back, and his arms tighten, and that low and rumbling noise in his chest, that had been so drowsily pleased, is suddenly a growl.

Annoyed, insistent, exasperated, once it reaches his vocal cords, becomes actual words. "Stop, stop, stop, stop moving, where are you going, huh?"

Dragging him back, bodily, the few inches he'd managed to push away, that Danny still wants. Is still hungry for. Maybe even more than the sex, and the kisses against the doorway, because this, he can feel sinking into every cell, and swelling. Suffusing him.

This, is slow enough, long enough, to enjoy. Not lighting a fire and threatening to burn the whole house down around his ears. Just. Steve. Blanketing him. Loose and easy. Completely relaxed in a way Danny's not sure he's ever seen, and he's suddenly desperate for it, to see it, know it. What Steve's like, after sex, if he can talk or move or think, if he falls asleep right after, if he's a secret cuddler, if he gets weird and awkward or just rolls over and checks out.

He wants to know it all. Wants to see it. Wants to know he's the one who made it happen.

And he doesn't want to move. Doesn't want Steve to move. Steve dragged him up here, and pushed on top of him, and now Danny's thinking he kind of likes it, right here.

Which means Steve isn't going anywhere. "Just relax, come on, please don't destroy this beautiful afterglow I'm currently enjoying. Come back, shut up, relax."

[thebesteverseen]

Danny's hand went hard and flat on his back, pulling him right back down the few inches Steve had managed to push up. His voice a soaked growl of noise that suddenly cut through the thickness of the room. Complaints that would usually be knife shapes shaped like warm whining even as they were suddenly beleaguered potential seeds toward insults as Danny was drug toward the light, even here in the dark of his bed. Danny, who didn't want him to move at all.

Which made Steve have to shift back, something surprised and uncertain setting through him, which might go easier if his head wasn't still made of fluff. Or he wasn't distracted by the sudden awareness of Danny under him, and the hands over him. That Danny didn't want him to move. Danny wanted him right here. Not moving. Not all off of Danny. Telling him to relax, to shut up. Adding that word that stung at Steve soft and surprising. Like it was nothing.

Enjoying.

Catching under his sternum and tripping him up. Impossible and amazing all at once. It wasn't, okay, like he'd forgotten that face Danny had made as he came, or the existence of that single word -- You -- stumbling at him, before Danny attacked him like Steve had stolen his entire lexicon from Danny's head. But Danny here, wanting him here, not moved even an inch away, pressing him into the mattress, sweaty and a mess....and enjoying it.

By the time the thoughts happen he's already back, movement less a thought than any of the rest of it. Steve's body a god damn traitor, because it listens to Danny's hands more than it's ever listened to him. Especially when he can't think. Or is it, especially because Steve doesn't want to be anywhere else? He wants this doesn't he. That's more of why the fragile uncertainty that looks more like wary jaggedness bubbles in his chest, while he flattens back with a roll of his eyes, and snort, muttering, "Your funeral."

Becuase it isn't.

It's never been like this. Not in his head, and definitely not in his bed. Even in other places with other people. Men. That weren't Danny. Never. Not even if they were picked for something that sunk it's nails into that part of him. He didn't to be there, want to stay. His skin to their skin, sweat and slick chilling, breaths slowly becoming manageable instead of erratic. He wanted as far away from those people as possible once they served a purpose, even if he didn't treat them as such.

He doesn't even want to move, which is worse and better. He could stay here. Making sure Danny doesn't move, and remembering every second again, that it really happened. Shift and tilt his head, letting out a breath, and end up with his cheek on a shoulder and his nose finding Danny's neck, the absolute disaster of his hair, and only just narrowly keep himself from pressing him face in against it or kissing Danny's skin again. Like it was a compulsion that couldn't stop itself, because it might be too soon.

[haole_cop]

"Whatever."

He can be totally derisive, and exasperated, because Steve is listening to him, the way Steve always listens to him. Following his hands back down, the way he always follows Danny's hands, except Danny's never tried it like this before, feels a little thrill that it works.

Wonders how many times he could have tried it, in the past. If it would have worked, then.

If Steve was telling the truth. If it's really been years.

But none of that is anything he wants to think about, right now, because he doesn't want to think about anything, right now, just wants to slip back under, go back to floating along that lazy river, with Steve flattened out on top of him, taken out like someone whacked him in the head with a pipe. "Shut up and stop moving."

Drowsy, but not drowsy enough. He doesn't want to even be able to put words together, to form them and speak them. He doesn't want Steve to apologize, and he doesn't want Steve to move. It might be the very last thing he wants, in actuality.

It all happened so fast. The job. The drive. His confession. And. This. No time to stop and think, or let it soak in, or be savored. The only moment of pause that one down at the doorway, when Steve decided to strip down, and even then, Danny didn't get to really take that moment for everything it should have been. Didn't get to fill himself up on looking, or let himself run fingers over every inch of newly exposed skin.

Everything Steve will almost definitely mock him for. Say he's sensitive. And maybe he is, because once Steve capitulates, and settles back down over him, Danny lets his hands and arms relax, and slides one palm up Steve's back, slow and lazy, over the nape of his neck, to curve at the back of his head.

Turning a little towards where Steve's face is not quite pushed into his neck, but his breath is puffing against Danny's damp skin, and his nose is brushing into Danny's hair, and for a second, Danny wants to turn them both over.

Blanket Steve, like Steve's blanketing him. Keep him from trying to get away. A thought that makes Danny shift, a little, under him, and let his other arm circle Steve's waist like a seat belt, even if it doesn't press down, or drag him in.

Just. "Don't go anywhere."

Okay. Not now. Not anymore. Not now that Danny knows.

[thebesteverseen]

It's a little harder than just a second thought to calm back down to nothingness, even when it's still shoving at his edges. A feeling he could pound into submission if he needed to roll out, just like broken bones, or didn't want to be wherever here was. But, he does, and he doesn't have a reason to fight it. Which isn't the same as it coming back easily as deciding he doesn't need to move or go somewhere. Like some part of his body is still uncertain, ready for Danny to change his mind.

Except that Danny's hand find his back again, amid his warm snapped words, and they trace up Steve's back. Danny's palm warm and flat, more solid and settled than it ever is except when Danny is trying to give comfort. Except this isn't that. It's so far from that. When Danny's hand is on his bare skin, has been on nearly all of it, and he's just running it up Steve's back, to curl it at the base of his neck, while he curves a little into where Steve's head is.

Steve can't help pushing into those fingers, on his back, his neck, letting them drag him back.

Even when Steve huffs a scoff that really comes out more as a heavy breath than a real scoff, barely settled into the hand and Danny's shifting when Danny adds an arm to back and says those words. Like Steve was still changing his mind. Like Steve wanted to be anywhere else in his house or the world, or had moved for any other purpose than that it was what he was supposed to do, always did, planned better, usually never got so smacked over that everything was an impossible blur and he didn't remember to pull to a side, or wasn't usually on the bed already by then instead.

"I thought you'd be less bitchy after sex," Steve says, low, too warm for a scoff too, even though it's all shit and lies, because he's never once really pictured 'after', except as Danny with other people, as something to hurt and keep himself reminding cold and brutal of his place, where he should be, can't be, but is tonight, suddenly is, and he has to give in to cross that barely an inch, since Danny shifted, and brush his cheek against Danny's shoulder, which brushes his nose and then his mouth against the side of Danny's neck. This small tentative thing, that isn't a kiss or a scoff or a laugh or an insult.

It's just Danny's skin. Another piece of it, like all the parts he's covering aren't enough still.

[haole_cop]

Steve shifts, and for a second, Danny's arm tightens, until it becomes clear that Steve is shifting closer, close enough to brush his lips against Danny's neck, in a way that would make him shiver, if his nerves weren't over-stimulated and shut down for repair. It does tug a little sound out of him, content and soft and low in his chest, while he turns his head so his mouth is against Steve's hair, Steve's forehead, thinking about it, drowsily.

The faint kiss. Steve, staying here. Saying that.

Something that should have been an insult, but isn't, because Danny's too distracted by what it means to pay any attention to the half-hearted attempt at mockery. "You thought about what I'd be like after sex?"

He doesn't want to joke about it. Doesn't want to trade barbs back and forth. They aren't in the car, or at the office, or on the couch downstairs, where a solid ninety percent of their conversation might be made up of digs at each other.

They're here. In Steve's bed. Naked. Had sex.

None of it anything like what Danny now knows were pale imitations of the real thing, and this -- he wouldn't have known where to start, even if he'd ever allowed himself to think about it. Sex could be a fantasy, a harmless daydream, or a more realistic, guilt-ridden one in the middle of the night, but after?

After is personal. Intimate. It seemed like too much of a betrayal of trust, too real, too raw. He never let himself. Would never have been able to come up with anything even slightly, remotely, resembling actuality.

Wouldn't have been able to imagine Steve's loose weight on top of him, or how much he wants it to stay exactly there. How Steve's voice goes low and rumbled, dopey and tired. How Steve's mouth feels, brushing gently against his skin and lighting Danny's whole system right back up again, like someone threw a fuse.

Or the idea that Steve might have thought about it. Any of this. From the doorway, on.

He wants to know, if he did. He wants to know everything.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny's arms tighten on him even for a small shift, and he's be amused, if he had the time he might snort or laugh, but Danny asks that question and any faint laugh that might have gone out in the next breath out his nose goes absolutely dead silent, because it doesn't happen. Laughing, or breathing out. Or in. Breathing, at all. Not when Danny asks and it's quiet and thick with the darkness, like it's crawled into his throat and his chest from the rest of the room.

The question absolutely real instead of the insult Steve had made of it. The only way he could say it.

When it parades back louder and broader into Steve's head than the glancing thought from with the words. The only ways he ever thought about it. Amber in his t-shirt, from the gloriously detailed misery of Danny that morning, panicking over Grace meeting Amber that way. Half dressed, in his shirt, obviously from the bedroom and entirely unknown. Back to Gabby, who he couldn't even picture like that, with her graceful veneer everywhere. A lot like Rachel in that way. Amber a complete opposite, a slipping slope in the opposite direction.

(And what did that make him, then.)

The silence drags and Steve does the only thing he can, too still and too silent, with too many thoughts that he absolutely can't say, doesn't want to say, but doesn't want to lie to Danny either. So he shrugs, haphazardly for the laying down and it quite being a true up and down movement like this. As though somehow that was a granted. He'd thought of it. But not exactly how, and never why. It wasn't about him. He was never going to be here.

He was growing more certain by the second that even being here, he was getting this wrong, when he couldn't find a word.

[haole_cop]

It's pretty clear from the moment he says it, that letting those words pass his lips was a mistake. Steve stiffens, against him, and hesitates long enough that the silence stops being a background shade, and starts lowering itself into the room with a low buzz, before he shrugs.

Awkward. And silent. A mistake.

But not one Danny wants to take back, because he wants to know, is hungry for it. Everything that led up to tonight. When it started, if Steve already hated that gray suit the very first time Danny wore it, years ago. Why Steve kissed him, instead of punching him, yelling at him, firing him. How any of this happened, when Danny is demonstrably not a lithe Navy lieutenant with glossy hair and a fond smile.

If maybe Steve did think about this. What it might be like. Pictured Danny, here. With him. Specifically, Danny. How it would go. What he would be like. What he might say or do. Everything Danny never allowed himself, because it was too close to what he really wanted.

More than sex, because it was never about sex. Never just about getting Steve naked and seeing how his bare skin felt, or where his tan lines ended, or the sounds he might make, the things he might enjoy.

Enjoyable, certainly. Incredible, even. Impossible, even as it was happening. But Danny has always been a sucker for this: these quiet moments, after. Feeling closer than he was before, to this other person in the same bed. Savoring each slowing breath, and each accidental brush of Steve's lips against his skin. Dissolving into it, that expansive, cracking feeling.

Once he'd known, once he'd been sure, what this was, he couldn't have pictured this. It would have been too hard, left him too desperate for something he couldn't have.

That he is having, right now.

Except now, the room is thickening with Steve's silence, and Danny doesn't want to take it back, but he never intended this: Steve, without an answer, except a belated shrug. Steve, tensing under his hands. "Hey."

Rubbing his thumb into the muscles that are starting to knot between Steve's shoulders. "Everything okay over there?"

[thebesteverseen]

Clarity works too well in moments like these, where everything feels frozen and precarious suddenly. The last thing he wants is to talk about is how he made himself be fine with everything Danny did, and who, for the length of their friendship. That he used as a prod to remember himself. His place. While constantly pushing Danny forward, or laughing at his mistakes, or giving him advice and calming him down from his panics.

It's selfish and probably insane, but he needed what he'd done, never to Danny's face or where he could see it, and it'd worked. But it wasn't something he wanted to give Danny. Not here, like this, talking about Danny being with other people. Not while Danny already feels so much further away and that was while the man was pinned under him.

A thumb rubbed into his muscle making him freeze briefly, in some surprise, startled from his thoughts, before realizing it was just Danny. Rubbing his thumb into his muscles and asking another question. Like somehow anything could be wrong. Or Danny could ever be an idiot, when Steve suddenly had absolutely nothing. Incriminating himself as bad as any other criminal, when all he wants is not to explain fully, but not to lie to Danny.

He doesn't lie to Danny, not about anything he has a choice about. Doesn't leave the city, state, without informing him now.

There's a thumb pushing into his muscles and warmth spills from his skin there, like it's been waiting for Danny's touch. A reminder that his bones and muscles, even as he's torn them back from relax, because they listen at the ready, for any run, are still close enough to what just happened that the sliding scale goes both way. Everything still full of warmth buried right under all this crap suddenly shoved on top of him.

Confusing him, wanting anything better to tell. Something worth Danny hearing. That he'd ever, even for a moment, pictured this for a good reason. But he hadn't picked this. Them. Danny, here in his bed. After sex. Wanting to be here truly at all. It wasn't something Danny was going to want. Him. His bed. Steve couldn't ever lie to himself beyond the pushing moment of using the idea of what just happened.

Except there's a thumb pushing into his shoulders, in small circles, that keeps dragging him back out in every turn, reminding him Danny is waiting. Making him nod in the dark, even if he goes from no words to only a single one now. "Yeah."

[haole_cop]

Steve's lying, over there, like Danny can't always tell he's lying even when he isn't collapsed like a building right on top of Danny. Only saying that one word, but that one word is a lie, because Steve had been relaxed and content, and now he's tense and silent in all the wrong ways. It's not unlike down by the door, when Danny realized, when Steve slipped up, admitted that it had been so much longer than Danny could ever have imagined. Years.

He'd pulled back then, too. Maybe he never wanted to talk about any of this. Maybe he just wanted to finally let it happen, and never actually talk about the why, or how long it took to get here. Maybe he never wants to talk about it ever again.

A thought that curdles anxious in Danny's stomach, at how easily Steve might simply pretend it had never happened. How good he is at compartmentalizing. Maybe this got it out of his system.

Whatever the reason, Danny does. He wants to talk. He wants to know. He wants to work through these things he's feeling, that are so raw and sore from being suddenly dragged out into the light and let loose for the first time. He wants to know what it is Steve is thinking, right now, that's making his muscles tighten and head turn in on itself.

Even if he doesn't want to know, he wants to know. Whatever it is. Good or bad. "I couldn't."

It's a small enough thing to do. Go first. Say to Steve whatever Steve is having a hard time saying to him. Confess a little more. Steve said he wanted it all, before, and Danny couldn't tell him, but he can start, a little, now. "I could never let myself get that far without feeling guilty about it."

It's his turn to shrug, a little awkward, because that's not quite right, either, and he wants it to be. Right. "Guiltier."

Because that was never very far away, when he broke down and let himself try to imagine, picture, fantasize about any of this.

But. "I wouldn't have gotten it right, anyway."

Not anything about it. Steve. This room. This feeling, knotting and unknotting in his chest. He would never have gotten any of it even slightly right.

[thebesteverseen]

He's jumping at shadows and he knows it, because Steve is surprised enough that Danny starts talking at him in the dark about it. The answer to his own question that Danny hadn't asked himself and Steve hadn't asked him in return, and Steve is jumping at shadows in his suddenly ragged uncertainty and tension, because suddenly he's not certain what Danny means at the end either. About never getting this far, because he'd never get it right.

Whether it's that he could never picture how it would be, or if he had, and now he knew Steve couldn't get it right for him.

Which has to be wrong. Right? Maybe. Steve is certain he might be back to the need to smack his head on something very still, solid, and heavy again suddenly. Desperately wants to slide back five minutes, to the absolute certainty of his hands on Danny's skin and his. His mouth on Danny's, the sounds and the sensations. The lack of any question except to shove through and submit, all at the same time. All of that feeling miles away, when Danny isn't inches away even.

Making Steve shove himself back to Danny's words. The ones Danny just said. Something before it. Something else. Something worth saying, because Steve can pretend he has a clue what words are and that he knows -- because he does, and can't not know, knows better than anyone on the planet in these last few years -- that Danny needs to talk out everything, and that it's only worse when Danny doesn't.

Even if Steve wants to shove a rag in his mouth. Somehow hold this moment. Refuse to let it change, turn, be touched, be broken the way it feels like it is already, crumbling in his hands, dust on his tongue, because he inevitably breaks everything, or isn't good enough, or enough enough for them, even the things he actually tries for. Everything in this house turning sideways and sour. The number of goodbyes. Betrayals. Other places that needed all of those people more. Than this house. Than Steve. Because Steve could survive all of that. Had. Did. Kept.

The way the entirety of the inside of his body and head aches at the idea of Danny being next on this. Especially now. That he has to shove hard away.

Close his eyes and just shove something forward, even if it's unfair. At least Danny has some words. "How far did you get?"
How long has it been, what day was it when, where did it start, and how far away is Steve from what Danny'd wanted.

[haole_cop]

"It depends."

In the warm, dark quiet of Steve's room, and the intimacy of this bed, being naked in it, having wrinkled and rolled the sheets, with Steve breathing against him, pinning him here and talking into Danny's skin, his own voice is gravely. Trying to be as quiet and calm as the rest of the room. Trying to keep from shattering the peace he'd been floating in only moments ago.

Even when, suddenly, it seems like he can feel ice cracking underneath his feet, under each cautious step.

He knows, okay. Steve isn't good at opening up about his feelings. He's gotten better, though. Maybe good enough that Danny thought, had started to expect, that Steve would actually answer the question, without freezing up like Danny's a terrorist who got the drop and a bead on him.

It's a work in progress. There are times he needs Steve to coax him into talking about what's really on his mind, the things that wake him up or keep him from sleep in the dead of night. It hadn't taken Steve long at all to figure out that all Danny's bluster is usually a smokescreen, intended as a distraction. For people he's around. For himself.

The harder stuff, the real stuff: that needs to be pulled out and examined. Questioned. Considered.

And maybe it does, here, too. Maybe Steve needs him to talk.

That's fine. Danny can talk. He's never had a problem with talking.

The hand on Steve's back lifts, enough to wave in a slight circle. "As far as we just got, sometimes. Understand, I tried very, very hard to not think about it, alright? It felt all wrong. You didn't know, and as far as I knew, you'd be...I don't know, disgusted. You didn't want it. So I tried not to, right?"

Fingers dipping back and forth, pausing, before settling, a little cautiously, back on Steve's skin. Like just saying that he thought Steve would be against all this, hate knowing he appeared in Danny's head like this, was the subject of too many vivid fantasies, would make it come true. Throw some switch in Steve's head, and remind him that he should hate this, be disgusted by it. Change his mind. Make it suddenly all untrue. "But I couldn't always help it. Thought about it almost every day, you know, especially...well, there've been some bad days."

Too many close calls. Too many times he'd been sitting by Steve's bedside, or stared down death in a gun barrel or at the wrong end of a bomb's proximity sensor.

"Thought about this. Kissing you. Getting to be with you. How it might happen. There were these moments..."

His turn to shrug, a little, uncomfortable. Feeling like he's slicing himself carefully open, like a fish flopping on a butcher's block. "I wondered, a lot. About going to bed with you, what it would be like. What you would feel like. Sound like. I tried not to, but I couldn't always...and then this happens, and it turns out, you know, I've got a pretty good imagination, but I wasn't anywhere near reality, you know? How good it really could be. How much better..."

Dragging off, hand lifting, and settling again, agitated, restless. It's not what he means. It is, and it isn't. "If I'd known, before, okay, what it would, could, really be like, I'd have burned up wanting it. This. You."

[thebesteverseen]

It's hard to picture, even when he can put the words into images and the images together, lined up, one by one, next to each other, as Danny talks. So close to him that every breath is pulled in and out beneath him, with a shift of his own body. That every breath expelled brushes him. A shoulder, the side of his head. So close that there is no way that the air they are breathing in and out isn't at least half the air from each other doing the same.

The nearness of Danny's voice, and the vibration of his speech across his chest, while he says these things. Danny somehow thinking there was anything he could think, or want to do, that Steve wouldn't have said yes to. That he would be disgusted. Maybe even hate him. The Steve in his head that Danny had already come to term with being a Steve would got punch him or fire him for just coming inside and saying those words.

When Steve can't even be certain what could be the reason to come in and face that, even imagined hell, tonight.

After that case, and the numerous outs Steve gave him, to just leave. Which thinking about makes his hands tighten some.

All of it is crazy, impossible, somehow still surreal, when it's hitting every sense, and Steve's skin is still tacky and drying with both of them on him. On them. It still feels crazy to hear these words spoken. Pushed into existence, asking him to believe that they've existed somewhere, not in his own head, not driving him mad, before this day. Which is when Danny slides those two words in, like it's nothing. A detail that could get lost in everything else. The beginning reasons and the ending point.

Except that Steve can hear Danny's voice. The words are there, but they have no traction and don't make sentences after those two words. Those two words are liking putting his face into flames. Or realizing that no matter that he hasn't been somewhere he didn't have food in over half a decade, it's like realizing he is. Starving. Maybe always has been.

It plays over and over, trampling Danny's other words that keep coming.

I couldn't always help it and I thought about it almost every day.

Almost every day. Every day. How had he missed that. Danny wanting. Every day. Almost every day. He was slipping, if he'd never. But. He couldn't even hold on to the words now. They kept throwing themselves like a bouncing ball, picking up speed, off every wall inside his head and his chest. Louder and softer, impossible and just put out there as real. When it could be Danny exaggerating.

He doesn't sound like that right now, though. The way he sounds when he is. Exaggerating. Insulting, or laughing, or high on being happy. This voice is so careful and it's aimed toward more logically put together than anything since the moment that Steve kissed Danny and the whole floor dropped out from under them. So serious. Maybe too serious? Maybe he shouldn't have asked serious?

Except Steve doesn't want to take it back. Even not certain what to do with how serious it is, how impossible, he wants it. There are still so many words. Danny's fingers lifting and falling, but Steve says those words when Danny stops. Aware that it might be entirely the wrong thing to even picked up in there.

"Every day." He repeats Danny's words.

(Even if his head is the only thing that repeats Almost. Cutting it apart already.)

Not sure if he wants Danny to just blow it off, as having been just a convenient turn of phrase to smooth it all together. Danny's and his millions of words that never ever ran out. Or if that was somehow. Impossibly...possible. Somehow now, too. In with all the rest of it. Every day for years. Every day since -- when had he said, the second year, his second trip to Asia, the big one. The one with his phone off and endless messages. Out chasing Shelburne, before he knew Shelburne was Doris.

Before he wasn't allowed to ever leave Danny, suddenly, with only a letter, again, too.

[haole_cop]

"Yeah, well -- "

He feels awkward, and exposed, which is a stupid thing to feel when he's already been naked and Steve's had his tongue down his throat, but he does. Feel awkward. Almost defensive. It's been there for so long, and he had to hide it for so long, and he is crap at hiding these things, okay, he's a shit liar and always has been, but he feels the need to protect it. Like maybe Steve will laugh at him, call him sensitive, mock him for all the feelings he has, and how they spill out everywhere and he can't control them. "Not like this, every day, but."

His hands are getting a little more agitated -- if he were standing, he'd be pacing, but Steve is lying on top of him, a dead weight, still, so all he can do is let them flick from the wrist, like he's shooing away flies. "You're always around, and you're always in everything, you stick your nose into every single aspect of my life, Steve, every one, so how was I supposed to go a day without thinking about it?"

Him. Them. Everything they couldn't be. Everything he wanted and couldn't have.

He rolls his head back, to look up at the ceiling, like that might make any of this seem less personal, less sensitive, less like he'd been pining for his partner every day for the last four years. Because he hadn't. Didn't. It wasn't pining, if it was never going to happen. Couldn't be, since it was impossible. Pining implied that there was even a snowball's chance in hell, and Danny didn't have that.

Until suddenly, it turned out, he did.

It's not a comfortable feeling, though, relating it. Every day. Even if most days, it was just a familiar ache, and nothing more specific than that. Just a brief thought of could be, before it was shaken off. Not usually more than that. He didn't always allow it.

Not always fantasizing about sleeping with Steve, because even at the start, it was more than that, right? "It wasn't even about the sex, most of the time, okay, it was just, I just wanted...to be," an abortive flip of his hand, and another shrug, feeling like he's about to start jittering right out of his skin. "Here."

Just, here. Not in bed. Just here. With Steve. At his side, at his back. And sometimes, sure, it got heated, got desperate, turned into torturing himself about what it would be like, about the physical, but that was never why it was a problem.

It was a problem because he fell in love with his partner, who was never going to want him back. His body wasn't the problem, as much as Danny wanted to blame it. It never is. It's always his heart.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny is becoming more and more small restless movements, that keep pushing at Steve like a proof that he should have moved. Yet now that every sign that Danny is giving off is the need to move, to be away, walk around, use the full range of mountain from his hands to his shoulders, Steve doesn't want to let go or move at all. He doesn't want Danny to have woken up enough to suddenly be the one who needs Steve to move away and off of him.

Danny even rolls back his head, leaving it dead weight on the mattress, and just stares up, beyond all of this. At the ceiling that Steve knows too well. That there is nothing worth looking at up there, but that it doesn't stop it from happening. There being absolutely nothing else to do, because everything else is out of reach, elsewhere, or just not a capable, applicable happenstance for any of the several situations it slides through his head. Cath. Doris. Even, Danny.

But he doesn't want Danny anywhere else. Up there. Away from right here. Him. For right here where he's talking about.

Making Steve have to go bolder. More pointedly specific in his actions and his words. He leans into the space left open from Danny leaning his head back. Lets his lips follow the shoulder right below his face to the wide of expanse of Danny's throat left bare and wide open right next to his head while Danny flicked his hands and looked at the ceiling.

Steve saying the only thing that was absolutely true, first and last in mouth and thoughts. "You're always here."

Always. All the time. Like. If it weren't Danny the person would be invasively underfoot and need to die a very painful death just so Steve could breathe and catch sight of his own shadow ever always. When it was so much more than just letting himself in Steve's door, and having his own key. Or even the parties he holds for the whole of Five-0 when it seems right.

There were the games and movies on the couch, and chairs on the back. Beers in and out. Grace here on weekends, where she gets her own tiny personal beach and whatever she asks for with those puppy eyes. Dragged out to her events, and him to theirs. Danny sleeping on the couch when they get in so late it's early morning from a case, because he'd stayed on that couch for so long years ago that the option just stayed. In the car. HQ. Steve even had more job mandated therapy with Danny than he had about his own case management.


There wasn't a place Danny wasn't. Maybe a year ago, two. When Cath and Doris were both still here. But they weren't.
They were gone, and Danny was everywhere, unchecked. Including his bed, in his head, and warm against his mouth now.

[haole_cop]

Steve shifts, like tectonic plates moving, slow and inevitable, until his mouth is against Danny's shoulder, and he starts following along it, up to the curve of his throat.

Making Danny's eyes drift closed, at the sensation, and a smile he can't stop press at the corners of his mouth, until he gusts out a breath of a laugh, tailing after a low sound that doesn't make it far enough out of the back of his throat to be called a groan. Hands landing back on Steve, and running up, along his back and along the back of his neck and into his hair, again, possessive and delighted, because Steve isn't making fun of him. Steve's not mocking him. Steve's not getting up, or moving away, or acting like this is going to be forgotten about in the morning and never spoken of again.

Steve's mouth is against his throat, and he's saying that. That. Not asking questions, or for clarification. But. Like he knows what Danny's trying to say. Knows exactly what he means.

And that he is here. Exactly where he wants to be. The place he's fought and argued and stubbornly pushed his way into. Here. And that he's always here. Always. Even when he's not. Even when he can't be here, when Steve's all by himself.

Steve's saying it doesn't matter, and Steve is making his slow, dedicated way along his throat, and Danny tips his head back, again, but this time, it's to give him more space, offer up more skin, the line of his jaw, the soft, sensitive spot right beneath his ear. "Yeah, you can't get rid of me, I know."

As much as he appreciated Steve not teasing him, he can't help it. It's a joke that comes from relief, not a desire to dodge, or dissemble. It doesn't even sound quite perfect, because it's not shot off in the heat of an annoyed argument, and his arms are tightening back around Steve, and Steve's lips are on his skin. Feeling like he's sinking into a hot bath, as the tension starts to unwind.

[thebesteverseen]

The low laugh, after the thick breath in at Danny reacting to his touch, is nice. It sounds slightly more real than all the waffling words trying to build themselves into towers just to jump off of from a too tall height. Never sounding like lies, but never sounding good entirely either. Steve wanted to put each word to memory to go over whenever he could think straight again, for longer than three minutes, but he could only choose one right now and the one was Danny.

Danny, with his hands suddenly back on Steve's skin, fluid and flushed warm against him, shifting smoothly up and down his muscles. Into the lower part of his back and then up into his hair. The restlessness evaporating back into this touch, while Steve's ability to focus dissolves into the sweat-salt flavor of Danny's skin against his lips, his tongue, the soft graze of his teeth as Danny shifts back, but not away, only opening up even more to Steve.

Draining at Steve's want to talk at all, because he hasn't managed to touch and map every single inch of Danny's skin and he still doesn't really know if there's time. If Danny will get off his bed, put his clothes back on, and go home. Especially since most of the parts of it are only right over there, a few feet beyond them. Steve tried to stab away the thought of this bed, empty and cold, after all of this. Danny's skin so warm against him. Steady heartbeat and even his uncertain voice still talking, filling up Steve's head and his room.

Always talking. Saying words that are old and worn-in but a new way.

A little out of breath and serious, instead of snipped. Awkward and unsteadied.

Steve having to give up sucking softly at a spot right at the top of Danny's neck and under the hinge of his jaw, to be able to make his own voice usable. Not for some snappy retort, that would fit, should fit. Except for that strange twist to Danny's voice in how he said it, too. Making it stick to Danny's, and the darkness in the room, that he's falling into as Danny shifts and shivers under him and he can see more of him like this.

Head tipped back, eyes closed. The most glorious mess he'll never forget. "I never wanted to."

[haole_cop]

Steve is working his way up Danny's throat with the same single-minded dedication he shows to everything he does, and Danny can feel it, the way his whole body is flooding with slow warmth, how Steve's mouth at his pulse, directly over the artery, is heating all the blood passing by just beneath it.

Leaving Danny to shift again, but lazy, now, in a whisper of sheets against skin, sliding one foot up the mattress so his knee points to the ceiling, inside of calf and thigh against Steve's leg. One hand sliding down Steve's back, slow and savoring, and the other slipping fingers into Steve's hair, thumb rubbing against the thin skin of his skull.

All of it combining to center him, back here, in his body, that Steve is touching, that Steve is covering, while Steve is allowing Danny to lavish all those touches he'd never been allowed before over his skin. Palm flat and nearly reverent. Mapping the curves and slopes and blunted edges of Steve's body in a way he was never able to, before, even with a look. The dip at the small of his back. The curve of his ass. The flat strong plane, dense muscle layered over his shoulder blades.

All of it slowly sending Danny slipping off, back to the cloud he'd been floating on earlier, the perfect liquid looseness of his muscles. "Hmm?"

Taking a deep breath in, and cracking an eye when he half-turns towards Steve, when Steve has stopped and his mouth is no longer against Danny's skin, and Danny's sure Steve is answering some question, but he can no longer remember what, through the puffy white clouds currently fogging up his brain. "Never wanted to what?"

It could be a response to any part of what Danny just admitted to, confessed into this dark room, to this bed, to Steve. Maybe, even, to himself. Things he was never going to say, that never had a place to be said.

Suddenly wanted. Like him. Impossibly, and incredibly.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve can't help himself. Danny opens his eyes, dazed even in the darkness, and Steve's laugh is something that is soft, sharp with surprise (and maybe a little too much smugness) more than anything else, but entirely real. When somehow he has this effect on Danny -- and it's the effect Danny wants him to have, use, be doing -- and somehow that means Danny can't even follow along with conversations he was running and that he'd only responded to seconds ago, the same as Steve.

"You know," Steve says, feeling the words roll off his tongue, sparkling, hot amusement. "I think I like you better like this."

He rolled his eyes even though his smile didn't get any less crooked or wide, not even as he leaned a little loosely toward the fingers suddenly massaging his skin. Holding on to the prize of the necessity of needing to clarify for Danny of all people, with his words and his endless conversations, what the topic of his own conversation he'd been just talking about is even about. "Get rid of you."

He hasn't in so many years, and any of the examples he can even come up with in the last few years?

They all boiled down to being about this. Unable to separate what he wanted from who he needed to be.

Danny being always underfoot, and something he could never entirely inundate himself to, until he was gone for a weekend or a few weeks and came back and it was like being gassed. Making it a lot like inundation training each time. Except it wasn't. All there was now was the tension of not leaning in to kiss Danny and his slightly befuddled, curious expression. Before realizing he, again, that he just could. Cross those few inches, of nothing but darkness and breath, and kiss Danny, this face, and the soft confusion Steve'd made with a few seconds work of his own mouth.

[haole_cop]

"No?"

He knows it comes out a little dopey, a little drowsy, knows his eyes are heavy and relaxed, but he's not out of it enough to miss the way Steve leans into his fingers, or how Steve's eyes drop to his mouth, and have to pull themselves back up again to meet his. "You coulda fooled me."

With all the times Steve's criticized him or mocked him, all the times Steve's argued back when Danny takes a stand, reminds him of the rules they can't break and the ones they shouldn't. There have been times when it's seemed like Steve is nothing so much as simply exasperated by Danny's continued existence near him.

Danny even used to believe it.

And maybe it was real, once upon a time. Back in the beginning, when everything was raw and ragged and Danny was so angry at the world he almost argued himself out of the best job he ever had with the best team there is. Maybe, back then, Steve meant it, and maybe there have been a handful of times since then, but not most of the time. Maybe not ever, anymore.

Not when Steve comes to Colombia to get him, or when Steve has never once questioned him about something personal and important since Meka. Not when Steve is either at Danny's place, with him and Grace, every weekend, or inviting Danny here, when it's just assumed that they'll spend their free time together, just like their work hours.

But he still says it, because he's supposed to say it, because that's what they do, even while his fingers start running more purposefully over Steve's scalp, before they tighten, and start pulling him in, as Danny's leaning forward. A little awkward, at this angle, but Steve's right there, and Danny wants to see what it'll be like, to kiss him slow and certain and specific, without the rush and fire of impatient need.

What he tastes like. What he feels like. How much more Danny can feel like his whole body is slowly dissolving into the warm, dark Hawaiian night.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny's fingers run against his head, trying to pour warm water down his head, shoulders, back, into those knots that know better how to stay taut and grow more solid than how to relax entirely and let go. Even on his best days. The best days. Where nothing has gone wrong even as the sun sets down. The rare ones, that he wasn't built for, but could enjoy even as he itched for the next run, the next pull of a gun, slam of a hand, click of cuffs, shaft of blue light in an interrogation room.

There isn't a wait here though. Danny fingers are warm against his scalp and then Danny is pulling him down toward the bed and himself, doing with absolute ease the thing Steve had only considered. Leaning up, pulling him down, so he's leaning in to kiss Danny's mouth. The soft warm slide of lips, slow this time and everything like the empty, quiet dark around them, and the waves out at the edge of the house and Steve's hearing.

The way it feels good, even when good and slow mean he's still thinking. Maybe too much. About the words that just came out of Danny's mouth. Dopey and drowsy, Danny dropped kicking, with so much ease Steve has no clue how to emulate, as he says the words that he should this time. Like it's not a serious comment, what Steve just said, right on the heels of Danny's, and all the jokes that turned sideways or couldn't be made.

The only thing that comes to his mind, like a personal recrimination, even though he can't entirely tell what his tone is when his forehead rests against Danny's and he says it in the space between one kiss and another, even though he hasn't a clue how many happened before his mouth and the words decided they needed to happen more than be ignored. Or how it sounds. A whisper of something that isn't any of the things it was earlier. So small, and almost, just almost, an apology. Honest. He doesn't know how to blink even with a gun pointed face-blank an inch from his face. "I did."

He doesn't know how he feels about that anymore.

He used to be so proud of it. He's already gotten insulted about anything pricking at it. Poking at the walls that kept their friendship and partnersip in one piece. Supporting Danny, and pushing forward with his own life, with Cath, and even Doris, so long as Danny was at his side. His sounding board and his place where he didn't have to be worried. About where anything was going or who he could never be

But.

There's something else there now. Something dark and uncertain in his gut, especially in the quiet, warmth and Danny kissing him like this. This terrible truth that twists in there. That they both lied to each other this well, for this many years. That neither of them knew. Which hadn't turned out badly by some improbable miracle percentage -- with all they're been through and are to each other already -- but.

This could have happened years ago. So many years, specific every days, that it tangles sore and nearly painful.

With no clue whether to be sickened at how much might have been lost already, or just grateful it managed to happen now.

[haole_cop]

He wonders, if this had somehow happened, three years ago, if he would, by now, be sick of the way Steve follows his tugging hand to kiss him, deep and slow and electric, and figures, probably not.

How could he. How could anyone. How could it do anything but simmer down in his belly, the way that Steve is allowing Danny to wrap around him, move him around, keep him here. How Steve kisses him, again, and again, until Danny feels like a sand castle getting caught in a slow and rising tide.

Until Steve pauses, pushes his forehead up against Danny's in a way that feels so much more intimate than nearly anything else they've been doing, because Steve never does. Sometimes to Grace, if he's trying to comfort her, or settle her. Maybe once or twice to Catherine, before Danny had to look away, because it seemed so personal. From Steve, who believes in not only being a wall, but running through others whenever possible. Who loves the reckless, blunt force attack. Offensive strategies. Aggressive forward movement.

Now here, in bed, leaning his forehead against Danny's, and dropping two quiet words into the darkness, before his mouth is on Danny's again, and Danny's opens for him, even while the words rattle around like the last two gumballs in a dispenser. I did.

Fool Danny. It's true. He did. For years, as it turned out, and Danny still hates that, the clutch of guilt and sick worry in his stomach over it, over everything they missed, everything he missed, because he wasn't paying attention, or simply couldn't see it. Caught up in his own life and head and worries. Too certain it could never happen to ever consider the possibility that maybe Steve was hiding something, too. "Yeah."

His turn to drop it between kisses, but he can't keep them up, after that word comes out, pulls his head back, pushing it deeper into the mattress to look up at Steve, searching, studying, mouth pressing into a wry line. "I guess you did."

For years. Years. "Some detective I am, huh?"

[thebesteverseen]

Danny gives it one word, and another kiss, and another, and then he pulls back. Steve's stomach going cold and still, even with the warmth still under his skin and the fingers against his head. Nowhere to look but forward at Danny, as Danny says words that set themselves like bombs on the field around where Steve is. Even here. Ready to trigger at a whisper. That he lied to Danny. Time and time again, if not exactly to his face. Or directly.

About something that wasn't classified. When he knows how much Danny hates that word.

How much of what he's prized in Danny was that Danny had never lied to him or betrayed him. Ever.

That the man wouldn't. Maybe even couldn't. But he hates that inverted question Danny gives next. He's always hated it when anyone actually cut Danny down. In a fashion that wasn't all shooting the shit and mockery, no matter how blunt or barbed. But actually meaning it was right out. He wants to take off fingers and faces for it, and he isn't entirely missing the defensive or guilt-edged reaction to that question.Steve shook his head, too many times, in the dark.

"That's not on you. You were never supposed to see any it." Which sounds worse, suddenly out loud. Like he always meant for Danny to never figure it out. Or was somehow proud of, or took for granted, how easily it would have been to keep even something this big from him. Was working against him the whole time, instead of with him. Instead of being right there, doing whatever he needed.

Trying to understand anything Danny said about Melissa got him stabbed (by, also, lying to him), and when he needed to figure how to both get into and out of Gabby, and everything that was Rachel, because Danny couldn't think straight in any mood about Rachel and then she broke him. When he never would have done a thing to upset their friendship, their partnership, any of the relationships in his life. Because he'd been happy. In all of them, at different points.

He wanted them. Chose them. Cups of coffee and vacation trips. Nearly moving right back to Jersey with Rachel and Grace.

"There wasn't anything to see," Steve tried, feeling like it was an even worse choice of words. Like it didn't matter what he'd felt, and admitting that was worse than it actually being true. A thing he'd reminded himself of so much those first few years. "You had everything going for you with Amber, and Gabby, and Rachel." He tosses that last name, like it's a nail in the coffin. That he's had this for so long, and pushed it aside since nearly when they met.

Not that far back, but in comparison now, it's laughable how little time of all these years wasn't spent like this.

"It's not like either of us were at a lack of other things that were happening." His Dad. Wo Fat. Joe. Doris. Cath. "And you weren't--" But Steve stalls remembering Danny saying it again. "--like you said--" That he'd always been right. That Danny wasn't into men. By his own admission. But it sunk in a fist, trying to hold Danny having said he was the first. The only. When Steve wasn't first, and especially not only, for anything in his own life.

There's a frown, and it skews. "You never even noticed when guys checked you out." Not anywhere. Bars. The beach. Cases.

[haole_cop]

He's not totally sure what he expected Steve to do or say, when he pulled back, commented on the fact that Steve was right, he had fooled Danny, for a long time. Maybe no more than Danny had fooled him, so it's not like they both aren't to blame and not, at the same time, here.

Both of them, trying to make sure the other one never had to know, or deal with it. And they'd been good at it. Damn good. The kind of good that the shiver that runs in a frisson over him now isn't from Steve's touch or what he's saying, but how close they came to never knowing. To just continuing on, like always, with no idea that everything they felt and wanted and couldn't stop wanting was mutual.

But Steve is talking, finally. Trying words on for size, seeing how they fit, and discarding them, while Danny's eyebrows crawl first closer together, and then up his forehead. That it wasn't on Danny, which is bullshit, because Danny is supposed to be able to tell, right, when something is bugging Steve. When something is on Steve's mind, and tugging at all his neat compartmentalized boxes.

Which still isn't as bad as you were never supposed to see, which is bad enough, but takes an easy second to there wasn't anything to see, which is an outright lie, maybe the first of the night.

Steve. Lying to him, while laying on top of him, close as breathing. Saying there wasn't anything, when it's ludicrously clear that there certainly was something, and his mouth is actually opening to refute that point, when Steve keeps going, and Danny has to swallow whatever it was he was going to say, before he accidentally chokes on it, at that name coming out of Steve's mouth.

Rachel. Who he loved so much, Rachel. The only person he might have left Hawaii and Five-0 and Steve for, Rachel. Mother of his daughter. Woman of his dreams.

Who shattered and left him, twice. Rachel.

Steve's continuing, and he's making even less sense, now, but it's a relief, in a way, to let bewilderment crawl across his face at that last sentence, strike on something more immediate, wholly inconsequential. "Guys don't check me out."

Nobody checks him out. People check Steve out, all the time, sure. Steve. Kono. Chin's had his fair share of the admiring public, but Danny has never been the type, and that suits him fine, was never anything he wanted or wanted to waste time and energy on dealing with.

Sure. It annoyed him when girls couldn't keep their eyes off Steve, or the occasional surfer boy would hang around their camp out on the beach, lingering a little too long, but only because he found it deeply unfair, at the beginning, and then started to feel it as an annoying personal affront.

That every one else could look, but he couldn't. Wasn't wanted.

Except he was, and that's the thing he can't get over, wrap his mind around, especially: "Did you say Rachel?"

Rachel. Who had wrecked him all over again. It was a big deal, for both of them: the first time Steve had ever walked him through anything like it, after having heard the story of the first time around. He was over here a lot.

But that was...

Years ago. Before the gray suit ever even made an appearance, years.

Before he even knew. Years.

[thebesteverseen]

It's such an effort not to roll his eyes this time. An extraordinary one. The truth is so diametrically opposite he could crack glass and his own teeth on it. People like Danny. He's fuss and fire and bitching, sure, but he's, also, the brightest winning smile and he's your best friend, with a grin, a laugh, and a compliment when he's happy. All of it light and entirely sincere.

He's showstopping then. Runs over people, never noticing. Like that kid earlier, left having no clue, watching him leave.

People have been looking since Steve can remember. Not as much in that first months of the first year, sure, when Danny's go to was an acerbic scowl and he was quicker with an insult about Hawaii than he was with anything else, but he's mellowed since. There are things he likes, places he prefers, favorite spots and habits. He surfs and even lets Steve drag him to other places he wouldn't choose to go, and people noticed. Especially when he was happy.

They notice a lot. With the tight-buttoned shirts, and when Danny has no shirt at all.

They stared until Steve wants to help them remove their eyes from sockets with only his thumbs.
"Yeah." Steve says, pushing a breath out his nose and then the word out of his mouth. "They do."

Have. Since the beginning. Since surfers Danny thought were insulting him, and who were actually getting fresh right in front of Steve, who hadn't care at all except to laugh at Danny's obliviousness, in the middle of a case. Maybe he doesn't answer the other one on purpose. Not so much because he doesn't want to answer, even though he doesn't, as though he'd hoped Danny would miss that one word, so much as because Danny is what he just said he wasn't, a great detective. An even better friend.

Maybe the only person who gets Steve consistently. Definitely the only one who can stop him.

Danny, who definitely didn't mishear him. Not this close, with nothing to distract him, and that name repeated.