AU: Trope Minefield

[haole_cop]

He's pretty sure this goes against his contract.

Actually, he's sure it goes against not only his contract, but also the various non-harrassment papers they all have to sign every time some aide in the Governor's office gets a little twitchy.

Like after Lori left. And after he and Gabby...

Well.

So maybe he hasn't made the best choices in the world, in the last few years. Maybe things have been a little extra rough, for him and Steve and the rest of the team, between Doris and Kono wandering around looking for Adam and --

(he doesn't think about Reyes, or about Matt, unless he has to, and he doesn't have to, tonight, so he just skips, like a record needle scratching)

-- well, that building. With the bomb. (And Amber, who -- speaking of bad ideas. Good kid. But a kid.)

Anyway you slice it, they deserve a win, Five-0. All of them do. It's been a hard few years, and they've all taken their lumps.

So when this got served up to them, it seemed too good to be true. Right? Straightforward. Sleek facade concealing sleazy underhanded deals, that first came across Duke's desk for possible fraud and tax evasion, now linked to not one, but two murders -- which means it's theirs, now.

Danny was even happy about it, until it turned out they'd be going in UC, until he's the one pulling open the door, stepping into a wash of air conditioning and dim lighting from Hawaii's sultry Saturday night, until this plan started looking less like recon and more like a heist.

At least this suit still fits.

Comments

[haole_cop]

"So what you're saying is you've felt this way for the last four years."

Yes. That is what he's saying, or refusing to outright say, leaving Danny to put it out there, blunt, flat. On the edge of horrified, underneath it, a reaction he's trying to drag down and strangle, even while tumblers fall and lock into place in his head.

The end of him and Rachel. The beginning of him and Gabby, and the end of him and Gabby. Matt, and Reyes. Amber.

Every time Steve had ever tried to steer him in the direction of a pretty woman, or tried to talk him off a cliff, drowning in his own panic. Every time Steve convinced him that maybe this time, it would all work out. "I wasn't –"

Stopping, and starting again, because it seems like too much. Only a year longer than he'd been thinking, for the last hour or so, but it feels like so much more. Three years was bad enough. Four was unthinkable.

A full year before. A full year. He keeps rolling over it with a thump, like wheels on a speedbump. "You told me to go out with Gabby."

It's almost accusatory, but it's not meant to be. Not at Steve. At the time, it seemed like something a best friend would do. Especially a best friend who was annoyingly involved with his life, nosing about his business, right, it wasn't like it was out of character for Steve to push Danny into something that made him uncomfortable. Steve did that all the time. Until tonight, Danny would have written it off as the kind of thing Steve actively enjoyed.

Except that he'd been feeling like this. The whole time.

[thebesteverseen]

It's growing under his skin. From that low itch so something buzzing.

"Are we really doing this? Right now?" Pushing itself out his mouth, because there's nowhere else to put it.

This wasn't what he pictured either. He hadn't pictured an after, but if he had it would not have been laying in bed, naked, on Danny, with Danny's hand on him, wanting to be anywhere other than there while discussing Danny's line of conquests. How he'd watched each other them sweep in, Danny gone broad and bright on them. How they overlapped work, and Grace. Him.

"You liked her." Steve's voice is getting harder. Exasperation not so much stealing in as striding in and taking over the console at Danny's accusation, like it's some kind of actual attack about his motivations toward Danny. Like he'd been a bad for doing all the right things. "You were goofy over her. To the point of stalling case information. And you were good together." Beat. "For months." For a long time. She was. Great with Danny. Great with Grace. Polite and friendly toward Steve the few times they met. Until the end went sideways.

He was everything over her, and even Amber, and especially Rachel, that he'd never been over Steve.

Not tripping over his tongue. Not staring too long and forgetting how to use sentences. Not freaking out about his house, or his head. At least not in the same way. Danny railed about both of those. But not like this. Like Steve was demented and prone to having no clue how to live a life. But he was never like any of this over Steve. Steve, who hadn't even known until tonight. Never so big it overwhelmed everything or showed through.

Except. It had in certain seconds. But only seconds. Maybe a minute here or there. A hug. A look. Those 'moments.'

"You weren't--" It still hitches, even when it's getting fierce. "--into men." Himself. His head throwing back It was only ever you suddenly. He wasn't even into Steve. Who didn't even know how to hold both of those at once. The bleak past and this sudden contorting moment on his bed, where Danny wanted him but this is where it got. "This wasn't even a thing for you then." Even if it was slipping in his hands, why it was one at all, if he ever had a grasp of why or how, outside his face being blown off my the surprise and the need that answered it. "You said that. You hadn't even thought of this, then."

He doesn't want to feel that cold, sharp thing spreading out from his spine and pushing, sharp spider legs into his lungs. That thing caught between doing the right thing, because for his straight, mostly happy, partner, who was steadily on the way to becoming his best friend, who he did want to support, want to be happy, and the other part, where he wasn't there. Seen. Optionable.

[haole_cop]

Steve is defensive, maybe even edging towards annoyed, and he keeps throwing excuses out, while tensing under Danny's hands, like he's winding up for a fight, and maybe he is. It would probably be the least possible surprise, to fight with Steve at a time like this, right, it would be the closest thing to normal that they've had all night. "So?"

So, Danny hadn't thought of it? So, he liked Gabby? So, he liked Amber? So, he had no idea?

When has Steve ever let a few details like those get in his way? When has Steve ever let details get in his way?

He knows it was the rational thing to do, okay. But Steve is not rational. Danny is rational, the one who does the expected thing. Not Steve. Steve is the tornado Danny's been tied to for years, and the idea that there was something in Danny that would make Steve back down, without even giving the slightest inkling that that something was wrong, sits strange and uncomfortable in Danny's stomach.

Okay, so maybe Steve being defensive isn't the only reason they might get into it, now. Maybe It's because Danny's guilt is starting to nibble at his stomach lining, and he doesn't like feeling guilty, or uncomfortable, and he wants to get to the bottom of this, because it sounds like, okay, it sounds to him, like Steve just pretty much didn't consider his own feelings, or wants, or needs, at all. Listing off reasons why he pushed Danny towards other people, actively setting himself aside.

And, sure. Danny's never seen Steve jealous. Not of anyone Catherine spent her time with, and not of Gabby, or Amber, or even Rachel. It's possible that never came into play, the way it did with Danny, whenever he opened the door to this house and found Catherine comfortably ensconced on the couch, waving and welcoming in like it was her home to offer.

He hated her more in those moments than she ever deserved. It wasn't her fault, and she was...she and Steve had something. Special. Strong. Unorthodox, maybe, but it could have lasted, could have gone the distance, if she hadn't left.

If she hadn't been the latest in the long line of people who loved Steve and left him behind, anyway.

Everything Danny always promised himself he wouldn't do. Wouldn't toy with Steve, or harm him. Wouldn't take advantage of his unending spring of loyalty, his stubborn need to help, his refusal to back down in front of insurmountable odds.

Everything it turns out he did. Knowing, or not. "You'd prefer we never talk about it again, maybe?"

Fat chance of that happening, when it's already worrying at Danny's leg, like a dog gnawing on the bone, leaving him discontent and annoyed with himself. Even if they'd both been hiding, those last three years. Even if, in the grand scheme of things, the year before might not be such a big deal.

It's a big deal to Danny. It matters. Steve matters.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny says 'so and Steve feels it slam through him. Unexpected and absolute. The unmitigated want to push up, not to move, but to a sitting position, even halfway up, so he could grab Danny's shoulders and shake him until whatever he has of a brain in that head rattled like pennies in a tin can. So. So. So. Like Steve wouldn't tear the whole world apart for that. Danny being happy. Danny getting what he deserved. Finally.

Hadn't made calls into lawyers, or high military. Looked into Stan's records once. Looked into everything that had once pertained to Grace's civil suit. Even Melissa's whole background, once Amber was Melissa and had gotten Danny stabbed, and he still stood by Danny because Danny wanted to believe in her. Choose her. Still wanted her. Felt something Steve couldn't about her. But Steve did it, because he trusted Danny, more than he trusted anyone else on the planet maybe.

Because there wasn't a single thing he wouldn't do for Danny.

Danny. Who stood by his side. Who got himself to fucking other countries where no one should have been able to get or find him, definitely not save him from situations he couldn't even say his own men could. Who was there. Always there. The same you're always (t)here Steve had said. But for Steve. Not just the house. With his Dad, and Doris, and Freddie, and Shelburne who killed his mother and then became her, and Jenna, and Wo Fat. Everyone ever. Everything in these years.

Danny, who Steve had made the god damn hero of his own drugged delusions, because the man mattered so much and his belief in Danny's abilities, apparently, had no bounds when his control of himself was jacked. Not as a fuck. Not as someone he needed to date. Just as he was. His best friend. His amazing partner. The person at his back and his side, every day and in every way. Who never faltered on him, and who Steve would have walked through hell, gladly, for him to be happy.

He would move sky to the ground and the ocean above them if that was what it took to make it happen. He'd find a way.

"Because I give off some vibe I don't want to talk about everyone else you've slept with, right now?" It aches. Old. So old. A scar he hadn't cared about that much at all, but now felt fresh sliced. Like even this was something he couldn't have. It couldn't be his. Not without belonging to all of those other people, too, suddenly. "We need to throw Amber and Cath on this while you're at it? That what you want?"

He's not doing well, and he knows it. He doesn't want the words in his mouth. The ones that keep coming out. Catching like a foot to his own face. He doesn't want to feel like he's both disastrously defensive of them and a damn coward for hiding behind them. For being proud of what he did, refusing to let anyone, even Danny belittle what he did or would do for Danny, but not wanting to push it into the light. He wasn't made to break. It didn't break him. He was still here, fine, four years later.

Knowing there was no way he ever would have come on to Danny then.

(Maybe even, sickened and angry at himself, that if it wasn't for Danny, none of this would exist either.)

[haole_cop]

"No, I just –"

Backpedaling, while Steve is, actually now, getting angry. Defensive. Pricked too close, maybe, and, okay, okay, okay, so maybe Danny needs to make all this clear. "I don't want that, okay, I don't want this, I don't want to fight with you about it, okay? I'm not trying to – it's not about them, okay?"

Even if it was. And Steve was right. And both of them made it work, and both of them were doing okay, and both of them were even happy, for a while. Everything Steve said he was. Goofy over Gabby. Stubborn about Amber, even when it turned out she was really Melissa. And Steve, there, helping him through it all, just like he tried to, with Cath. "Look, I know what it was like, I remember, alright? I just, I didn't know."

And maybe that's the crux of it. The thing that matters, the thing that keep catching him, why four years is so much worse than three.

He didn't know. Had no idea. That they could have been here, so long ago. That Steve felt even anything like this. That Steve felt like he had to hide it from him, and hid it so well that even once Danny realized, figured it out for himself, he still didn't have a damn clue that Steve had already been living with it for a year. Past Rachel. Walking Danny through his first post-Rachel relationship. Being there for absolutely everything else. While Grace loved him. And Danny depended on him.

Always at his back, and always faithful. Always the best friend and partner he'd ever had. "Look, I'm sorry."

He is. Sorry. For turning this into an argument. For that first year. For the three after, when he should have known, when if he'd known – "Okay?"

His hand, which had lifted to move without him even noticing, pauses, and then settles, a little cautiously, at the side of Steve's head. "I'm sorry."

[thebesteverseen]

Danny backpedals hard and fast. The words catching in his throat and his face, and Steve almost wants to back down. But he doesn't. He isn't built for it. He was made to be a raging storm, taking out everything in his path, and he doesn't want to be stood up next to every person before him right this second. Not yet. Not naked and skin barely cooled. He doesn't want to have to look in the mirror and see that he's nothing like any of them. Want Danny to see it and --

He keeps talking. Too many words, that are Danny backing the hell off, without letting go or moving away. Not raising his voice, and suddenly apologizing. Not wanting a fight. When Steve knew that, but he couldn't stop himself. Even if he couldn't say why he went for Danny's throat. Crass and inverted. When that wasn't what Danny was doing. They weren't talking about other people Danny had sex with exactly. Or sex at all. Implicitly acknowledged in all those places, consenting adults and all, even children, but not flaunted.

It was meant to hurt, and Steve hates himself for it, as Danny apologizes suddenly. For not knowing. Not wanting to fight.

Those two words edged suddenly by Danny moving and then settling a hand against his skin. Somehow that one hurts, hits deeper, makes him hold more still than either of the two words. Like it's an even bigger apology. When it's Steve, not Danny, who should be apologizing. Who doesn't deserve any of this. Making something in Steve's throat become a boulder instead space, or air, or anything else normal. When he's tipped into it before he can stop himself. Head into hand, eyelids closing, as though pushing for the contact of his whole palm without even realizing it.

Even when he shakes his head, dragging in a breath through his nose and putting it right back out. Too heavy, but deep enough that he's actually breathing. At least for that one breath. That it's almost like a showcase before he says quieter but entirely set. "You don't have anything to be sorry for. You didn't do anything wrong."

[haole_cop]

That, too, is demonstrably untrue, okay, he has plenty to be sorry for. Every day he hadn't said or done something since the first day he had even the slightest idea, he can be sorry for each one of those. For every time Steve felt like he had to push Danny towards anyone but himself. For every time he dismissed any one of those moments as just a fluke, another instance of their friendship taking on a form nearly unrecognizable as simply friendship to anyone else.

He has a lot to be sorry for, but he'd be more sorry if any of them kept pushing at Steve, prodding at him, pushing him to snap and punch back. Again.

Even if Danny knows he did plenty wrong, because he's supposed to know better, right, he's supposed to be better. Be the person who knows Steve better than anyone. Who always has his back. Who will think of Steve when no one else, including Steve, will.

And he didn't. Hasn't. Let Steve down, more sharply than he had any idea. Got it so wrong, while he was patting himself on the back for being the only one to get it right, and getting righteously furious with the never-ending list of people who said they cared about Steve, only to leave him or lie to him or betray him, when he was doing the exact same thing.

Maybe worse. Maybe he's been the worst culprit, simply because he'd thought he was in the right.

But Steve's leaning into his touch, and huffing out that heavy breath, and his eyes are sliding closed, and Danny doesn't want to shatter it, okay, wants the tension in Steve's neck to slip away, not tie itself tighter, not thread itself through Steve's body and this whole room and around Danny's throat like garrote wire.

He's done plenty wrong. But he can start trying to get it right.

Sliding his fingers with the motion of Steve's head, to run them firmly over Steve's scalp, followed by the long sweep of his thumb. His other hand settling at the side of Steve's neck, before smoothing slowly down his shoulder. "Okay."

It's not. But he can work with it, for now. To wind it down. To get it right. "I don't want to think about anyone else, okay? I want to think about you."

Here. In bed. Naked against him. Beautiful in the dark. "I just want you."

It's been so long. And there have been others, but they weren't Steve. They were never Steve. "So do me a favor, huh? Do me a favor, kiss me."

[thebesteverseen]

Danny is quiet. Quieter. They both are, like a blanket dropped into the tense noise of a few comments back, and there's a quiet truce finding its way into the spaces between their breaths. The suddenly smaller words. Softer, and more direct. Less other people's names when Steve opens his eyes while Danny goes back to talking, alongside his hands rubbing up and down Steve's skin suddenly.

He knows Danny is trying to calm him back down, and that Danny shouldn't have to. Calm him or apologize.

That this, right here, is in the long list of reasons he knew that he should never be right here. Didn't deserve to, as well as couldn't be and wouldn't be. Except that Danny keeps touching him, and he keeps looking down at Danny. That traitor in his chest. His heart that just won't stop beating no matter how many beatings it takes from how many people he tried to believe wouldn't do what they always do. Like clockwork. The one promise he can rely on from the world.

But he wants to believe it, all over again, when Danny says those words. I want to think about you. I just want you.

Impossible. Improbable. But Danny is still here. Danny isn't shoving him to the side and getting his pants and his keys to get the hell out of dodge from Steve who can't even reign it in for a civil discussion of when, where and how. Just keeps touching him and saying those words instead. Following it up with that small request that makes Steve look at him, in the dark, a touch too long. Maybe uncertain. Maybe confused. Maybe just unable to be relieved and distracted entirely. Not twenty-five and entirely reckless anymore.

Even if he wants to be, and it is something he can give. Wants. Doesn't even give it a word, because his words are poison in the air, but he can do this. Okay. He can do this. Right now, if Danny wants him to, and for as long as he can, until Danny doesn't want him to anymore. Lean back in and find Danny's mouth. Warm smooth lips, that just touching makes his stomach quiver like it's been days somehow. Kiss him as though it doesn't feel the ground is entirely unstable or that he knows the ground is sable, as it always is, and Steve, himself, just isn't.

Just press himself against there, trying to push it all away. The thrumming tension and the sharp protectiveness, the biting cold hunger. Shame. Anger. Helplessness. Jealousy so old it's another shirt. Just close his eyes, and tip Danny's head into the mattress again, his own hand finding the side of Danny's face and remember the rest of it. The parts that don't feel like even on the first night everything in his hands is cracked and broken because he can't stop dropping it.

[haole_cop]

It starts out as a transparent ploy, maybe, an obvious attempt at distraction, because Steve pauses for almost too long, before he finally does lean in, but he does. Leans in. Finds the side of Danny's head with his hand, and presses him back, while Danny's lips part and his eyes close and it's already stopped being about a distraction, hasn't it?

Must. Is. Forces him to be present, in a way he'd been hoping to coax out of Steve, but which hauled him along as well, because there's nothing to think about, nothing to worry over or feel guilty about, when Steve's mouth is sliding against his and Danny can breathe him in, slow and deep and relaxed. Hand sliding down Steve's back, palm warm over working muscles and velvet-soft skin. Thinking, if he thinks of anything at all, of how much he's wanted to touch Steve, exactly like this. Every time he's watched Steve slap on sunscreen. Every time he's looked over to find Steve dozing on the couch, with his shirt rucked up a few bare inches above the waistband of his pants or shorts. Every time the sun painted it, or water ran down it.

This perfect, flat expanse of tan skin and dense muscle, living and shifting beneath his touch. The texture of Steve's wiry brown hair. The slick warm slide of his mouth, and puff of his breath, and how immediately it starts working its way all the way down Danny's body, unlocking and untying and working away tension he hadn't even known was there.

Settling him back into the mattress, while Danny tries his best to wind around him, a leg slipping over one of Steve's, hands moving slow but specific, painting across wide swathes of skin, roaming over curved muscle and up the slope of his back.

He hadn't meant it to be all consuming, but maybe there was never a chance it wouldn't be. He hasn't gotten enough of being kissed by Steve, yet. Of Steve kissing him, because Danny told him to. Of Steve blanketing him, touching him, wanting him.

It's not a lie. It's the only thing he wants to fall into.

[thebesteverseen]

It's wrong but he knows, better than he should, how to kiss someone to just shut them the hell up. Girls in places that weren't here, and maybe one or two who were. People he didn't want here, who he could overpower with a direct dedication that made them forget anything else he didn't want to talk about or wasn't going to do with them once this all ended. But that isn't Danny. They weren't.

If there are words he doesn't want Danny to say, it's not about filling the space until he'll leave. Knocking him out with this all.

It's about the way that crack inside his chest intensifies when Danny's mouth parts under his, just as ready and just as responsive as every other time he kissed Danny tonight. The way Danny kissed him back downstairs before he even gathered his wits enough to ask how, why, wha, when Steve kissed him instead of talking. Which maybe is the wiser move all over this. Even if he doesn't want the same moves to mean the same things here. Because they can't.

Kissing Danny pulls at him. Cracking the center of his chest wide open. It's like how he can't just stand two or three feet inside the ocean waves without feeling it there. A magnet tug so strong there is nothing he wants -- not even helping Grace with her board, or talking to another surfer, or anything with his friends -- as diving into that blue and pushing for the deep blue, black that will come if he holds his breath and kicks strong and sure.

That's what kissing Danny is like. A tide tugging his feet under. A light to the blind. Something he doesn't want to fight, and isn't even positive he could. That it was cultivated like his own person super weapon. Pushing words and worries aside. Making him want to find every corner of Danny's mouth all over, again. To touch every part of him one more time, like it might be the very last time. The only. Danny will come to his senses about Steve being too much trouble.

The way, maybe, Cath did over everything he didn't know how to give her.

Maybe couldn't give Danny, who he seemed to give almost everything, everything but this, and her, who he did.

None of it is right and none of it fair. It hurts somewhere too deep for bones and muscle to exist. Down where his mother was dead and his father didn't need him, and then his father was dead and his mother wasn't but didn't want him, and where Cath chose her, and chose another country. Even with her fingerprints on more of him than anyone else had ever gotten. And this. This, where Danny inhabited what felt like everything but the last five or ten cells in his body, and he was taking those now.

The danger of it, and in it. How badly it would hurt when this ripped away from his hands, too. When he wasn't like them. Tiny and malleable. With glossy hair and brilliant smiles. Graceful or sassy. Someone Danny could spoil and tease and do god knows what else did with his bevy of tiny, slim girls that Steve was never going to be even five percent like. That ripped at his center, prying his ribs open against that crack.

That long, cold time of watching so many hands, on Danny, on them. Arms around their shoulders, pulled in close, under Danny's, against him. Kisses that were delicate and worshipful, and something Steve had to look away from, because he was a good friend and not a creep. Because he didn't want to see it and hate them, or Danny, even more, even if it was only for a few seconds. When it was too intimate and it was inappropriate and he had to remind himself hard to be happy for Danny. Not just happy to get drink a little more and numb it out before Danny returned, all smiles and effusive brilliance to nudge at him in the wake of it.

Which maybe is what shifts this kiss. Makes it something harder. Hungry, and helpless at fighting, and more exacting, almost punishing, for anything so profane as being made helpless and unable to burn Danny out, and so achingly old. Four. Years. Old. That was four years ago and I do know how to count. Because maybe he never did as well as he was supposed to at that. At any of this. Maybe on the top. Skin deep. Danny couldn't tell. He did that right. But everything under it had burned and boiled, roiling muddy and messed up. Always wanting this so badly he couldn't escape it even in his dreams and delusions.

[haole_cop]

It doesn't take Steve long to start escalating this kiss, but when he starts pushing harder, Danny can't keep from meeting it, wanting it.

He doesn't want Steve holding back, and he doesn't want Steve thinking. Doesn't want Steve to be re-thinking. Specifically. Re-thinking any of this. Kissing Danny instead of hitting him. Telling him anything, for Danny to get caught on and try to wheedle out of him.

It matters. Of course it does. Everything Steve feels and wants and needs matters. Should, especially, because the people who were supposed to care about Steve's feelings and wants and needs haven't. Everyone Danny always prided himself on being nothing like. Because he cared. He knew Steve.

Except it turned out, he didn't, right? Didn't know, and didn't do right by him, after all. Spent a whole year in blissful ignorance, asking Steve for relationship advice, and never for one second thinking there would be any reason why Steve wouldn't want to hear it. Steve, even, pushing him into it. Gabby, and Amber.

He should have known better. He should have known.

So when Steve kisses him harder, a little more desperately, he meets it. Pushes up into it, sinks his fingers into Steve's hair, belts his arm a little more firmly across Steve's back. Wanting to burn out that year, and the three than followed it, and every time he got it wrong, every time he should have known. All the times he patted himself on the back for being such a good friend, for listening to Steve and taking his advice with Gabby or Amber, and imagining he was the only person he'd be hurting, with it.

Priding himself on being the one person who would always take what Steve wanted and needed into consideration. The one who would never lie to him, or put him second to anything other than Grace.

He'd thought he'd done such a good job. That even when it was like sticking his own face into a pile of red-hot coals, he did it. Even when all he wanted was to tell Steve that the only person he wanted was him, the one standing right there, always at his side and at his back.

And he hadn't. For years, he hadn't.

He can't make that up, and he has no way of even trying to start making it up, but he can kiss Steve back, and drag him in closer, now. Pushing up into him, to roll them both over the mattress, and keep Steve close enough that it won't ever be something he can question again.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve isn't positive, even when he is letting Danny push him, roll them, that he wants to relent. Let Danny. Do anything but kiss him into the bed, and through the mattress, maybe the floor and the ceiling and the next floor. Like somehow that action could say everything it can't, and that he has no clue how to say for Danny, and Danny keeps asking, because Danny needs words. That even trying to touch in himself, either of them trying, makes him vicious and feral even at Danny, who is every reason for everything.

Danny whose fingers were in his hair, and whose arm was across him, leg tangled up. Making this shift ungraceful, but, also, somehow like it didn't matter. Neither of them letting go, or paying it any mind, as they didn't pull apart during it. Steve didn't care. Or he did. Too much. With their names still in his ears, like it had been etched with a razor sharp blade on his skin, or his brain. The backs of his eyelids, and the last thing he wanted was to share. This fleeting darkness. These minutes. His bed. Danny.

He's done it for so long. Sharing Danny with the world, and with them, and he doesn't want to anymore. Not now. Not with Danny kissing him back like this. Making his breath go ragged, when he even remembers to breathe in and his hands have to find more of Danny's skin, as Danny lets him. Kiss him like this. Touch him like this. Not backing down and not flattening a hand on his chest, or his neck, telling Steve that Steve had to. Danny only pulled him even closer, kissing him back just as hard. Nothing but willing and seeming to want him, still, too. To feel the urgent insanity and the blistering impossible walls in the air.

That it wasn't just Steve who lost it on a touch. The taste of Danny. The solidness under his hands.

The way nothing in his head made any sense when he was trying to say it, but everything about this did. Even if it was the kind of sense crackling the edges of everything calm and sane. Tempting him toward the edge with a red blanket waving, while it felt briefly, crazily, like somehow they might be on the same page here at least.

[haole_cop]

Steve lets him, because Steve always lets Danny move him. Rolls to his back, while Danny pushes up, winds up straddling Steve's hips, and bending in toward him, like Steve's mouth is the only source of air left in this room or this world.

Maybe it is.

Air, but not sanity, because Danny can feel that evaporating out from between his own ears, with a tortured shriek like the whistle of a teakettle on a hard boil. Everything condensing, and crystallizing. Guilt, and anger, and want, and longing. As much disgust with himself as there is pure heady need for Steve. His hands, and his mouth. To prove against them that Danny wasn't lying, earlier, that he doesn't want to talk or think about anyone in the past.

He doesn't. Didn't, then. It wasn't about Rachel, or Gabby. Amber. Except in how, if he'd known, at least one would never have happened. Gabby would probably have ended very differently. Playing second fiddle to a woman she knew about, and this man, that she never did, and how could he have expected her to somehow want to stay, knowing she'd always come second, third, fourth?

But it's not about that. This feeling. This need to prove himself. Paint himself across all of Steve's skin. Maybe feel like, if he's straddling Steve, and kissing him into the mattress, Steve won't be able to go anywhere. That Danny will be able to try and start making up for it.

Hands running down his body, over his chest and stomach and sides, down to where Danny's thigh is interrupting the line of his torso. Chasing the edge of his jaw, finally, finally, like he'd been thinking for too much of tonight and wanting for too much of the last three years, down to his throat, the pulse ticking solidly away there, a little faster now, against Danny's tongue.

Steve doesn't want to hear it, but Danny still needs to prove it. That he wants Steve more than almost anything or everything or anyone else in the world. That Steve is important. Second only to Grace.

That he's the only one Danny wants to touch, kiss, roll onto a mattress with. Fight with, even, as long as it doesn't lead to Steve leaving.

Because Steve's not allowed to leave. Danny hasn't had enough time yet.

[thebesteverseen]

It has to be wrong. All of this. All of him. That somehow he's allowed this at all.

The push of Danny's hands, the way his back his the bed, making it bounce, and the solid weight that settles itself across his hips and thigh, weight on top and constriction friction on the sides. Thing's that feel too good to be anything he deserves -- while he's reaching out, even in rejection of his own thoughts, hands to find Danny's side, the ladder of his ribs, all the way to the crease between his hip and bent thighs -- when he was just trying to break it.

When. God. The world slashes itself up, ribbons and heat, his hands tightening hard on Danny's hips when Danny's mouth starts on his skin. The run of his jaw and the side of his neck. Soft, but hard lips, and the prickle of a just beginning stubble adding sharps of sensation to everything. It's wrong. It has to be wrong. But he doesn't want to care. About the world. Fairness. Right. Wrong.

Not about anything but Danny, and how true, blisteringly base and shameless and fiercely true that's been for so long.

Not with Danny's mouth at his skin, like it's a hand on his heart ratcheting up his pulse until it's pounding deafening in his ears and pulse points, and somehow one of his hands isn't on Danny's hip, because there's hair between his fingers, and he's pushing Danny into him even more. Because it already feels like fire lapping at him, and he just wants to be burned by it. Like he could offer Danny a visible proof of the mark, or make the mark of a mark, that has always already been there.

[haole_cop]

He wants to say it. Insanely.

Wants to press it into Steve's skin, until it's written there like a tattoo. How it matters. How that year matters because Steve matters, because Danny's been in love with him for longer than he could even recognize.

Except he can't say that, because it is actual insanity, to start babbling about being in love, a surefire way to send anyone running for the door on the very first night, during the very first time, but he wants to. It hammers at the back of his teeth. Stamps itself on his tongue, when he's got it flat against Steve's throat, and Steve's pulse is pounding against it, and Steve's fingers are in his hair, driving Danny's face into his own neck, harder, because Steve doesn't believe in slowing down, and he doesn't believe in safe.

Which is all the more reason to swallow everything he wants to say, the words than want to come spilling out, another confessional to at least match the one from downstairs, back when he thought Steve was going to hit him, yell at him, fire him.

Never this. Never this.

Steve's hand, hard on his hip. Steve's skin under his palms and fingers. Steve's throat against his mouth. Not safe. But not as deadly as those words have been, all of Steve's life, handed off by people who didn't give a damn, or who did, but sent Steve away anyway, or left him behind.

And Danny won't. Not until he's proven it. That he's different. That he won't leave, and he won't lie, and he'll do whatever he can to make up for the times that he did, the times he let Steve down. Should have known better.

Except all he knows right now, is that Steve tastes like salt, and he smells better than anything Danny could have imagined, and he feels, under Danny's hands, like the precursor to an earthquake. A faint tremor running through muscles, jacking up his pulse.

The hair behind his ear damp with sweat, when Danny makes his way there, to that flat, soft, delicate spot just behind his earlobe. Running the edge of his teeth, brushing lips along the shell of Steve's ear, exactly like he'd pictured and hated himself for picturing in the club. "You feel too good."

[thebesteverseen]

Whatever peace there had been back when there were words, before Steve thought he could attempt any words and even shatter that, is gone. Which he's sure, any other day, one where Danny didn't have his mouth against the pounding point of Steve's heart, he'd say Steve didn't know how to be. Peaceful. Calm. Able to breathe. Relax. Do anything more than push forward toward the next rush. Thrum. Conflict. Fight. It's true, isn't it. Even here. Going up in flames, exploding heat under Steve's skin and setting a fire back in his center.

Except that, if Steve had proves that back with the talk, Danny is the culprit now.

Danny is slamming at everything he can. His hands on Steve's skin, making everything tune itself to him instead of the tension that had crawled up his spine and taken up residence in his bones. There's no room for it, when Danny is suddenly touching him like this. Making it impossible to even want to think about anything but wet suction and pressure on his skin. The flat of Danny's hands and the brush of his stomach and his chest against Steve's as he does this.

It should feel like being pinned. He should have more than the faintest, far-off, flicker sputtering about being stuck and the delicate, and easily deadly, places Danny puts his mouth and his hands. Without asking, without noticing. But he doesn't. Danny would never. Danny's been the person who got his hands on Steve, wherever he could get them, to drag him down and around and be a big stop sign in front of him for years. And his want for this is so much stronger than any warning.

It should feel like he's stuck, but it feels amazing. Danny's weight pressed against him everywhere, not because they are dodging bullets or just happened to have ended up in the same space, passing out on the couch against a late movie or a recorded copy of a game that played while they were on the job, from an equally far away time zone that didn't' fit Hawaii's off the chart maritime either or a too late BBQ, with too much to drink, where all the talking slipping into silence and pressed shoulders.

Steve drew in a sharp hiss and shuddered shaking through him, against the bed, and Danny, and his own bones, when Danny's teeth raked the edge of his ear, following the sharpness with the soft, wet heat of his lips and then words. Nothing makes sense, except holding on to Danny. Not that Danny still wants him here, or wants him at all, but Steve can't let go. Doesn't want Danny to stop. Touching him. Hands, and body, and tongue, and teeth. Kissing his skin.

Talking to him like this. His voice gone dark and hot breath pressing into his skin where lips had been.

Saying things Steve could hardly even imagine Danny of all people saying. Meaning.

[haole_cop]

These are things he's never told anyone. Not his therapist. Not his sisters. Not Gabby, or Amber, or Rachel. Kept from the one person he might tell anything to, because they were about him.

Maybe never really admitted, even to himself, that he wanted them. That he ever thought about, fantasized about, whether the fact that Steve lets Danny drag him around, lean on him, punch his arm or smack him upside the head, would mean he'd let Danny do something like this.

Push him into a wall.
A mattress.
A pillow.

Let Danny flip him, turn him, pin him. As much as Danny can ever pin him, or hold him. He can't, couldn't, if Steve ever tried to get away, but Steve doesn't. Never has. Always stops, and listens.

Like he's stopping, and listening, now. Except nothing about him is still. It's like the way he thrums against Danny's fingers and under his palm, when Danny drags him away from some scumbag Steve is trying to turn into a puddle of meat and blood. Paused, but vibrating with the need to keep moving. Like a racehorse held back at the starting gate.

He feels it, now. The shudders. The low, constant vibration. The energy being held back, hauled back. Because he asked for it. Wanted it. Steve still listening, letting him.

It goes to his head like someone smashed a bottle of champagne across his temple. He wants it, and so much more. To see if Steve would let him take his hand, and thread their fingers together, and keep it. If Steve would let him leave a bruise, here, on the curve where his shoulder meets his neck. What it would take to push Steve into pushing back and rolling them, turning this into a wrestling match just like the one their partnership has always been, neither giving in, both giving as good as they get.

He wants that sound, again, and he wants Steve's mouth and Steve's hands and Steve's skin. He wants it all.

[thebesteverseen]

He could, is the glaring, confused, thought, blurring in and out. Danny. He could have chosen to be done already. A mess, pushed through that once. This. Whatever this is. Done, then. Done enough to get up and go home. Or done, a few minutes ago, when Steve thought the smartest thing was being a crass bastard. Done, then, too. Enough for clothes and shut doors, houses and cars. But he isn't. He isn't, and that just keeps hitting Steve in the few seconds he can think.

Especially, because he isn't trying to. Not anymore. It washes in, scattered, battered pieces, like detris washed up on the beach by the constant waves. Except that here the waves are made of fire, scalding even wet against his skin. Danny mouth on him, while his hands can't stop moving anymore than he can stop pushing into Danny's touching. Hands pushing down Danny's sides. Heavy and hungry across skin he's seen and others he never had.

Here where Steve's hands fit into the space between Danny's ribs and hips. Bones giving to soft skin and Steve wants to brand his ability to touch it finally, the overwhelming sensation that he fits here. They do. Like he should have done this so long ago. Would have. If could have. Here where Danny's hips and thighs meet. Where Steve's thumb fit down into the juncture perfectly, fingers curling the sides of his ass. The constant friction of moving bodies.

Unable not to move under Danny's touch, or capable of keeping himself from touching.

This resurging need to just shove his way into Danny's skin. Or pull Danny into him. Where he's always been.

Steve's second skin, and every bit of him that recognizes he might always be better at what he was trained to be and do than Danny could ever even attempt to emulate, but that when Steve wants to know what to do with anyone else in his life, any other normal situation, that everyone else takes for granted, he asks himself what Danny would do. That voice that is Danny walking around in his head. That shoved in with the same force as Danny years ago and never came out.

Steve holding Danny to him, even as he bucks, only marginally controlled, up into Danny.

His whole body on a livewire from Danny's mouth, while he says, "If you keep doing that, we're never going to sleep tonight."

Not that Steve gives a damn. About sleep, or the world, or the morning that is only so many hours away. Not when Danny is here, like this, touching him, wanting him. The rest of it could burn. For the rest of these dark night hours, and however long he can get away with this. With Danny touching him and wanting him. With being allowed to hold on to Danny so hard he doesn't even know how to question if it's too hard.

While he says it more like it's a threat and a warning, than a complaint. Because nothing in him wants anything else.

[haole_cop]

Steve's saying one thing, but his hands and voice and body are all saying the exact opposite, and Danny's laughing into the side of his neck, pausing where he is. "You telling me you'd rather be sleeping, right now?"

It's such a lie. When Steve's hands are painting up and down his sides, and gripping his hips, fingers curving possessive and greedy over into muscle, and every pitch and roll of his body is an attempt to get closer to Danny, he's pretty sure it's a bald-faced, pathetic attempt at a lie.

Which is heady enough in itself. Steve's focus, all on him. Steve's hands, unable to come off him. Steve reacting to him, like this, only wanting more, letting Danny put him on his back and touch him or kiss him however he wants. It's absurd. Impossible. Somehow happening.

Danny doesn't want to sleep. He's not sure he ever wants to sleep again, if sleeping means waking up and finding that all of this actually was just as impossible as he always thought. "This doesn't seem like the far better option, to you?"

It's not that he doesn't like sleep, or the idea of sleep. It isn't late, but it's not early, either, and he can't go quite as long as he used to, anymore, without a decent rest in between.

He's not even against the idea of sleeping here, with Steve. The idea is actually one he'd rather not touch too abruptly: feels fragile and delicate. Sex is one thing. Sleep is something else. Sleep would mean Steve wants him to stay, here, in this bed. To wake up to the reality of all this, and what it means, in the morning and the broad light of day.

It's an attractive and a terrifying concept all at once, but Danny also has no intention of stopping, even when he pulls back, heavy-lidded and flushed, to grin at Steve. "You want me to stop, so you can get some shut-eye, huh?"

[thebesteverseen]

That laugh, Steve thinks, is the best thing in the world.

Danny hasn't even stopped having his mouth against Steve's skin, tender under his attentions, when it hits his skin. Warm puffs of breath rolling one after another, and the sound, tingling through his skin. Like being hit with the heat of the sun even in pitch dark. The shake of Danny's shoulders and expansion of his chest, the way it rumbles through him, and hits against Steve, like thunder in some very far off places he hasn't thought of in what will never be too long.

But he's wrong. He's so completely wrong, and it only takes two more seconds to know it.

Danny's mocking him, laughing at him, pressing into him. His hands, and other parts of his body that are quite clear, without the help of Steve's mouth, to being clear on the point of what Steve wants, that isn't sleep. Especially not when Danny pulls back smiling like the goddamn sun and eclipsing any notion he'd had of the sun on his skin seconds ago. Breath heavy and mouth curved, eyes somehow still bright in the darkness.

He could even mark the exact expression on Danny's face if he needed to. If he could think before the mark of Danny's last question there. Before he was all lightning movement. An arm shoving back on the bed, to push him toward Danny, weight on one forearm, while the other let go of Danny's hip to find Danny's neck and the base of his head, pulling him down into Steve's shift upward. Lips managing only two words, while his eyes were unblinking, before his mouth was back on Danny's. "Don't stop."

The collision of finding Danny's mouth again, the only thing that kept him from plowing straight into the wall and letting the word ever spill out of his lips and not just plaster itself across his head. Reaching out, on the tip and the edge of his tongue as he kissed Danny with every edge of those syllables and the truth under them. That he wanted to be nowhere else, and he was full of shit, talking about anything that involved closing his eyes and possibly not having Danny there. That nothing anywhere else on the planet was something he wanted if it was in comparison with staying here and covering every inch of Danny.

[haole_cop]

Steve pushes up in an instant, in a visceral reminder of how fast Steve is, when he wants to be, and how much bigger he actually is than Danny, and how much of pinning him, without actively trying, is an illusion.

Pushing up, and burning those words against his mouth, while Danny's hand goes automatically, instinctively, to the back of his head, fingers spreading and holding, dragging Steve in as much as he's being dragged down. The other landing on the mattress to support them both. The sudden shift causing friction against Steve's stomach, and punching a groan out of Danny, along with a sudden and vivid slew of mental images about how this could be so much better, how they could be so much closer, if he just shifted a few inches down.

Hitting like a hockey puck to the head, or being doused with a flaming shot. Nothing he's prepared for, and everything he wants.

Steve, under him. Pushing up into him. Steve's mouth on his, kissing him with this forceful intent, veering on the edge of desperate, when Steve is never. Not with Danny.

Telling him not to stop. Echoing Danny's own words, from downstairs. Every inch of his long body thrumming and responsive and enthusiastic.

Telling him he's felt this for years. For so much longer than Danny even imagined, even realized for himself.

He meets it. Pushes back. He might get flipped, or Steve might let himself be shoved back into the bed, but Danny doesn't care, either way, he just wants to be, needs to be, closer. To slide his legs back, and press himself as fully against Steve as he can. Chest to chest. Belly to belly. To wind themselves up, legs and arms and hands everywhere. Pushing the thought of Steve's balking at telling him the truth of how long it's been away, to think over, mull over, chew on, another time.

Later. When Steve isn't trying to boil the blood straight out of his veins.

[thebesteverseen]

Danny's hand finds his head, and his kiss feels like fire. A little desperate. A little too honest. Broken over everywhere, and threatening, in the thrum of his skin, everywhere to just let out everything else he's managed to keep closed in his fists. How long. How deep. Through everything. Everything, everything. Everyone. He's wanted Danny. He's been so aware of Danny. Everything he put into everyone's hands, and everything that threw away.

Never seeing him, while Steve couldn't stop seeing him and had no right to be wanting this.

Wanting even more than everything Danny gave him. Like it wasn't enough that it was more than he'd ever gotten before.

Someone at his back, and his side, as much in his real life as on the field. Whom he could trust with full impunity and implicitness. Danny who spoke the truth even when it was the worst thing to say, or share. Who made the god damn hard choices and somehow got himself to other fucking countries he shouldn't have been able to get to, no less make the military do his bidding, to be there every time it was almost the last time Steve's eyes closed and opened because he made it through.

He was allowed all of that, but none of this, and somehow this had been there all along. In Asia, The Middle East, here.

When he can claim it, trying not to let the tsunami of all those years, months, weeks, days, minutes swap straight through him and paint all his sins on Danny's mouth, his skin. Even when something that he can't tell if is a growl or groan, or maybe both, rips its ways out of his chest and straight into Danny's mouth as Danny shifts himself, them, lining everything up, and friction makes fireworks explode behind his eyes and through his whole body. Tears at all of his skin and any strength not to let it all fall.

Burning comets of debris to burn the bed and Danny's ears. Send him running back to wherever else he could want to be.
To the places and people who are easier and maybe even better for him. Except that just makes Steve's hands more harder.

"I want you," Steve mouth says, breathing out the fire that is consuming his skin again. When sleep would be impossible, and he'd be rubbing himself on the bed, or his his hand, whether he was awake or asleep. This would never let him go, let him be, ever again. The scent and taste and feel of Danny everywhere. Spurring him on. Needing his hands back on Danny's hips, rubbing them together, tight and perfect, and making the world explode all over again.

Even when the muscles in his back begin to burn with nothing to support them being half upright. His hands needed.

Until Danny rectifies that with shoving him back. Back on his back. Back on his bed. Back under Danny and Danny's hand, while he grates into Danny, and those words are still coming out, like Steve can't stop them. Not saying them, or meaning them, or always having meant them. "I just want you."

More than sleep. More than sanity. More than even fucking thinking. Breathing. Everywhere, and every way he could have Danny. When his brain was suggesting so many other things. Sweat and force, madness in every bit of his body, and losing it. On Danny. In Danny.

[haole_cop]

Steve goes, which might be a relief, if Danny could still process anything other than the immediate; anything other than Steve's body writhing up under his, grinding up into him like they're a couple of horny teenagers going at it in a locker room or in a basement, hoping like hell that nobody's mom is about to open the door, flick on the light, walk down the stairs.

He's not sure he can remember the last time he felt like this, like he wanted to crawl right under someone else's skin, to get closer than closer, to wind himself so close around their body that he ends up sinking straight into it, can't remember the last time he didn't care about getting it right, too caught up in how it feels, but it's been a long time. Since Rachel, maybe. Back when they couldn't keep their hands off each other, back when they were young and stupid and so in love nothing else even seemed like it existed.

Like nothing else is existing, now, except Steve grinding against him and Danny gasping, and that groan that's been ripped out of Steve's chest, so many times tonight, and not enough. It couldn't ever be enough, he needs to hear it again and again to know exactly how wrong he was, every time he ever allowed himself to picture this. The way his whole chest clenches, and then cracks, like a block of ice someone's taking a sledgehammer to.

Because he picture also never had that. Those words. Steve saying them, breathless and raw and too honest, the way he can be, sometimes, when he's been railroaded again by a world he keeps trying to save, but which seems to love nothing more than to kick him, over and over again.

Saying he wants Danny. He just wants Danny.

The strangled sound Danny makes now isn't from Steve's skin rubbing against his, or Steve's hands hard on his hips, or even the slow white out building up in his head: it's those words. I want you.

When he can't remember the last time anyone wanted him. Just him. "Tell me."

Even if it's hypocritical, because he has his mouth on Steve's again right after he says it, kisses coming undone, getting messy, distracted by the heat Steve's churning into his gut. "I want to know -- I want to know everything. All of it."

[thebesteverseen]

Nothing else exists in the world with Danny's skin warm and heavy on his, making him snake a leg around Danny's thigh. One that is almost two, only nearly not just trapping Danny against his body. Maybe because Danny makes that noise, and Steve can't even be positive what causes it, because there is so much. All of this is so much, so new, so neither of them able to let go or slow down. When everything flows and floods into everything else.

Like Danny, going from that sound, to those words, to right back to kissing Steve.

But those words burn inside Steve's ears, down into his chest, even while Danny is kissing him, grinding right back into him. Smoothness lost in need. Tell me. I want to know everything. When this is. Everything. Kissing Danny, while sparklers impale his eyes, crackling down every vein in his body. Making him feel more alive and on fire than he's felt in anything but a fight in. Too long. Too long. He doesn't know when or what the last thing was. Only that it makes him kiss Danny again.

Tell me. Danny voices wheedles in his mind, while Danny's hand are on his skin, mouth is on his mouth. Everything. And maybe lesser men would let it pass. Let it go. Because Danny is kissing him. Trying to drown him back down in fire and madness, stealing his mouth and his focus. But Steve is made for madness. He excels there. More than any other standstill second of his day. Week. Life.

Where everything is red, and haywire, and insane. That's where he most know how and what and who.

His fingers are in Danny's hair and at his hip. Still fisted, still sliding, still grinding steadily up into the mess of slipping movement above him becoming messy, words coming with no plan to them. Fodder on the forsaken altar of Danny's skin that he can't let go, can't forget, can't stop wanting even more with every new second of it.

"It was always you." It's almost an accusation. Sharp, a little almost to mocking, but somehow it's relief, too. Finally saying it. Carried so long. When he's kissing Danny and keeping them close. When he'd go for broke for Danny, if Danny wanted him to, and because. Yeah, maybe. Because he wants it that way. Broken and ragged at the edged. To know if the things he can't say, ever, can be shoved over the cliff, with this insanity, and Danny.

Those first words too dangerous, too real. Everything. Danny said, and it's a marvel he didn't use that word right back. Everything. That Danny was everything. Always had been. Every new thing he learned about Danny taking up space. In his head, his gut, his memory. Building itself into perfect memory and an ache Steve couldn't control. Respected more than he respected almost anyone in his own branch, from the best of the best of the whole country.

That it wasn't about just wanting to shove him up against a wall and fuck him daily for all these years.

That it was everything else, too. How he was with Grace. With victims. Jersey, and Christmas, and how he was with Steve. Daily. Sticking. A friend, a partner. Re-inventing those words, a relationship, into things Steve had never before had anywhere with anyone, and how no one could ever get close to it after he realized that was there, between them, no matter its limitations on what it wasn't over what it was.

It's all too close to coming out of his mouth. Battering at his teeth like a tank, while he swallows white fire creeping along his skin, trying to help it come burning out on every heavy breath and hot, messier kiss. When it makes his words trite, more mocking, less serious, almost like it has to be. To survive not covering Danny with everything this same second.

"You and your stupid hair--" Curled in his fingers even now. Smooth, even with product. Golden in the sun. Soft looking fluff on the days he woke up on the couch, or went to the beach without. That perfect dome on more days than Steve could count. "--and your stupid shoes." That really were. Stupid. Loafers in Hawaii still. Bitched about always somehow getting sand inside them, but never given up. Things Steve would mock him for, but wouldn't see change.

It was all Danny. It was all the way Danny was supposed to be, and had been, and pieces of what him right.

[haole_cop]

"My shoes?"

It's what he wants, and it's nothing like what he wants. More of the same. Everything they've ever tossed at each other, in a brand new context. All the old insults, that feel both wrong and right, when Steve is shoving them through kisses getting messier and messier, and Danny's whole body is getting hotter and hotter, winding tighter and tighter from the way their hips are rolling, skin rubbing on skin, hot and tight and almost perfect. "Now I know you're lying."

Which is a joke. Or, it is, more than it isn't. "You hate my shoes."

And not in the way Steve hated the suit that's currently taking up residence on Steve's floor. They were the mark of his status of outsider, that haole cop who might have finally given up the ties for everyday wear, but who would never really belong. "Even I know they're terrible."

Hideous, but comfortable. They're functional, and he's used to them, and even when he tries his best to shine up, these days, he knows they're not what might be called attractive. His work shoes and work pants and shirts, there's nothing special about any of them. He takes care in how he dresses, but he knows what the end result is: Steve's mocked him for it, endlessly, for years.

But he shouldn't be surprised. Isn't, if he stops to think about it, which is difficult, because Steve is trying to take him apart, unscrewing every nut and bolt holding him together. This is how they communicate, right? Steve says something ridiculous, Danny counters with every word he can haul from his sizable collection, lying in wait.

Still, he refuses to believe it. That Steve wants him for his hair and his shoes and his one good suit. That those things encompass those too-fragile, easily shattered words, that are still slipping closer and closer into his soft inner organs. I just want you, he'd said. He said those words. Steve did. In a way that Danny doesn't think has anything to do with his shoes, at all.