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]

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.

[thebesteverseen]

There's something a little tight, and a little caustic, about the way Steve's mouth twists at Danny's words.

Even if it gets lost for a second in a slide of movement, and a near snap of teeth, back arching, and fingers tightening on skin. In the hands on his skin, and the riot of movement that is Danny pushing, curving, driving into him, along him, at the same time as Steve kisses his mouth, and there's more, something more like the air of smugness and laughter than the actual sound of it. Because Danny rarely admits to that either, but it's very him, too. He keeps to what he likes.

"Maybe." Is half burned out. Dizzying, disastrous heat, twisting like a chain, tighter and tighter in his gut.

Maybe he did hate Danny's shoes and his hair at the beginning. His every thrown about hand and dancing movements. So much movement, that seemed like flashing signals and plane directions anytime he got going, that Steve never knew, never could have dreamed hard enough, to think would become this. The rampant press and slide of every ounce of that movement being played out against his skin. Rubbing thighs, and lips that could barely part for long enough.

He has to move. It's just a necessity, pushing them upward, taking Danny's weight with him toward sitting, not stopping his movements in the slightest, even as the muscle burn slid into Steve's lower back and his thighs. Keeping his hand along Danny's neck and the back of his head, fingers tightened in his hair, kissing him as it happens. Shifting, but keeping close enough, unable, unwanting, to stop any part of this friction, drive, dizzy dive toward sparklers crackling through more and more of his veins, as the floor was singeing to a smoulder everywhere again.

Because, maybe, he's never been able to stop any part of this. Ever. Drown it under. Cover it up. But not stop it. Never stop it.

Not when he was heartbroken over Rachel, or drunk on Gabby. When Steve was trying with Cath, and Amber appeared at the beginning, lightening Danny up again. It was always there. Those moments. Those sessions. Those days where the world demanded they keep choosing each other, again and again and again. Because they were partners. Because they were friends. Because no one else could, would, had, and really because it wasn't even a choice. It was less choice than breathing. It was who they were, who'd they almost always been now, too. Like one breath in and out.

"Everything," Steve said, after another kiss, he didn't know how many later, forehead pressing Danny's briefly in a thrust of movement. Taking Danny's word, his tell me everything, and throwing it back at his own mouth. Danny's mouth that got Steve in so much trouble, in the day, from the screaming and in the black of the night. When it was his fingers he'd been thrusting up into and not Danny's skin, and his eyes had been tight as death, instead of drilling into Danny's like this even in the dark. "-is a lot."

And he'd already gone miles to prove he was shit at it in the last twenty minutes, hadn't he?

And for some miracle reason Danny was still right here, fingers on his skin, breath heavy and fast against his lip, his cheek, somehow?

[haole_cop]

He's not a teenager anymore, and the refractory period is a real thing, but nobody seems to have told his body that. Steve pushes up to sitting, carrying Danny with him, until Danny ends up in his lap, and they're fitting together almost as snug as a lock and a key.

Almost. Almost. Enough to blitz his brain like Steve tossed it in a blender and hit high. Enough that they're slick with sweat again, melting the tackiness of earlier off skin, slippery between stomachs, and making Danny groan. He hadn't meant for this, when he back-pedaled, when he told Steve to kiss him, after wanting to know. Needing Steve to see.

That it matters. One year. Three. Four. Every day they lied to each other about this, and how much longer it would have gone on if it weren't for a stupid sting operation, undercover at a gay bar like the start to some third-rate porn.

That Steve's feelings matter. Every time he pushed Danny towards Gabby, or Melissa, and away from him. Every time he held his own hand in the fire because he thought it would make Danny happy.

It matters. But he fucked up talking about it, somehow, and now Steve is dragging him into his lap, and Danny's hands are at either side of his head, because it is. A lot. It's a lot. It's everything. Everything Danny still wants to know, can't wrap his head around, needs to have accompanied by some solid proof, evidence, something he can hold up and examine in the light of day, that will mean this isn't just tonight, and it's not just another dream he'll hate himself for when he wakes up.

He wants to know everything. When it started. Why. How. What it is about him Steve wants so much it's been eating at him for four years, without him ever making a single peep, without any sign except for a few too-tight hugs and maybe a closer than usual interest in the boring, mundane details of Danny's life.

Leaning to press his forehead against Steve's, while trying to catch his breath, which is impossible, because they're almost in a dead sprint again, his hips nudging forward and sending hard shudders up his back. Eyes closing. Licking at dry lips. Caught between a kiss, and just...this. Forehead to forehead. Feeling almost close enough to sink straight into the joint of Steve's hips. "So I hear."

Except it still doesn't make sense. Doesn't seem real. After Steve said I just want you, and they've both been using those words, and Danny's not sure he'd be able to explain them, either, but they're piling up in his chest, trying to force their way out. Everything.

He wants to know everything, before he loses this chance. Before this all goes away.

[thebesteverseen]

The thing is maybe he doesn't want to talk about everything -- everyone -- he's thought about too much.

But it's not the same thing as wanting this to stop. It's not the same thing as wanting to scare or shove Danny into running, and he does know how to do that. He knows Danny better than anyone, maybe even Danny. He could delineate it, and it would be a fight. Words, cold and biting, words, more than fists. It would require the kind of cruelty that Steve was trained to dole out without flinching, but had never once used on Danny. Had never done except in insults that were never entirely meant.

Never could, unless that cost was so much higher than this. Higher like the price of keeping Danny alive.

When he already knew there was no law or rule or promise he wouldn't break to keep that truth a part of this world. His.

It's not that he wants Danny to be anywhere other than suddenly precariously balancing all of his weight on Steve's thighs in a way where it nearly makes it hard for Danny to balance or hold on to anything that isn't him. Because that. He doesn't hate that. He doesn't hate the way Danny's eyes keep rolling up and his eyelids flicker down. He doesn't hate the roll of Danny's hips. The shudder of muscles through his back under Steve's fingers. The way he can't stop moving, never stops moving.

Never. Not in the car. In the field. On Steve's couch, or the beach. Never, never, never. Not even known, with all of it on Steve.

"So you hear," Steve scoffs that one. A laugh that sounds rich, smug, rejecting, even burned black.

Thrusting between them in what has become a powder keg of sweltering body warmth and wet, caught between skin, buffeted by movement that wants to make his eyes unfocus he just keeps going. Broke is so far from here. So far from nearby when he can still laugh into Danny's skin, ghosting breath over his just-kissed mouth, caustic as explosion. "Like you ever hear anything. You're always talking, talking, talking."

[haole_cop]

"I don't hear anything?"

Comes out ragged, but he makes it, pushes it, because this is them, and apparently this is what they do, even like this, which makes sense. It's not like anything he ever thought about, any fantasy he ever had, wouldn't contain this, too, because it's part of what he wants, what he loves, what he needs about Steve, and this, and them. "I hear plenty. I hear you bitching, bitching, bitching, all the time, Steve, all the time."

It's probably even less believable than ever, with his body pressed up against Steve's, and his voice getting tighter and tighter and his fingers in Steve's hair, but he can't stop himself. It's like throwing a match on a pile of TNT, and hoping he can dodge the shrapnel. "I hear you mocking me, and bugging me every single day about what I'm wearing, what I'm eating, what I'm doing later. You are like this annoying fly that's always buzzing in my ear, that I can't get rid of."

As well as the voice of reason, on more than one occasion; his conscience, occasionally, his sounding board, often. He doesn't know what the world would look like, if Steve weren't there to narrate it with him.

He's pretty sure he doesn't want to know.

He's also pretty sure this isn't going to last much longer, especially once he drags one hand down from Steve's head to wrap around them both, punching a groan from so deep in his gut he's sure he'll be sore from it later, like getting hit, or doing too many sit-ups. "Fuck, just...you're terrible. The worst."

[thebesteverseen]

The world is stripping toward a live wire of frayed, sparking cords. All of them connected to the slide of their skin, sticky and hot, and Danny's fingers, in his hair, gripping tighter and tighter, to give his head a dull ache, that he couldn't give a damn about, because Danny's head is so close, his mouth, and his words get higher, and higher, messier and messier on Steve's skin. All those complaints he's always made, but like this.

Picking up the slack Steve can't find words to fill. The way to explain. How it is absolutely everything. It's all of these words. It's everything he's always needed to know, pushed and pushed and pushed for, waiting for Danny to tell him no, to shove him out, to show him the door and tell him he'd crossed the line, five hundred of them, and he had, now and then. But even then it just like this. Words, sharp and caustic in Steve's ears, yelling, and his hands everywhere, waving, instead of on Steve's skin, but giving in, too.

Always telling Steve the answer to everything he taunted, jibed, insulted, bullied for, like Danny had to present the proof. Show up Steve. Prove him wrong, even if every time, he gave Steve what he wanted to. Let Steve have those answers, steal that time, get in his space, into his life. Maybe further than he should have been. Until Danny just drug him into things, like it was given, until even that could confuse him, the givenness of it, the aboluste unquestioned expectation after a while, being wanted there, expected there, but his own finger were knotted knuckles that wouldn't, couldn't let go.

Until it was just them, too. Except that maybe it was this, too. This. Whatever it is. That Danny had been feeling, too. All along.

This thing, between them, boiling over, getting everywhere. While Danny is suddenly swearing, and Steve can't help that he just laughs. Voice gone all rough and dark, a blistered boil, when he shudders, too much weight and ability in the reaction when he suddenly shoves up into Danny's hand, the sudden tightness around him and even more friction, smoothness, caught between them, and Danny's fingers and Danny.

While Danny swears and complains, and Steve all but pushes Danny back into the bed, and himself into more of Danny. Instead catching Danny's mouth, and kissing him through it. That laugh gutting itself on every reaction in himself, in Danny. The blistering mania of it, charging through his veins, demanding more. Always more. Always more and more and more. That everything that Danny wants. The everything that was never enough no matter how many inches into not like everyone else this had ever and always gotten.

Wanting to burn up in his fingers, and dissolve on his tongue. Refusing anything short of abject madness, of everything.
When he's pushing up into those fingers, hips and thighs bouncing Danny on them, kissing Danny like air was only accelerant now.