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Steve was empty when Danny found him. And empty shell walking and talking. Fighting to keep his head out of the dark and muddy waters that threatened to swallow him.
Steve was lost when Danny found him. Lost in a forest of dangerous feelings, lost in what he thought was going to be his habitat forever. A maze of wrong turns and thorns.
Steve was meaningless when Danny found him. He had no goals to reach, no days to look forward to. He kept desperately running towards blank spaces. Pushing himself always a little bit more.
And then Danny found him.
This strange cop from Jersey, who owns an insane amount of ties and a car that he never drives, he’s found Steve and has dragged him out of his colorless shell little by little, each day cracking it just a bit, just enough to slip between the aching wounds of Steve's soul and heal them.
It has been a slow process, since the day they met. To be honest, at the start Steve had feared that they wouldn’t endure even a whole day without trying to punch each other. Yeah, he’d been damn right.
Not even a few hours had passed since they had met and Steve had tried to get Danny into submission, as if he was one of his subordinates, as if he didn’t matter enough to bother. Danny had punched him.
Knuckles crashing into bone, Danny had left his first impression of Steve written in purple on Steve’s jaw. And as the days had gone by and the bruise on Steve’s face had faded, the idea that, yes, Danny was just stubborn as a bull as it seemed, had made house in Steve’s head and settled there, comfortable around the huge mess that his mind was.
It had been just the first of a long list.
Danny gets snarky at times. He almost never resorts to harsh measures – mostly because usually that is Steve’s duty – but uses words like bullets, aiming straight to the target and rarely missing a shot. Steve is fascinated by this side of him, each time he feels like a kid discovering something powerful and beautiful.
So when Danny talks, Steve listens, observes as Danny takes down the obstacles on their road as if they were a castle made of cards, just waiting for a breath to knock them down. And when Danny's words aren't enough, he smirks in Steve's direction, or sometimes is just a movement of his eyebrows, or the way his feet start tapping on the ground. Just... Move.
These are the times when Steve feels a faint fire burning under his own skin, when Danny lets him take control, when Danny lets Steve slip easily into the complicated system of gears his days are made of, as if he is something important. As if Danny needs him.
Like a two-edged sword, this feeling both pleases and wounds Steve, carves into his heart useless promises, engulfs it in a intricate garden of venomous roses. It’s like poetry, but it hurts so deeply, leaves him bare and exposed to life, to dangers he never thought he’d have to face.
When Danny lured him onto this metaphoric Ferris Wheel, Steve wouldn't have never imagined that it’d have been a trip straight to the top, no coming back. And now they are stuck so high that there are times when Steve's head starts spinning, and he starts worrying about the moment they will start to inexorably fall down.
Thing is, life for Steve had always been like one of Kline's paintings. Black and white, no margin of error. But now the shades keep mixing and changing, as Danny shows him sides of the world that Steve didn't knew, things that his previous life didn’t contemplate.
Colorful like a rainbow, that’s what Danny’s life is. Everything he touches suddenly coming to life in ways Steve never thought possible. And Danny isn’t afraid to show him, isn’t afraid of Steve burning everything around him as he did with his own life. No, Danny trusts him with everything he’s got, trust him with the most precious thing he’s got. He trusts Steve with Gracie.
Slowly Steve has learned what this means, has learned to hear the words that Danny doesn’t say when he lets him take care of Grace. No questions, no recommendations, just an open smile and a wave of his hand, as if he didn’t spend half of his days giving Steve imaginative names, like Demolition Man or Rambo, and the other half rambling about rehab for bomb addiction.
Despite that, Danny has slowly started to ask Steve for little favors, always more frequently. As in picking Grace up from school when he’s still working or reports, or meet them at the beach because Gracie wants to learn how to surf so bad and Danny still loves his knee, so that has become Steve’s duty.
Strangely, all of that has suddenly transformed into habit. So Steven isn’t surprised when the three of them start spending time at Steve’s home, eating pizza and watching movies like Monsters, Inc or Cinderella and Steve and Danny get tangled in an argument about how you should carry a proper suspect research. It feels like a natural development of whatever this strange bond between them is.
And when finally they come to an agreement – “Of course you’d do that! You possess the emotional baggage of an amoeba!” – and Danny stops madly gesturing at Steve’s face, Grace has fallen asleep on the couch between them, small and adorable and armless and Steve is allowed to carry her to Danny’s car. “See? There are times when your inhuman strength gets very useful,” Danny mocks him as if relieved that he hasn’t to carry his sleepy, beloved and practically weightless daughter from Steve’s couch to his car, but they both know that it’s just an excuse. So Steve hides his smile behind Gracie’s hair, and just hums in reply, gently depositing her in the backseat. Danny doesn’t stare at them fondly.
These are addicting feelings. More than the adrenaline rushing in his veins during the operations Steve took part to when he was still a SEAL. This is full, blind trust, way different from the hot, sweaty days when his own life and the life of his fellow soldiers depended on them working together as a group. No one gets left behind, that was the rule.
Quickly Steve is understanding how the same phrase can have multiples meanings, like a Rubik’s cube, words can be bended and mixed, and the same expression can both build a group or a friendship, as it can build a home. No one gets left behind, now finally Steve gets its true meaning.
The end of their days often catches Steve and Danny just sitting on a wood bench in front of Steve’s house, the red and the blue mixing on the horizon, water lapping at their bare feet and a beer in their hands. It’s peaceful and familiar in ways Steve had forgot it could be. They just breathe the salty air and watch the sea and the sky become something limitless and obscure, as the night takes over, as their day just slips away, leaving space for more dark things, more dangerous thoughts.
Sometimes Steve makes his mind slip away to cold nights spent in places he didn’t even know how to pronounce, when fear secretly ruled their hours and a gun could make the difference between getting back home or not. He almost hates the sky at night, judging it a place too insidious for his own like. But Danny’s calm breathing beside him grounds him more than anything, so he doesn’t mind to spend hours just looking at the stars, the sound of the waves kissing the sand under their feet both overwhelming and soothing.
"It's like everything is alive, up there," Danny once had whispered, eyes fixed on the sky, bare shoulder touching Steve’s, stealing his heat. Steve had took another sip of his beer and hadn't replied. But, as he’d slid a bit more into the bench, head bent back, Danny’s words had stuck to him.
Steve was brightless when Danny found him. He didn’t have any spark inside him, he didn’t even know how to light one. And then Danny came and blinded him with his light.
Steve still doesn’t know how to explain it, so mostly he just lets Danny steal his breath, when he laughs like the sun is sleeping in his chest, purring content and bright. Every time Steve stares, drinking in Danny’s light, making it his own too.
Danny smiles and Steve’s world lights up like during a storm, thunderbolts violently warming his insides. And when Danny beams at him, something growls wantonly inside Steve, asks him to reach for Danny and just take it, whatever it is that makes Steve’s certainties falter. Something inside Steve just craves to touch Danny’s lips, his teeth, lick the light away from Danny’s mouth, taste and suck on his lips until they’ll be swollen and shining with spit. Steve’s spit.
So when the sun will reflect itself on Danny’s mouth, Steve will be the reason his lips light up as if made of warm, delicious marble. Steve wants to crawl inside Danny and stay there, curled inside him where everything is powerful and windy, so hot it burns.
And when one day he finally does, kisses and touches and drinks up Danny’s moans directly from his mouth, while his fingers work their way into Danny’s body, searching for his burning light, making him scream and arch on the bed and just beg for more, Steve starts crumbling.
Piece by piece Danny’s words dismember him, as he teases him, working his way down his body, marking him as his but still it isn’t enough. “Steve,” Danny calls, breathless, his hands working their way into Steve’s hair, hips lifting up from the bed, eager.
It’s a jolt of adrenaline and it wrecks Steve. It pulls at his insides, destroying and rebuilding, a fire burning and eating him. Danny’s cock is hard and throbbing when Steve’s lips close around it, engulfing it in slick, warm pleasure. His fingers still deep in Danny’s ass, fucking him and taking him and no one will ever have him again, not after Steve. He won’t let him go, he will fuck his way into Danny like he is doing now, mouth and fingers and spit everywhere, he’ll bury his cock deep in Danny’s ass and come into his tight hole and just mark him.
And Danny will beg for it, he will writhe and open his thighs for Steve, cock leaking and lips parted, moaning Steve’s name, just Steve. His.
When, after long minutes, Steve stops teasing and Danny locks his legs around his hips, urging him to “get that cock in me, come on. Come on,” something finally snaps inside him. Light starts coiling in his groin as he fucks Danny open, as Danny’s hole throbs around his dick, welcoming him, and Danny screams and grips Steve’s shoulders. Urging him, needing him.
“Yeah, fuck me, babe,” Danny whispers into his ears as Steve lowers himself on Danny’s body, gets more leverage with his hands and just slams into him, burying his cock deep inside him, marking Danny in a way no one will ever get to, something growls inside Steve’s head.
The sound of their heavy breathing is like a huge bubble filling the room, pushing on Steve’s timpani, muffling the filthy words that Danny is moaning in his ear. Like the hissed curses leaving Steve’s lips, everything sounds like underwater, even the noise of the bed creaking, the wood crying out loud along them.
The sheets under Danny’s body are damp with sweat when Steve works his hands around him, lifts his hips to get deeper inside him and “God, Steve. Yeah, like that, come, babe, come in me,” Danny pleads him. And Steve breaks once again and follows Danny’s words, his shell crumbling and dissolving as his come floods into Danny in violent spurts, filling him and taking away the last of Steve’s fears.
After, when Danny beams at Steve from under him, body sated and Steve’s come slowly sliding out of his red, open hole, drenching the sheets- After, when Danny’s fingertips draw non-existent lines on Steve’s back, his body warm and welcoming, just then, Steve feels himself smile back. And finally, finally he thinks that maybe, if he can’t have his own light, Danny’s will be enough to warm both of them.