Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Welcome to Reality
When Danny woke up that morning with an epic headache threatening to burst his brainpan, he immediately knew that something terrible had happened. Something amazingly stupid and terrible and… By that time Danny had already dared looking to his left where something strangely heavy and warm was lying on his arm but his brain still needed a few seconds to actually process the information his eyes had sent it. Someone was lying in his arms, a head full of short, dark hair pressed against his chest, and the warm hardness pressing against his left thigh beneath the blankets suggested that his latest pickup was a man. That did not shock Danny as much as it should have. Not after all the things he had thought about while masturbating during the last few weeks and months. What did shock him was the voice coming out of the man’s mouth when he mumbled a sleepy “Good mornin’”. He knew that voice all too well. And then it hit him. Steve inviting himself into Danny’s apartment the previous evening, both of them drinking, drinking, drinking and the only thing he could remember after that was the taste of salty skin and a husky voice growling his name.
Steve seemed to have come to the same realisation now as he suddenly sat up, tearing himself out of Danny’s embrace, and almost fled to the edge of the filthy sofa bed they were both lying in as if he wanted to get as far away from Danny and as far away from what they had done last night as possible.
“I uh…we…we shouldn’t have done this,” Steve said and hastily dressed, putting on his shirt the wrong way around, not even bothering to tie his boots, before he ran out the door. A few seconds later Danny could hear Steve’s car racing away.
All of this was way too much for Danny’s hungover brain to process. After a cup of too hot, too strong coffee he was able to think again. Unfortunately, that only made matters worse as Danny realised what had just happened. He had messed up. Big time. He loved Steve, loved him so, so much and now he knew that Steve didn’t feel the same way about him and it hurt, hurt so much more than the uncertainty he’d had before, so much more than the ridiculous hopes he’d let himself have. Thick, hot tears started rolling down his cheeks, blurring his vision as his face turned into a pained grimace. Danny slumped to the ground naked as he still was, buried his head in his arms and started sobbing, everything around him seeming small, unimportant, useless.
Danny didn’t show up at work the following Monday. Kono and Chin believed Danny’s lie of having caught a severe cold. Steve knew better than that. The SEAL liked Danny, really, he did. It was just that, well, Danny was a guy and Steve was a guy and guys just didn’t do guys. Not guys like Steve, anyway. Steve liked women. Steve liked breasts and vaginas and Steve liked being normal. He had just been too drunk to think “straight” that evening and now he had messed it all up. His friendship with Danny would never go back to what it used to be after this. What was Danny’s view on this? Did he think it a mistake, as well? Did he blame it all on Steve? Or had Danny liked it? Oh, shit, was he maybe even into Steve? Steve knew that he had to find out how Danny felt about this incident to decide on his course of action. Steve also knew that talking to Danny was the last thing he wanted to do right now but he was a SEAL. He would just shut off Steve and turn on Lieutenant Commander McGarrett. Should be easy to do. Steve had gone through much worse things before, right? Well, when he arrived at Danny’s apartment that afternoon, he would’ve rather faced a whole army on his own than getting out of the car, knocking at Danny’s apartment door and facing that one man. Let alone talking to him. Let alone talking to him about what had happened last Friday night. But this had to be done, right? No way around it, no easy way out. Steve wasn’t the kind of guy who ran away from problems. No. Steve was going to get out of his car. He was going to get out of…
“Dammit!” he growled, forehead resting against his steering wheel.
He couldn’t do it.