Chapter Text
The sun had just begun its slow wane when they decide to call it a day, hunger mostly satiated with Danny’s hard-earned tuna, and thirst mostly slaked with the pleasure of cold beer and cool laughter in the slow smolder of the afternoon. He had reached for his wallet when Kamekona had come around their table for the last time, out of both habit and familiarity with Steve’s carefully cultivated image of scroogeliness. He had been surprised, therefore, when Steve had knocked his arm out of the way, and had cheerfully answered Kamekona’s repeated jests of bad credit with enough bills to cover their charge, and to leave the big guy with a tip generous enough to earn a toothy, if not mildly predatory, grin.
Danny had opened his mouth then – because what better opportunity could there be for teasing Steve, and for getting some gratification for all the times Steve had skipped out on the bill? – when he noticed Catherine’s beam of soft approval, and Steve’s oddly hopeful expression. The words had died unformed in his throat then, and he had held Steve’s gaze for a heartbeat, and looked away quickly. It would be beneath him to rain on Steve’s parade, when the man clearly wished to impress his girlfriend, much as the thought lodged an unwanted stone in Danny’s gullet. He throws his focus then into handily measuring the length and size of their most definitely unfriendly shark for Kono and Chin’s benefit, and takes pains to smother the green concoction of jealousy churning in his stomach, mixing furiously with his two bottles of Longboard. He chances another glance at Steve as they unfold themselves from the benches to leave, and is frustrated to find Steve’s bright eyes and warmed half-smile still trained on him. What does the big goof want, collaboration from Danny regarding his generosity, to better secure his suit with Catherine, who is already looking adequately impressed?
Steeling himself (okay, his traitorous aching heart), he nudges Steve in the shoulder when they near their cars.
“Thanks for dinner, buddy,” he says, and is horrified at the choked quality of his words.
He quickly appends, with some feigned heat, “but don’t think that gets you off the hook for my emotional and physical scarring! I’ll still keep the distance of a 10-foot fishing pole between us both when it concerns any and all future fishing endeavors, you hear?”
Kono and Max laugh, but Chin’s smile is slightly thoughtful as his gaze flits between Steve and Danny’s faces. In the molten amber of sunset, Danny also imagines something strained and vulnerable to cross Steve’s face at his words, but that moment passes quickly, banished in the comparative corporeal certainty of Catherine’s presence, attractive, and all too keenly felt, at Steve’s side.
The group calls out their goodbyes then, in the makeshift parking lot just directly behind Kamekona’s shrimp truck, and everyone pretends not to notice when they each temper their goodbyes to Chin with more care and attention than is customary. Kono, especially, holds on to Chin that touch longer when they hug, but that lurking weight and sorrow that has taken up residence in Chin’s face and posture since Malia’s death seem to ease their grip that infinitesimal amount when he pulls back, and Danny feels something loosen in his own chest. He makes sure to elicit Chin’s promise that he “will call should he need anything, at any hour, clear?” before he heads in the direction of his Camaro, throwing a quick wave in Steve and Catherine’s direction. He watches enough to see Steve walk with Catherine towards her own ride, a darkly sleek model much like herself, compatible, naturally, with the hulking masculinity of Steve’s truck. Then he shakes himself out of his maudlin thoughts, and calls a moratorium on fruitless undertakings for this day.
He ferrets around in his pocket for a good five minutes before he comes to the sickening realization that his car keys, as usual, are in Steve’s possession. After that knowledge sinks in – and sharply, too, in Danny’s already tender heart and bruised ego – he forces himself to resist kicking the gravel. He is just about to turn around, and hope that Steve is still in the vicinity for him to make further fool of himself, when a warm hand claps across his neck. He jumps, and his hand is already halfway to his holster when he recognizes that scent of sea salt and citrus shampoo.
“What the fuck, Steve? Are you trying to scare me to death?”
He sounds loud even to his own ears, and he winces inwardly. Steve, however, only grins that frustratingly unrepentant smile of his, and holds up something that catches and flares sliver in the light cast by the encroaching twilight. Danny doesn’t immediately register that it is his car keys that are brandished as some trophy of Steve’s victory; he is too distracted by the weight of Steve’s hand still on his neck, the curl of Steve’s fingers into the hair on his nape. When he finally comes back to himself, Steve had already crossed over to the driver side of the Camaro, and has the door already open.
“You weren’t going to leave without me, were you, Danno?”
Steve’s smile is wry, but Danny isn’t fooled – he can see, as clear as day, the glow of amusement in Steve’s eyes, the smug tilt in his jaw – or rather, his Annoying SEAL Lieutenant-Commander face, rendition number 12.
“Are you crazy?” he hisses at Steve across the roof of his car, his fingers jabbing sharply against the silver finish to lend emphasis to his words.
“You have a beautiful woman waiting and willing for you to take her home, so why are you still here, huh?”
The world must not be rotating on its right axis, because Steve has the temerity to frown, and worse, the audacity to look as though Danny has grievously injured him by pointing out the hot monkey sex he could currently be having.
“We drove here together,” the idiot says, stubborn as a mule who refuses to recognize that it is a mule, and therefore sadly deficient in logic.
“So? In case you haven’t noticed, Commander Oblivious, I can drive myself home. In fact, I have been driving my own car for years before I’ve even met you, thank you very much.”
If his voice had risen an octave both in volume and snark, Danny doesn’t care. Steve, naturally, only frowns harder, and Annoying SEAL Lieutenant-Commander Face #12 morphs into Constipated Face #4. He leans his stupidly sculpted tattooed arms on the Camaro, and glowers across at Danny.
“We came here together, so we are leaving together, all right?”
“No, not ‘all right’, Steven. I am a grown man and can take – you know what, never mind. But tell me – are you really going to allow Catherine, your not-girlfriend and booty call, to drive herself back to your house and wait for you to make your entrance?”
Steve’s fingers, where they lie on the Camaro, have curled into loose fists now, and his tone is decidedly terse when he replies.
“First, Catherine isn’t driving herself back to my house – she is going home to her own place. Second, she is neither my girlfriend nor my booty call.”
“Not tonight anyway, and only for your lack of trying, pal,” Danny shoots back, and damn if Steve’s face doesn’t shutter over completely at this pronouncement of his sleeping arrangements.
“Just get into the car, Danny.”
With that, Steve climbs into the Camaro, turning the ignition with enough force that Danny can imagine his precious engine weeping from the unprovoked abuse.
And the absolute worst thing about this situation, he thinks while he gazes skywards in some silent beseechment, is that he is now thoroughly confused. He doesn’t know why he should be offended that Steve hasn’t invited Catherine home, or that Steve apparently isn’t going to sleep with the aforementioned lovely Naval Intelligence officer. He doesn’t know why he dares not feel any more jubilant over this piece of news, and worse of all, Steve’s tight-lipped anger is completely unreadable, and he doesn’t know what to make of this tense fury. As he climbs reluctantly into his own car, weary in more ways than one, the pleasant weight of beer and good tuna is replaced by a knot of anxiety no less heavy.
* * *
They pull up at Danny’s crappy-apartment-of-the-month first, which he belatedly realizes isn’t at all intelligent, seeing as Steve would now have to find his own way home, or hold the Camaro further hostage.
He fidgets in his seat a little, uncertain how, or where, to proceed. Stupidly, he is reminded inappropriately of his first date as a teenager, trying to muster up the courage to round at least the first base in the driveway at the end of the night, and traumatized by the worry that his advances might meet with indignant screeching, or worse – reciprocation, for which he isn’t sure he is equipped. Not that he would have a problem with an enthusiastic and reciprocating Steve, he thinks now, and quickly slams the door shut on the glut of images that follows.
The drive home had been … uncomfortable, to say the least. On his part, Danny had pursued the topic of Catherine with a suicidal zeal, determined to squash that tiny, lingering, annoying bug of hope crawling around in his head whenever Steve smiles that soft smile at him, conspiratorial and quiet – as though Danny knows something of him that the rest of the world doesn’t, as though he knows something of Danny that nobody else does, and as though he wants nothing more but to continue in their shared bubble of space. Those moments, without surprise, have been killing Danny one heartstring at a time, and he feels like shredded paper scraps from all the emotional turmoil that his stupidly and straightly oblivious partner has put him through in the last few years of their friendship.
No, much better to find out once and for all that he stands no hope whatsoever, than to continue pining (just as an useful adjective, because Danny Williams does not pine, alright?).
However, Steve had only become edgier as Danny continued his badgering, until he had snapped, and demanded to know why Danny was so “hell bent on foisting him off onto any and all interested women”. Danny could only splutter then, rendered wordless both by the sudden awareness of the stupidity and destructiveness of his own agenda, and also by the look on Steve’s face. Steve had worn an expression almost of defeat, visible only when Danny squinted, and masked heavily by frustration and anger.
Danny had not expected to see that look materialize, because of all of Steve’s numerous and carefully catalogued expressions, this is the look Danny hated most. Unfortunately, this blend of hopelessness and hurt had made itself comfortable on Steve’s face, across his generously smiling mouth and the playful splash of wrinkles around his eyes (okay, fine, so he is hopelessly besotted), since Joe White, and then Doris McGarrett, had re-entered his life.
Danny never wants to see that expression on Steve’s face – he doesn’t even want to name it for fear that it would decide to stay, and he never ever wants to be the cause of that look. He had dropped the topic then, and had allowed silence to fall thickly between them, and had devoted the rest of the short drive to contemplating the genius in his wishing to match-make Steve with Catherine, when success in this endeavor would only bring him heartbreak, even if it should be accompanied by closure.
Now, he waits a few more seconds; finally, he clears his throat even as he briskly unsnaps his seat belt.
“Well then, good night Stev-“
“Did you have such a bad time?”
He isn’t certain he’s heard correctly, and the surprise of the question, if nothing else, causes him to lean back into the passenger seat again.
“Bad time?” he echoes, a tad foolishly.
“Yesterday,” Steve gestures with his free hand that isn’t clenched tight on the steering wheel, knuckles bled white with tension, “the fishing trip. Did you – was it that bad?”
The “yes” comes to his lips almost immediately, from reflexes well-honed from the three years of bantering with Steve, and of constantly bitching him out to ensure that someone, at least, keeps the crazy SEAL from jumping head-first into shark infested waters, so to speak. But he sees the strain in Steve’s face, hears the doubt in his voice, and he is horrified that perhaps he has taken the task of verbally grounding Steve a little too far this time around.
“The hijacking I could have done without, the shark too – tiger or hammerhead or whatever species it may be,” he pauses, and Steve still isn’t looking at him, still hasn’t relinquished his grip on the wheel.
That’s it, he decides, confusion be damned, he isn’t allowing the night to end on this strange note.
“Of course I had fun, Steven – don’t get me wrong, I still don’t like the ocean, but the tuna, the tuna was great. And the beer, and the breeze – shooting.”
He lets some exasperation find its way into his words; banks on it to stir Steve from this strange uncertainty gripping him. He wishes he could tell Steve just how much he enjoyed watching him in his element, how having him tow their stupid dinghy, or beholding him in all his grease covered glory as he worked at that yacht’s engines had been the highlights of the afternoon, bar none. He wonders, lost in the mad pleasure of momentary insanity, how Steve would react if he were to tell him how much he had wanted to worship at his feet, on his knees and with his mouth, during those adrenaline-charged moments of their adventure, and how Steve’s seafaring competency had only added to his primal monkey thoughts.
The hard hunch in Steve’s shoulders eases slightly, and his eyes, when his gaze finally finds Danny’s again, is without that terrifying and guarded blankness.
“I just thought – my father’s – after that last hiking – date – ”
He catches perhaps one word in six that Steve mumbles, but he doesn’t ask, because Steve’s frown tells him that those words had not been meant for him. He waits until the harsh lines between Steve’s eyes – impossibly sticky brown in the dim of the Camaro, and so easy to lose himself in – smoothes, and then he opens his car door.
“Good night, Steven,” he says for the second time that evening, and as an afterthought, adds, “and you may have possession of the car tonight, but I expect you here tomorrow morning to pick me up, with masaladas as tokens of gratitude, we clear?”
He is already out the door before he hears Steve’s quiet laughter, and his even quieter good night, Danno, and somehow, the intimacy of that whispered parting dogs his steps all the way up to his apartment, and into his dreamless sleep.
* * *
The next few days are calm, and neither of them brings up the fishing again, or even that something (nothing?) in the car. Danny also speaks not of the moment by Kamekona’s truck, when Steve had leaned over to murmur Billy’s name, his eyes sharp with intent that had appeared to go deeper than just the simple tribute to Danny’s childhood friend. He also tries not to remember how he had felt in that instance, trapped by the hold of Steve’s focus, and absolutely certain that he is ass over teakettle in love with the man.
By the third day, the malaise of their fishing trip and the subsequent celebration passes, and Danny is able to once again see the wisdom of hurrying Steve towards the inevitable conclusion of Steve-and-Catherine. His certainty is just as much a foregone conclusion, especially since Catherine has taken to hanging out around the Palace more frequently than not. And with Catherine’s intelligence, and her frankly frightening roundhouse kicks, Danny finds it hard to begrudge her seamless, if unofficial, integration into the team, and is actually appreciative of their good fortune. Watching Catherine’s dark head bent next to Steve in the bullpen, at the coffee maker, in Steve’s office had wrenched something loose in Danny’s heart, and he would like to think it is his foolhardy bug of hope, squashed to paste. He doesn’t know why it has to hurt like a motherfucker though.
Therefore, he accepts discretion as the better part of his valor, and vacates spaces to Steve and Catherine, going as far as to carefully avoid Steve when they are off the clock, and even when they are on it. Steve spends the first few days of Danny’s renewed strategy looking confused, but that confusion soon lends itself to acceptance, and Danny manfully believes, gratitude, even if he can no longer read the expressions that sometimes steal across Steve’s face, or the rigidity that reinforces his posture.
This song is danced to for about two weeks, and if he notices Kono and Chin’s quizzical, and then oddly knowing, glances at him, he makes no mention of it. In the two weeks, he watches Chin with nearly the same care that he avoids Steve-and-Catherine, and watches grief and temporary relief ebb and flow in Chin’s demeanor, and likewise speaks nothing of the matter, recognizing it as something beyond verbal comfort. He makes sure, however, to lurk near Chin more often than not, offering his physical presence as an invitation of support, and hoping that Chin acknowledges it as such. Naturally, with his many distractions, he does not notice Steve watching him, does not see Steve’s eyes soften when he registers what Danny is clumsily but characteristically offering to Chin, and does not see the war in Steve’s eyes when he tracks Danny’s evasion.
He is the only oblivious one though, and the office seethes with the thrum of kept secrets and suppressed desire, or as Kono ruefully thinks, business as usual.
* * *
A quarter into the third week, and Danny realizes that he could collect on his plan. That Tuesday, Steve comes into the office together with Catherine, and Danny doesn’t need to look into the parking lot to know that they have come from Steve’s place, from Steve’s bed, and in Steve’s car. He tries to derive some joy from his success in ascertaining his position in Steve’s life, and when he fails miserably, attempts to settle for accepting what he has always known would be the outcome. At least his heartbreak need not be postponed now, kept in nervous anticipation of that day that Steve gets with the program and allows Catherine into his bed, if she has ever left in the first place.
Doris McGarrett returns on that same Tuesday, insinuating herself back into her son’s life with such shameless force that it leaves Steve tightlipped and guarded, oscillating between anger, distrust, and relief. Danny feels only distrust, because Doris McGarrett has only been home for a month, and already, she has turned Steve’s world on its head, and seems not to care about the fact. Naturally, she approves heartily of Catherine, but it is not as though Danny needs any more reason to dislike the McGarrett matriarch. Catherine, however, is reserved and careful in her interactions with Doris, and Danny can respect a woman who wants to protect Steve as much as he does, and who can recognize a liar when she sees one.
All in all, the week is a terrible one, and with Grace gone on a school trip to the mainland, it is a week that has Danny reconsidering his tenure on this rock of a sunbaked and windswept island. He does take some small comfort in the fact that the work week ends early on a Friday, for they have wrapped up their most recent case late on Thursday evening, and had left the criminal du jour safely behind bars. Friday is therefore devoted to the filling out of paperwork, but with Steve’s sudden and uncharacteristic diligence in filling in blanks and copying in triplicate, the stack of bureaucratic red sheets dwindles down to nothing shortly after lunch.
From the safety of his office, Danny keeps a constant eye on his partner throughout the day, even as he searches for synonyms and euphemisms to justify their weekly brand of destruction masquerading as police work. Steve’s jaw is tight as he works, his grip on his unfortunate pen painfully tight, and even though Catherine wanders in and out of his office throughout the day, his mood does not appear to sweeten. More than once, Danny has had to quickly look away when Steve’s gaze flits over to land on his own office and on him. From the careful glances that he steals in the wake of those moments, it is obvious to Danny that the tension in Steve’s face and posture only mounts the longer he contemplates Danny, or Danny’s office.
By mid-morning, Danny is willing to consider the creature that might possibly have crawled up Steve’s (finely shaped) ass and died, because the storm cloud that looms over the other man becomes increasingly more ominous as the day lengthens. He wonders briefly if he is somehow to blame for Steve’s dark rage, because he catches the unhappiness and frustration writ on Steve’s face every time he beholds Danny. Privately, Danny wants to laugh at the injustice of this possibility, because unlike Steve, he hadn’t spent the previous night and part of the current morning entangled in sheets with a beautiful woman, actively breaking the hearts of those who might unwisely have fallen in too deep when it concerns him. He tries to nip these dangerous thoughts in the bud every time they attempt to flower and branch, because he is not heart sore enough to not be able to recognize the hypocrisy of his anger. After all, didn’t he want this; didn’t he push Steve towards Catherine to put himself out of his own misery? Now that the inevitable has occurred and he has, more or less, succeeded, shouldn’t he revel in the satisfaction of his hard-earned certainty?
He ignores these questions, because there could be no happy answers for them.
Kono, Chin, and then Catherine take their leave after lunch, leaving the Palace quiet and dim but for the lamps in Steve’s and his offices, and the weak grey light coming in through the blinds as a thunderstorm – unexpected but ferocious, much like everything else on this island – prepares to sweep through downtown Honolulu. In the quiet broken only by the cry of the wind and the soft tapping of Steve’s fingers on his keyboard, it is not hard for Danny to imagine the distance between them both shortened and made even more insurmountable. After another five minutes spent staring blankly at the acquisition form in front of him – and why does Kono need truncheons? He is not sure he even wants to know – he gives up, and heads towards Steve’s office.
Steve looks up the moment he hears Danny’s approaching footsteps, and therefore, Danny finds himself crossing the last distance between them with Steve’s gaze watchful and somewhat wary on him. It is unnerving, especially after the week of secret Steve-induced torment he’s suffered, and he tries hard to come across composed and nonchalant.
“You waiting out the storm?” he offers in lieu of a proper greeting, thinking that the weather is as safe an opening gambit as any.
“Yeah,” Steve says, after maybe a pause too long. “Truck’s parked too far from the entrance, and I don’t want to get wet.”
“What, you are actually worried about getting wet? Aren’t Super SEALs supposed to be bff with all things watery?”
Steve’s lips quirk slightly at the term of “bff”, but just shrugs, and Danny wonders where their easy camaraderie had gone.
“So, what’s up with you?” he asks finally, leaning against Steve’s door to make it clear that he isn’t about to leave without satisfaction.
Steve’s response is a look of almost furious incredulity, and when Danny continues staring at him, now somewhat belligerently, he snaps, “Shouldn’t I be asking you that question?”
“What the hell does that mean?”
He doesn’t mean to turn so quickly to annoyance, but Steve’s prickliness and undisguised aggression pushes his already crappy week further up the shit meter, and he cannot help himself.
“You know what I mean.”
And apparently Steve intends to end their argument on that enlightening note, because he pushes back from his desk, and gets to his feet, the intent to run scrawled all over his face.
“Humor me,” he snaps, arms flying out to gesture even as he widens his stance, deliberately blocking the doorway.
“Pretend I can’t read minds, Steven – tell me what you think it is that I know.”
Steve stares him down, and when Danny does not as much as flinch, crosses his arms defensively across his chest. He is only a few steps away from Danny now, and the rain has started to come down, the muted roar of water and wind taking up the empty spaces between them, strange bedfellows with the palpable presence of their mutual anger.
“You have been ignoring me for weeks now, since that fishing trip.”
When Danny opens his mouth to protest, he is immediately cut off.
“Don’t lie to me, Danno. You have hardly been able to look at me, and you run like a scalded cat the second you catch sight of Catherine. You talk to me but you don’t really say anything, not anymore.”
Oddly enough, it is Steve’s use of his nickname – his use of Danno, his cadence familiar as he shapes the word he has used time and again – that breaks Danny.
“Look,” he mutters, a little weary now, “you finally got together with Catherine. That’s good, isn’t it?”
It shocks him when Steve gets up in his face then, all shaking rage and white-hot heat. He doesn’t move back, hell, he doesn’t move at all, caught and trapped by more than mute confusion.
“And I suppose you want to congratulate me now? Tell me how you know what is best for me?”
Steve pauses, his eyes still flashing fire, his chest heaving with emotion. A look that Danny has never seen on him before fills Steve’s face, frightening to behold in its crippling intensity.
He feels sick, and says nothing at all.
Steve barks a rueful laugh, painful and mirthless.
“You and everyone else, right, Danny? Because I can’t possibly know what I want, or what is good for me, or whom I want, can I?”
Danny isn’t a fool; he knows where exactly Steve is coming from, and his stomach twists and knots at being compared with Doris McGarrett. Still, hurt burns irrationally in his chest, making it hard for him to draw breath – how could Steve think he is out to hurt him, as his father and Joe had, as his mother is doing now?
Steve takes his silence as confirmation, or even guilt, because he snorts, a small ugly sound, and readies himself to push past Danny. But he takes another shot before he leaves, though the vulnerability and the grief that he doesn’t bother to hide sits poorly with this provocation.
“You could have just told me that you didn’t want me. You didn’t have to shove me towards Cath.”
This parting volley is delivered in a hoarse monotone, but it punches Danny in the gut with the force of a rocket launcher. He thinks he stumbles where he stands, Steve’s words ripping into him so fiercely it is visceral and tangible, disbelief and horror made physical. Steve would have escaped by him if he hadn’t had the reflexes born out of years of training on the beat, reflexes to catch and parry even when his entire body feels numb with shock, shuddering with the arrest of trauma.
No – he darts out a hand to catch Steve’s wrist as the other man storms by him, back rigid but shoulders slumped, a contradiction in the sum of his parts, always.
“Say that again,” he demands, low and insistent and his voice as raspy as Steve’s had been.
A fine crease appears between Steve’s brow, grimace and frown both. He stares down at where his wrist is held captive in the circle of Danny’s fingers, but doesn’t attempt to shake himself free.
“Why?” he asks, but Danny only continues to search his face with an expression almost of rapt hunger.
“Don’t make me repeat myself,” he says, lifting his gaze to a spot high above their heads, as though the thought of meeting Danny’s eyes costs him something dear.
“Please.”
Steve reels at that, and Danny allows him to squirm free, somehow certain that bewilderment and uncertainty would keep him in this room even when his grip couldn’t.
“You don’t want me, Danny,” Steve says again, voice pitched as low as before, almost inaudible. “You’ve made yourself clear on that front. Isn’t Cath the solution to your problems?”
“No,” a vehement whisper, “no.”
Steve really looks at him then, confusion warring with the seeds of reluctant hope in his thunderous gaze, and Danny lifts his eyes to meet it, his own tumult raucous in his head and in his ears.
“I haven’t slept with Cath for more than a year now, until – ” and here Steve swallows painfully, “until last night. I thought I stood a chance with –”
He breaks off, and paces a few steps, but it is on the inside of the room, and Danny doesn’t think he’ll run. He hopes Steve won’t run – not now, not after this huge mess they have both created out of misunderstanding and misguided nobility.
“Cath deserves better – I know it, and she knows it too. She expects – expects more from me, but I – I can’t, because –“
Steve’s words come out in a mess, rushed and hesitant and tripping over themselves, but it is the looks – hopeful, wary, frightened – that he keeps darting at Danny that scalds Danny with shame.
“You do stand a chance,” he says, jumping in headfirst, cowardice be damned.
Steve, bless him, looks genuinely puzzled by this abrupt turn in the conversation. Danny doesn’t wait for his deductive skills to catch up with him, as it is quickly bound to do; rather, he hurries on, because he owes Steve (and himself, and god, especially Catherine) at least this much.
“You do stand a chance, with me,” he clarifies, a little quieter now, suddenly and ridiculously choked and bashful.
“All the chances in the world,” he continues earnestly, and stumbles forward a little, towards Steve, who has now swapped quizzical for gobsmacked.
He stops just a breath away from Steve, and Steve automatically reaches out for him, a large hand curling warm over his hip, still tentative but already possessive.
“But you hated all our dates, and you pushed me towards Cath.”
Although he sounds accusing and still more than a little disbelieving, Steve’s grip on Danny belies his words, only tightening as he tugs Danny closer, covering that last inch between them. Before Danny could blink, he finds himself tucked firm against Steve’s chest. He blinks then, looks up, and frees his arms from where it is trapped between them. For a quick minute, Steve’s face shutters over, the first bloom of hope quickly withering in the frost of his disappointment and defeat. Danny sighs, and raises one finger to jab Steve firmly in his pectorals, delighted to find it as firm and taut as he had imagined, and most pleased to consider it as soon in his possession, if he plays his cards right.
“What dates, Steven?” he demands, forcing himself not to smile as Steve looks at him, frowning, even if his hand migrates to the small of Danny’s back, warm and holding him in place.
“You are such a Neanderthal, I swear. Were we on dates this whole time, huh? Were you courting me without even informing me first?”
“I brought you to look at petroglyphs that I’ve only ever shared with my dad, and took you out on the Marquis! Even Mary hasn’t ever been in that car, and she has partial ownership of it, by the laws of inheritance!”
Danny just pushes against Steve’s chest, intending to create the space to fold his arms as a general indication of just how unimpressed he is by Steve’s logic. However, he doesn’t manage to get very far, because Lieutenant-Commander Octopus immediately hauls him back in, disapproval writ all over his face, possession (or possessiveness, really) already two-thirds of his law.
Admittedly, he doesn’t struggle very hard against this manhandling, gleeful in a manner that he could put no words to. He settles instead for poking Steve further with his finger, and for schooling his expression into that tried and tested Danny Williams scowl of dissatisfaction.
“And how was I supposed to know all that, huh? Also, which cheapo doesn’t bother to pay for dinner and drinks on the dates that he initiated?“
“I paid for the tuna, Danno,” and Steve actually looks like he could be pouting, “and that was after taking you out to the fishing spot my Dad used to bring me. I wanted that day to be special, you have no idea how much.”
Danny is unable to help himself; he feels his own face slacken, and knows, just by looking at the sudden brightness in Steve’s eyes, that something soft had crept unbidden into his features, something tender that tells Steve more than he had intended to share.
They are both quiet then, and even over the roar of the thunderstorm that has fully been leashed upon Honolulu while they had been arguing, he could hear the solid beat of Steve’s heart, the thrum of his lifeblood. Steve’s chest rises and falls steadily, he can feel its rhythm where he is skin to skin with the other man, and somewhere at the back of his head, he realizes that like everything else they do, they seem to have conducted this courtship backwards – start with the cuddling, and end with the declarations.
And almost as though Steve could hear his thoughts, he murmurs, “did you mean what you –”
“Yes,” he interrupts, because Steve isn’t the only mind reader in this relationship of theirs.
He pulls firmly away this time, and although Steve makes a small distressed sound at the physical distance newly created between them, he allows Danny this room. When he finally steps out of Steve’s orbit, Danny looks Steve dead in the eye, and with as much finality and conviction as he could muster, repeats yes.
Steve studies him for a heartbeat, and then nods, and leans down for his mouth.
The kiss is heated almost immediately, wet when Danny’s tongue darts out to lick at Steve’s lips, and hard when Steve calls him out on his teasing, and chases him with lips and teeth, pulling him back. Steve kisses like he lives – furious and single-minded, tender and certain, and Danny never wants to stop, wants to spend late nights and early mornings curled around this man, in their bed, tongue twisted with his even as they twist through sticky sheets.
He tells Steve as much when they break apart, and Steve’s eyes darken, and his hands reach out to grab, and then to dance beneath Danny’s shirt, palms hot and needy.
As he allows Steve to pull him towards the desk, to manhandle him until he sits straddling Steve in his chair, he is certain that backwards is the only way to do things right – especially for them, and especially if Steve’s questing hands were to continue their journey downwards, light and nimble.
Steve watches him now, his eyes scorched black with desire, his face open with wonder and want and love.
He laughs giddily, rests his forehead against Steve’s, and shares his breath, and thinks yeah, backwards, definitely.
* * *