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delicataleThe fic in which Danny has a past - an angry kid that used his Uncle's boxing club to keep his frustrations to explode all over the world - and Steve is totally, stupidly in love. Written with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sirona_gs, beta'ed by stjarna1984. Much fun was had! Inspired by this picture, and this picture and this picture.
Steve doesn't understand how it could be wrong for him to want Danny to live in a better place than his dingy, probably rat-infested, little apartment. He's just looking out for Danny, in his - and Gracie's - best interests. It's all out of love, really.
And life is being quite obliging to him on that one, because when he mentions to Mamo he's looking at apartments for his partner, Mamo tells him about this house he owns in Āina Haina, nice place, too. Steve jumps on the offer faster than if it is an ahi he wants to spear.
He visits the house first. It's a nice bungalow type, with a lana’i giving out to the sea that Steve just knows Gracie would love. Open kitchen, two real bedrooms, a big bathroom. Simple, clean, nice, exactly what Danny’s current living arrangements aren’t. Steve likes it instantly.
He can see Danny sitting out on the lana’i in the morning, steam rising from his first cup of coffee for the day while he dries himself from his shower and drapes the damp towel over the spare deck chair, shakes his hair loose for the last time before he forces it into its daily straitjacket of hair gel and stubborn willpower.
And on the weekends when he has Grace, Steve can almost hear her happy shouts from down by the waterline, running squealing away as a laughing Danny chases her.
Steve has maybe been thinking about this a little too much.
He just can't help it, though -- Danny and his daughter, even more than Kono and Chin, have become his substitute little family, something he would do any number of highly illegal things to protect and keep happy and smiling.
Now for a much more dangerous part of his furtive "Get Danny To Love Hawai'i" mission -- how to break the news to the man himself.
He waits until Friday rolls around, and he's in luck, because the week has been one of their less insane ones, and no one is so wiped out that all they can contemplate is the shortest route to their beds.
"Hey, Danny," he says, trying hard for nonchalant, and actually making it for a change. "Got a call from Mamo a little while ago. He's asked me to run an errand over at his old house."
"You mean where he used to live when you were kids?" Danny asks, patently not suspecting a thing. Steve pats himself on the back. "You want me to come with? It must be quite close to your house, right?"
Danny set him up nicely with that one. "Right, and then beers with the team at mine?"
"Sounds like a plan," Danny says, smiling fondly at him. Steve's heart only stutters a little, and he's reasonably sure that he managed to cover his reaction in time. It's getting harder and harder to do, the longer this thing between them simmers.
He drives the two of them to Mamo's bungalow in relative silence, which is interesting and a little unnerving. Steve is a little scared to start anything, spill the beans before Danny sees the house and comments on it. If he likes it, Steve will definitely bring it up, but in the meantime, he’s stuck in the car with Danny and he can’t say what he wants to say, has to let it run around his mind over and over, making it impossible to focus on the driving. He keeps stealing glances at Danny.
Danny doesn't look tired, or annoyed, or anything else than content, looking out the window with a small smile on his face, relaxing his features in a way Steve doesn't get to see often enough. It makes him itch to reach out and touch, graze his fingers along the laughter lines around his eyes and engrave them in his memory. He's in so deep it's not even funny, and he's pretty sure Danny is perfectly oblivious.
He parks the Camaro in front of the house, quickly stepping out and walking to the door. Mamo leaves his trust with the people of Hawai'i so much the spare key is under the welcome mat. Danny grunts lightly when he sees it, mumbling something about crazy Hawai'ians that makes Steve smile.
Steve fishes it out and lets them in through the fire-red front door. The inside of the house is just as immaculate as when Steve had gone to see it -- the living room spacious and drenched in sunlight as it is most of the day, since it faces South; a nice comfy sofa sharing space with soft-looking armchairs and a coffee table made from driftwood nailed and strapped together. Steve had worried about that last time -- Danny is not quiet when it comes to voicing opinions regarding Hawai'i's unique lifestyle -- but Danny barely spares it a glance other than to give it a suspicious once-over and raise his eyebrows in silent resignation.
"So what are we doing here again?" Danny asks.
Steve has had plenty of time to think about it on their drive over, but hasn't come up with much else than: "He asked me to pick up his old surfboard for a beginner student of his."
To his relief, Danny swallows the excuse and Steve heads out to the back of the house, hoping Danny's curiosity won't let him down now and he'll follow of his own accord. He does.
Steve grabs the board from its place off the edge of the lana'i and turns to see Danny gazing out into the ocean, the gentle breeze ruffling fly-away strands of hair that have made a bid for freedom. He looks even more content out here, tie tugged half-undone and shirt collar unbuttoned, eyes bluer than the ocean crinkling to keep the sun out, mouth tugged into a relaxed, happy sort of half-smile. It's mesmerising.
"So, d'you like the house?" Steve blurts out, all thoughts of breaking Danny in gently to the idea gone in a flash of Danny's teeth.
"Sure, it's nice, great location, and I bet your boy Mamo adored this little bay right here."
"You think the bay's nice?"
"It's all right for those that like it, I suppose. Why are you so keen for me to like this place?"
Steve shuffles his feet and looks away. "It's sort of on the market," he mutters.
"Yuh-huh," Danny says, eyebrows lifted in disbelief. "And how much's it going for, a couple mil’?"
"I meant it's out to rent. And before you ask, I've uh. I'vekindoftalkedtoMamoaboutrentingittoyou."
"What." Danny's voice has this dangerous edge that Steve has learned to know and fear. "What do you mean, you've talked to Mamo about renting it to me? That is what you said, right? It's not me filling in the blanks in your excuse for an offer?"
"Yeah, Danny, I mean, it's a really good price, Mamo has another house twice as big as this right by the Pipeline, he's not using this one, and he's very happy to rent it out to you for a very reasonable sum a month. It's miles better than where you're living right now, and Grace will love it, and I'm really close by, so you won't have to drive far to pick me up in the morning, and it's close to the highway so it'll actually cut the time it takes you to get to Rachel's to pick Grace up..." He kind of dries up around this time in the face of Danny's ominous silence.
Danny's watching him, a strange weight to his gaze. "I see you've given this some thought," he muses, still looking at him like that, and Steve's having to fight really hard not to squirm under the force of Danny's stare.
"I, I have. Sort of. Yeah, I guess. Just thought it'd be nice. It's not like you couldn't do with a better place..."
Steve is rambling now, trying to hide his discomfort, because he can't read Danny right now and it's hard, it's fucking hard not to know if he's pissed or not. Danny takes another sweeping look outside before walking back in, leaving Steve, dumbfounded, on the lana’i.
Steve tries to shake it off, the feelings he's usually so good at bottling up threatening to overwhelm him right now, making his shirt too tight around his chest and neck, as if it's trying to suffocate him. When Danny comes back out, Steve almost doesn't see him, the edges of his vision blurry with everything that he wants to say and do.
But then he takes a good look at Danny, through it all, and he sees that Danny's wearing a soft smile on his lips as he looks straight at Steve. When he reaches out and wraps a hand around Steve's arm, Steve releases a breath he hadn't realized he was holding in.
"It's actually really nice. How much would it be?"
Steve isn't sure he can talk, so he swallows a few times, scratching his throat to make sure his voice won't sound broken.
"I’m sure Mamo would love to talk about that with you."
"Okay. Hey, Steve, um. Thanks for this. It's really quite thoughtful."
"You're welcome," Steve says after a moment of swallowing down everything else clamoring for attention in his head. He chances a smile back at Danny, letting himself believe that yes, this is happening, he has finally won a solid victory in his campaign.
They spend the next half hour touring the house and taking down pointers on what furniture might be needed and how soon the rest of Danny's stuff can be shipped in from the storage facility in Jersey. Danny takes one look at the lovely wide double bed in the master bedroom and gets such a blissed-out look on his face that Steve is hard-pressed to keep from tackling him right in the middle of it.
The next room down the hall is a good-sized spare bedroom whose walls are already painted a pale lavender.
"She's going to want pink everywhere, you realise," Danny says conspiratorially, not even bothering to mention whom he's speaking about, secure in the knowledge that Steve will just know. It makes Steve feel warm all over, even as he starts planning a trip to City Mill in their very near future.
Danny makes the call to Mamo there and then. Steve doesn't even wait for the nod before he's calling Chin and asking him to help move Danny in tomorrow, "call Kono too, the more of us there are, the faster we can get him settled". Chin is amused but perfectly willing to be roped in, and he only ribs Steve about it a little.
If he's honest about it, Steve can't find it in himself to be bothered by Chin's gentle mocking. They both know, him and Kono, they're not blind and Steve wouldn't want it any other way. It's just Danny, for all the detective he is, that just won't see what's right under his nose, even if Steve is perfectly unsubtle about it, about how much he wants Danny. Or maybe Danny just doesn't want to deal with it, keeping their relationship as it is, a solid work partnership and friendship, easy, something they both slipped into as if it was a second skin.
Steve’s found it even easier to latch onto Danny and his exuberance, the loudness and frustration with the whole world that Steve loves to tease and poke at. Danny’s given him something he craves, a sense of family stronger than anything else Hawai'i has given him since his father died, since Mary left again. Danny makes him feel like he belongs, like he can stay in one place, build something stable, a life outside of the missions and restraints of the military.
He finds Danny sitting on the stairs down to the beach when they're both done with their phone calls. He joins him, wishing they had beers now, just the two of them for a while longer.
"Ready to go celebrate?"
Danny's smile is loose around the corners when he bumps his shoulder into Steve's, and Steve can only grin back, nodding as he keeps himself from wrapping an arm around Danny's shoulders.
"Yeah. Definitely."
---
It's not even eight o'clock in the morning and someone is already trying to knock his door down with their fist. Danny knows that knock. There's only one man in his acquaintance crazy enough to inflict it upon him at this hour on a Saturday.
His head is only a little tender from last night's three-too-many beers, but it had been impossible to decline, not least because Steve would have pouted like he'd insulted his home state again. And Danny can't deny he enjoyed himself thoroughly, lest he perjure himself.
"All right, all right, Jesus Christ, McGarrett, I still haven't collected my safety deposit, don't go knocking my apartment to the ground--" he opens the door, but while he expects Steve's grinning face, he does not expect the small army behind him. Kono waves at him cheerily while Chin looks on benevolently. Kamekona is cracking his knuckles and giving him that stupid 'hang loose' sign, while four other burly Hawai'ians square their shoulders behind him.
"What--" Danny starts, only to be interrupted yet again by Chin's clap on his shoulder.
"Kamekona asked his cousins to help with the move. They won't even charge you, either, since you're a friend."
"Wow," Danny says, genuinely speechless. "I'm touched, man, thanks!"
"Hey, 's all right! As long as you bring Gracie around more often, the boys want a re-match! The little minx won all their money off them last time!" Kamekona says, showcasing his trademark goofy grin.
"I'm not promising anything," Danny says automatically, but Kamekona and his crew are on a very short list indeed of people he would trust with his daughter.
Speaking of which, there comes the man occupying the top of it. "Let's get started, Danno!" Steve says happily, heading right for the pile of boxes Danny had spent an hour last night and another this morning taping together. It's depressingly small.
"That all?"
"Almost. Need to finish that closet. And the kitchen."
Kamekona goes straight to the boxes as Steve looks at the closet Danny just indicated, and seriously, there are too many people in his tiny apartment right now, they can barely move. Danny feels a little better, like he can breathe again, when Kamekona and his cousins grab most of the boxes lying about to get them inside the truck. Kono and Chin are inspecting the kitchen, carefully depositing silverware into a box and wrapping up bowls and plates. They're very much more efficient than Danny has ever been at eight o’clock on a Saturday.
"Please tell me you brought me coffee, at least? Or can I make myself one before you bag my coffee maker?"
Kono gives Danny an indulgent look, all the while handling cooking knives. It's disturbing, but in a way it's rather reassuring, too.
"I'll get you a coffee, don't worry about it!"
"Thanks."
He’s about to add some more, maybe a rant or two about how there is no reason for them all to be here this early, when there is a crash to his left, and Danny whirls around to find McGarrett - of course it'd be McGarrett - surrounded by a mountain of old pictures that Danny hadn't been able to leave in storage. The shoe box in which they were stashed is still in Steve's hands, and he's wearing his puppy dog eyes with such conviction that Danny is perfectly sure he can't be annoyed. It's Steve, Steve and his faces, the whole array of them; Danny knows when a fight isn't fair and Steve and his faces have never been one, Danny’s not stupid, nor emotionally stunted like his partner. Danny just sighs, because it is definitely too early in the morning for that and he gets it, he does, Steve wants him moved out of this rathole and into a nice bungalow overlooking the beach as quick as possible, but it's still too fucking early for this.
"It fell apart - I'll sort them out, Danno - sorry."
Danny sighs. "Only you, McGarrett, could be so fucking graceful one minute and a total clutz the next... I really did just say that, didn't I? Kono! Where's my coffee, my brain seems to be rotting away here."
"Coming, Danny," Kono yells back from the kitchen.
Steve is staring -- though not at him, which Danny supposes is a small mercy. But he is staring down at the pictures spilling across the worn floor. Danny glances down, too, and feels the tips of his ears heat. Goddamn it, he thought he'd gotten rid of those!
"I--"
"Don't say it, McGarrett, don't even think about it, I am not in the mood."
"You look so tough," Steve says, sounding strangled.
Danny is not expecting this.
"Uh. Thanks?"
"When were those taken?"
"Um. About ten-fifteen years ago? I don't keep track."
Steve keeps staring. Danny isn't sure what to make of the flex in his fingers, like he wants to--what? Tear them up? Stash them away for later?
"When you're done ogling my younger self, McGarrett?" he snaps, discomfited.
Steve splutters. It's not charming. "I wasn't 'ogling', Jesus, Danny, it's just, I've never seen you like this before. Did you stop boxing or something?"
Danny runs his tongue over his top teeth, thinking of all the reasons why he’s not boxing anymore, all the reasons that actually don’t make sense nowadays. He could start again, find a club somewhere in Honolulu, let off some of the steam he builds up working with Steve. But right now, they’ve got too many things to do and too many people around for Danny to want to carry out this conversation. Might be fucking stupid, but he can’t help feeling like this is personal, something he used to unfurl dark feelings that now just stick to his heart.
“Yeah, I did. Long time ago. Can you just clean this mess, Steven? That is one box that is going to the basement straight away.”
Kono pushes a mug of steaming coffee in his hands and Danny gives her the most grateful look he can muster, wrapping his fingers around it as he looks at Steve, scrambling around, gathering up the pictures. He stops for a few of them, though, Danny can remember when they were taken, why they were taken. It’s as though Steve has trouble imagining that Danny has ever been anything else than a tie-wearing, straight-arrow cop.
Danny averts his eyes when he sees Steve running his fingertips over one of the pictures, one of those of the time he experimented with his hair and wore dog tags as if they made him tough. There’s something so soft in Steve’s eyes that it makes Danny’s stomach twist, his muscles clench painfully. If they weren’t surrounded by large Hawai'ian people and two of their work colleagues, Danny might have allowed himself to question Steve about this, the look in his eyes and the meaning of his smile. Because they all make him feel something close to hope, and it’s exhilarating, scary and fucking stupid, all at the same time.
It’s only after the box is closed over all those snapshots of Danny’s past that he allows himself to relax, finishing his coffee before nodding to himself. He’s not about to let a bunch of other people move for him, he’s not that lazy, and besides, he hates owing people and he owes Steve way too much already.
---
Steve sits in the driver's seat of the Camaro and tries not to fidget. He literally cannot get those pictures of Danny out of his mind -- it's like they're burned into his retinas, burned somewhere deeper inside that has Danny's name written all over it. He opens and closes his mouth a couple times, bites back the questions that clamor to get out, trying so damn hard to respect Danny's privacy that he doesn't notice Danny giving him The Look, the one that says "I know you're up to something, and I'm just itching for a reason to call you a goof".
It shouldn't take him by surprise when Danny disregards his own evasion and plows right over Steve's desperate desire to put a 'why' to the fact.
"Okay. So my Uncle Jimmy ran this boxing club back when we were kids, and I was there all the time, anyway, and when he wanted to have some promo posters done, he asked me to do it, and I said yes."
Steve digests this. "You were kind of pumped up back then. You don't get that from sitting around, Danny."
"I know that, don't you think I know that?" Danny rolls his eyes, throwing him a sideways look. He seems to be thinking about something, but Steve doesn't even get the chance to wonder what before Danny's talking over his thoughts yet again. "Okay. Here's the thing. This may come as a surprise to you, but I was kind of an angry kid." He ignores Steve's snort of mock disbelief and rolls right over him. "It was just a good way to work through all my pent-up energy and frustration. Better to hit on people with protection and skills than on the other kids at school, you know?"
Steve hums noncommittally. He can see a young Danny, scowl fixed permanently on his face, beating the shit out of a padded opponent, driving and driving until there's nothing but an unyielding wall at the other guy's back.
"Why d'you stop?" he asks, thinking that he might as well push his luck while it's still holding.
Danny sighs, gets this faraway look in his eyes. "I got into police training, and found out there were other ways to punch the crap out of a person than just my fists. I had other things to think about than how fucking mad I was at the world. And then Rachel rear-ended me, and she wasn't too fond of finding bruises all over me that she hadn't put there herself, so I guess I never took it up again. I probably should have -- would have done wonders during the divorce, but there you go."
"So you think you might take it up again now?" Steve asks, genuinely curious. It would be good for Danny, no question.
Danny takes a while to answer, gazes out of the window with a distant look on his face before turning back to Steve. "You know what? No reason I shouldn't. God knows it'll help with the stress you pile on top of me on a daily basis, Aquaman."
Steve snorts again, rolling his eyes at the road, not trusting himself not to try and superimpose the images of Danny younger, ripped, all skin and muscles over this version of him, the one with ties and tight shirts. He doesn’t want to wonder what Danny looks like now, under these clothes; he's scared of how it makes his fingers twitch over the steering wheel.
“I do no such thing, you put the pressure on yourself, Danny.”
“Oh, please, I wouldn’t be bursting at the seams all the fucking time if you weren’t planting grenades under people’s chairs and jumping off roofs. My life would be much, much easier.”
“You’d find someone else to get angry at, D. I know it, you know it, I’m just convenient.”
Steve'd had no idea it would be so hard to say those words, but as they leave his mouth, they burn a hole through his chest as he realises that they’re true, that if he didn’t force himself into Danny's life, force him to become his partner, force his presence on Danny, all the time, even when they’re off work, just so maybe Danny will give him a little back, possibly; if he didn’t do that, then Danny would just find someone else to get angry at, someone else to rant at and call a goof and look at fondly from time to time.
Danny’s silent for a long moment, but Steve can feel his eyes on him. He waits until they’re parked in front of Danny’s new place before turning to Danny, and it fucking scares him to death how he can't decipher a single thing he sees in Danny’s eyes. Then Danny licks his lips, turning towards Steve fully, shoulder digging in the passenger seat of the Camaro.
“Have you seen yourself? You are anything but convenient,” he uses the same tone Steve had, and it makes something hot and tight pulse in Steve’s heart, “you are a hot-headed, gigantic dolphin mutant, and that does not make you convenient, Steve, it makes you stupid and goofy but whatever you’re thinking right now, just don’t. I’m not stuck with you, I would have gone back to HPD if that was the case, McGarrett.”
Steve ducks his head to break Danny's gaze, because he can't stand the weight of it, not when he's feeling so raw and open, not when Danny can look inside and see his every hope, every desire, every inappropriate thought Steve's ever had about him -- because he is a creep who thinks far too much about his unattainable partner, about how much he would love to suck biting kisses into every inch of those sturdy shoulders, about what Danny would look like as he drives into Steve, eyes boring down into his, cataloguing the most minute flutters of Steve's eyelashes. About wrapping his legs around Danny's hips and--
--And this is possibly the worst moment in the history of ever to be having these kinds of thoughts. Those pictures must have completely scrambled his mind. It's bad enough that he's letting what Danny said sink into him, warm the empty Danny-shaped spaces Steve has accepted are there right under his skin. It's just too much to know, to believe that Danny thinks Steve's someone special, too, someone he can share not just his job with, but maybe--
"Okay!" Steve yelps, far too high and fast for any kind of denial to hold true. "Let's get you settled in, partner!"
It might be just his imagination that Danny seems to hang behind in the car for that little while too long, but he somehow doesn't think so. Oh, God, if he's gone and screwed this up after everything they've been through, he might just go looking for those sharks and let them have at it.
---
Kamekona and his brothers are parked right outside the house, boxes piled up neatly just by the front door. Kono is already sitting on the stairs leading up to it, and Chin's talking on his phone further inside the shade provided by the roof overhang.
"Ready to get all this inside, brah?" Kamekona asks, picking up the nearest box like it weighs less than a feather, when Danny's positive it contains all his manuals on police procedure that he's been planning to brain Steve with the next time he's being an absolute idiot who jumps off roofs and tackles armed suspects with nothing but a paperclip left over from his mangled attempt at paperwork.
He walks through the tunnel everyone seems to be making for him, gets the key from under the welcome mat and unlocks the front door for the first time with a flourish, to a round of pleased applause.
"Come on in inside my new house," he says, just to be a pain in the ass, but he doesn't think Steve realises just how wide his grin has suddenly become as he bounds over to where Danny's standing and shoulders his way past him, carrying two boxes on top of each other that almost obscure his face.
"Those go in the kitchen," Danny yells after him, and smirks at how quickly Steve changes direction. Ordering Steve about is never going to get old, he thinks to himself, and if that performance in the car is any indication, there might be a whole new arena opening before him before too long -- or as long as Steve takes to get with the programme. Come to think of it, that might be a whole while longer than Danny's willing to wait. He makes a mental note to drop the subtlety altogether, since it's not a concept Steve's too familiar with.
It takes no time at all to get all the boxes inside; he'd better call his mother tonight and ask her to set the wheels in motion for the rest of his stuff to get shipped in, now that he has the space to house it. He trails into the kitchen to find Steve with his head in the fridge, out of which he magics a six pack of chilled beer that Danny knows for a fact wasn't there the last time he came round. When Steve had the time to sneak back in and put it there in between beers with the team and picking Danny up this morning, he's not going to think too hard about. There are too many people by half around for that particular discussion. It's going to have to wait until Steve is inevitably the last one left around tonight.
When he thinks about it, that's been happening more and more often recently. Is he really so dense that he's only just starting to realise just how deeply invested Steve is in his happiness? Some kind of detective he is.
"I can't," Steve says apologetically a little later, when Danny asks all of them to stick around for a few beers and a take-away pizza or five. "I've got something to do. Maybe I'll see you later tonight?" he adds hopefully, and yeah, Danny knows all about those faces of his, doesn't he.
The rest of the team of movers take their cue from Steve, and within fifteen minutes his house is his own for the first time. He wanders through the cozy rooms, makes a face again at the ridiculous coffee table, what was Mamo thinking, wait, no, he doesn't actually want to know, and back into the kitchen, where he rips the tape off the box at the top of the pile. The pots and pans his mom refused to let him move without are right there, nestled tidily into newspapers, along with Grace's favourite bowl, mug, and plate. He puts them away quickly, and finishes with the rest of the pile of boxes in less than half an hour.
The coffee machine from his old apartment takes up far too much space -- always has, but it's simple to use, and its buttons aren't so small that he punches two when he's trying to hit 'start'. He debates another coffee, but he's moved onto beer already, and he doesn't really need the high anymore. If he wants an adrenaline rush, that look on Steve's face when Danny had told him that he wasn't just someone 'convenient' to take his irritation out on would be enough to kick him into next week. How Steve could possibly think that, after everything, after Meka's death, and Victor Hesse, and Chin's bomb encounter, and the trek up the summit, and last month when Danny had honest-to-god thought that was it for him, Danny just cannot fathom.
Steve and his damn insecurities. It's like no one he's ever loved had stuck around for long enough to--oh.
Oh.
Well, that changes things, he thinks. That changes a lot of things, questions and doubts now taking shape into something different in Danny’s head. The annoyance he feels when Steve pushes himself in the line of fire, pushes Danny back, it turns into something that makes Danny’s heart swell a little. The little idiosyncrasies; coming over to Danny’s without any reason, inserting himself into Danny’s family like he belongs there - he does belong there - the small touches and little looks, they all make sense in a different way, now.
Danny moves from the kitchen to his lana’i - he has a lanai’i, since when is this his life, he has no idea, he’s never wanted to ever call a patio a lanai’i, fuck, the things he does for Steve - after grabbing the box of pictures someone left on the couch, sitting on the stairs after brushing sand off the steps. He toes his shoes off and lets the soft breeze of the late day soothe his overworked head. It all makes so much sense, and he guesses he’s got to be the one to do something about it, because until this afternoon Steve though he was just convenient for Danny, some sort of living breathing punching bag.
He’s so much more, he’s so fucking much Danny sometimes doesn’t know where to put his feelings; sometimes they take his heart apart with fear when Steve rushes headfirst into danger, sometimes they rip his whole being apart with want, pure unadulterated lust when Steve undresses as if he’s some sort of exhibitionist. Sometimes they threaten to drown him with softness and fondness and love, stupid, teenage love that he can’t quite contain within himself and it spills out in the way he rants and moves his hands about as he talks and smiles like an idiot.
Danny puts his beer to the side and opens the shoe box that keeps the pictures Steve spilled everywhere earlier, picking up the first one. He was young, silly, bright but angry, so angry, and Jimmy had channeled that anger into something that made Danny wiry, hard with muscles, wise too, ready to take punches and throw them, when the fight was equal. When he looks into his own eyes there, he can see the frustration, all the energy he kept packed inside himself; he can see the anger, through it all, through the smiles and the laughter. It almost feels like he’s watching someone else, but he knows better, the anger simmering under the surface, he still feels it. He remembers exactly how punching a sack feels, the sand shifting under his knuckles, and he remembers exactly just how much strength to put into a punch to break a jaw clean off. He remembers blood seeping through his yellow practice gloves, the skinny ones, and he remembers how it felt when Johnny Tortuga put a lead weight in his gloves. The pain, the exhilaration, the emptiness in his head, he remembers it all too well, all of it mixed together to form memories Danny is - now he realizes - incredibly proud of, because they made him who he is.
He lost himself in the anger once again. He knows that now, now that he’s moving on from Rachel, from the divorce, from the constant throb of heartache in his chest. He used the anger to keep walls up between himself and others, letting only a few select ones through. For someone who pretends to be as open as Steve is closed off, the roles are pretty much reversed -- Steve putting his heart on his sleeve, right there for Danny to take, while Danny kept himself and his past, his secrets hidden, at least those he could.
But now Steve knows about the boxing and, maybe, possibly, if Danny hadn’t realized how exactly Steve feels about him and how he feels about Steve himself, just a minute ago, he’d have felt violated by the whole thing, by Steve’s discovery and questions. But as it is, Danny can’t help but want Steve to come back, and to allow him to share some more, to tell him about that time he got his eyebrow split open and how he was the only one without a broken nose in the whole club. There are so many things Danny wants to say now, so many words wrapped around memories that he wants Steve to know about -- but he’s not a 15-year-old girl, okay, he’s not going to call him and leave the longest voicemail in the world - although he’s pretty sure Steve would pick up. When Steve doesn’t pick up his phone, you know something’s gone very wrong.
Danny’s not going to do that. He’s going to enjoy his new house, possibly go for a swim, once he’s made sure Steve hasn’t bugged the place. And when his muscles are warm and loose, he’ll go to bed, in an actual, real, honest-to-God bed, in which he’ll get to spread all his limbs around, starfish style, and he’ll probably jerk off to the sound of all these epiphanies echoing and clinking and clattering together in his head.
---
Steve considers knocking when he gets to Danny's front door again, lugging the huge lump behind his back and trying not to let it drag on the ground too much. Then he thinks about all those times Danny just walked right into his house, like he belonged, like he couldn't care less about the stubborn walls Steve had built between himself and the world, and grins darkly. 'Payback's a bitch,' he thinks to himself as he pushes the door open and creeps inside. There are no noises at all, nothing to indicate that Danny is still there. Steve wonders if maybe Danny's gone out or something, even if it is pretty soon after the move, but maybe he went to get groceries?
Regardless, Steve is pretty pleased with being the only one in the house right now, because otherwise the surprise would have been ruined. He's trawled through four sports shops before finding one big enough to take Danny's meanest punch (which he knows for a fact is not something to be mocked), before finally giving up and going to Boxing Products Supplier, where he'd seen this monstrosity lurking by the back wall. He'd purchased it on the spot, barely blinking at the exorbitant price. It would be worth it to see the look on Danny's face, to see Danny dance around it while he lets himself go enough to pummel the crap out of it.
He doesn't know what lucky deity is looking down on him when he surveys the place for a suitable spot and his eyes narrow on the hook in the ceiling of the lana’i, far enough back to leave most of it open for lounging, yet spacious enough a spot that Danny can do some real damage to the bag. He braces the load on his thighs as he reaches up to untie the cover from the top of it, then takes a deep breath and pushes, stifling a groan at the burn in his arms. The woven club slips right over the hook, and Steve lets go cautiously, not even sure if it's sturdy enough to take the weight and the punishment Danny's going to unleash on it. The hook holds beautifully, and Steve breathes a sigh of relief. He dusts his hands in satisfaction and makes his way back out of the house. He'll drop by to check on Danny later, and maybe, just maybe, Danny might let him watch. The thought burns a path through Steve's lizard brain, and he's not quite sure how he's going to make it home with such an uncomfortable restriction as there is now in his pants.
It's almost nine o'clock before he ventures back, almost not going at all because it's pretty late already, and Danny has had a very long day, mainly due to Steve being unable to wait to move him in to his new place. But he can't wait to see Danny's reaction to his housewarming present, and if he's honest, he's kind of gotten used to Danny being the last person he sees before going to sleep at night. It might be stupid, and pathetic, but it's not something that he's willing to give up -- it's not hurting anyone, and he's sure Danny doesn't notice, so it's not going to be a problem between them, not if Steve can help it.
Once again he walks right into the house, and he won't lie, it gives him an addictive little thrill to be able to step inside Danny's space without warning -- and to have Danny let him, every single time. There are sounds reverberating through the house now, thumps and grunts that have him worried until he remembers what he got up to earlier, and then the thrill is back and it's grown to three times its previous size. Danny is at the punching bag, letting it take his frustrations and unhappiness and tension, and all Steve can think about is a sweat-covered Danny, droplets trailing down his neck and shoulders, blond hair heavy with moisture plastered to his forehead, limbs loose and pliant as he leans against the bag to catch his breath.
Then he rounds the corner--and it's better, so much better than his fevered imagination could have ever come up with. Because even if Danny isn’t shirtless, he’s wearing this white wifebeater that is clinging to his back, sweat turning the fabric translucent in patches. He’s wearing gloves - not the big, heavy ones, but the small ones that Steve favors in training as well. They look old and a little battered, strips of material flailing around every time Danny punches the bag, his movements measured, on point, a dance that finds Steve enthralled. He’s always known that Danny could fight his way through anything, but he always thought it’d be in a scrappy, growing-up-on-the-streets-of-New-Jersey kind of way, not this balanced, thought-out strategy of hit and duck, precise and fucking beautiful if Steve has anything to say about it.
Danny’s hair is falling into his eyes, strands flying around, sweat making some of it stick and curl over his forehead, and Steve’s fingers tremble with the need to push them away, drag the tips of his fingers through Danny’s sweat. He looks so beautiful there that Steve can hardly breathe, looking on and feeling like he’s intruding on something as private as jerking off. He feels like a pervert, but he can’t take his eyes away from Danny, from the way he moves, as if he’s got no back problems and no bad knee, effortless, graceful.
Steve can find himself grow hot, and he scratches the back of his neck, the flush working its way up his chest to his cheeks, and he’d feel embarrassed if there was anything he could do about it - he knows what he likes and what he wants, and maybe it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, maybe most people are into flowers and romance and candles and fancy restaurants, but he’s never been, he’s always been into diamonds-in-the-rough and arguments and adrenaline that drives him through life. And fuck if Danny isn’t just pure adrenaline packed into an explosive body.
Steve bites his lip, almost turning around when his eyes meet Danny’s. The flush comes back full force, and Steve swallows when Danny stills, but then Danny smiles, loose and easy.
"Oh, I didn't see you there, babe. You all right? You're looking kind of constipated."
Steve's pretty sure Danny's fucking with him, but he has no proof other than the twinkle in Danny's eye that he's becoming all too familiar with.
"Sorry to barge in on you like this," Steve says, for form's sake, because he's not, could never be. "So... you like it?"
Danny grins, a happy curl to his lips. "It's damn perfect. Where on Earth did you find it so quickly?"
"Uh, I just saw it lying around in this shop--"
"Don't, do not even try that with me, McGarrett. I'm trying to say 'thank you' here, the least you could do is accept it graciously," Danny snipes mildly, shaking damp hair out of his eyes and undoing his gloves with clumsy fingers. His whole body is vibrating with released tension, it's like there's a cloud of satisfaction emanating from him. It's fascinating.
Steve watches the movements of Danny's hands as they tug off the gloves like he's been hypnotised. They are at chest level, and Danny's dark nipples peep through the sodden fabric. Steve's flush intensifies until he's positive his entire body's burst into flames without him noticing.
And Danny keeps watching him. It's disconcerting, and strangely arousing.
"See anything you like, babe?" Danny murmurs, and okay, Steve knows he's staring, knows he has to stop right now before he fucks everything up between them irrevocably, but that doesn't give Danny the right to mock him for his weakness--and then Danny's tugging his wifebeater over his head, and Steve's brain shorts out altogether.
His stomach clenches violently at the sight, and he takes a step closer without even thinking about it, his body on auto-pilot. He wants to talk, say something instead of standing there looking at Danny like an idiot, but he wants to touch so badly he can’t form words. Danny’s skin is shining with sweat, golden bronze in the light of the dying sun. Seeing Danny shirtless is rare, he's always wrapped in all these shirts and ties, and so Steve cannot look away, mesmerized by the soft-looking blond hairs covering Danny’s chest. He forces himself to stop, though, blinks the lust out of his eyes before he does something he regrets, before he realizes Danny’s just kidding.
“Maybe I should go. You had a long day.”
Danny shakes his head, looking a little dumbfounded. To be honest, Steve has no idea what he’s doing, either, but he has a feeling one way or another, he’ll be wherever Danny wants him to be. Danny moves closer, leaving his sweat-drenched shirt on the ground behind him.
“Steve, what the hell are you doing, don’t be stupid. C’mere, you doofus. You think I’d accept this from just anyone? Not only the punching bag, but the fact that you walk in here without knocking - don’t say a word - and the house, too. I mean, you found me a house. Just - c’mere.”
Danny holds out his hand and pulls Steve in when he’s close enough, the distance between them vanishing when Danny pulls and Steve pushes, the two of them ending up in the living-room, the sea breeze brushing past them from the open door giving out to the porch.
“I’m a Detective. I detect these things, Steve.”
“What?”
“But you, you, instead of simply, you know, buying me a few beers and offering to suck my cock in the back of your car, no, you find me an house. With a beach.”
Steve’s blood rushes all the way south of his body, his mouth going dry at Danny’s words. Whatever they’re doing right now, he knows for sure that Danny will make him lose his mind, but his brain is currently not firing on all cylinders for him to give a damn about it. He licks his lips before answering Danny, his voice a little low, as if unused for a while.
“What can I say, I’m a romantic?”
Danny snorts, and Steve relaxes, just for a second, because if Danny had such trouble dealing with this all, he wouldn’t be trailing his fingertips along the waistband of Steve’s jeans.
“No, you’re not.”
Steve flexes his fingers at his side, once, before he gives up all the pretense and the energy he’s been putting into not jumping Danny, rushes into the kiss he bruises Danny’s lips with, forceful and desperate, and he clings onto Danny’s biceps in an attempt at not losing all control, which he will, if he touches Danny anywhere else.
Danny, though, doesn’t seem to want Steve to keep control at all, pressing his fingers under Steve’s ears, curled around his jaw, thumbs brushing the day-old scruff adorning Steve’s cheeks. His free hand is moving from Steve’s neck down his chest to brush against a nipple, coming back up and then down again, under Steve’s shirt, dragging sounds out of Steve’s throat, making sweat break over his brow.
“Who knew seeing me beat the crap out of something would turn you on so much, huh?” Danny pants against Steve’s lips, his hand curled around Steve’s neck as he keeps their foreheads pressed together.
“Fuck, Danny, we stop now or we’re seeing this to the end, I swear to God -”
“Don’t plan on stopping, Steven. Don’t want to stop. Did you bring beer?”
“Huh? Oh. No. Sorry. Why? I mean - what?”
“You’ll need one after I’m done with you.”
"Danny," Steve whines reproachfully, beyond coherent, clutching at Danny's hips as Danny presses a string of kisses down his neck, the barest flashes of tongue peeking out at the most unexpected moments. It makes Steve's blood sing in his veins, makes his vision blur and his fingers tighten on Danny's skin, nails digging in. Danny grunts a little, presses closer.
Steve's knees give out the very moment Danny's fingers close around his cock, still covered by his pants.
"Whoa, whoa, hey, Jesus, McGarrett, you weigh a ton, come on, work with me here, the couch is like a foot behind you," Danny grumbles, but his grip is sure at Steve's sides, and his strong arms curl around his body like they were made for it. The backs of Steve's knees hit the couch and he folds right into it, helpless and desperate and undone by the feel of warm skin slipping against his.
"How is it that you walk around half-naked all the time, but the second I want you that way, that shirt is clinging to you like it's going out of fashion?" Danny mutters into Steve's dumbstruck silence, tugging at the hem of his top. Steve lifts his arms obediently, and Danny tugs it deftly over his head. "Touching makes you pliant. Who knew?" he teases gently even as Steve leans up and fits their lips together like he's dying for it.
Danny opens for him easily, like he, too, is dying for Steve's tongue in his mouth. He dips his head without Steve having to ask, angles his neck so that their noses press together sweetly as they kiss and kiss and kiss. Steve makes a broken sound at the back of his throat as his hands slide over Danny's shoulders, when their chests slip together slick with Danny's sweat, when Danny pushes between his legs and arranges him so their bodies align from shoulder to groin. His breath stutters when Steve pushes up helplessly into his weight, when Steve's hands bury themselves into Danny's hair and their bodies start moving like they've been doing this all their lives.
Danny's fingers slide to Steve's belt, sure and firm on the leather as they pull it out of the hoops. Steve's breath hitches when they brush against his belly, teasing at the fine hairs of his happy trail.
"Oh, God, please," he gasps breathlessly when Danny reaches for his zip and tugs it down carefully.
"Jesus, you're killing me here," Danny grunts when Steve's hands latch onto his hips and start pulling down his shorts. They snag on Danny's cock, thick and hard as it bounces a little with the pressure. Danny groans harshly, fingers scrabbling at the elastic of Steve's boxer briefs, and then Steve's free, too, and Danny goes right for the prize, curls nimble fingers around Steve's length, and Steve loses his mind a little.
“Fuck, fuck fuck,” Steve feels the words come out of his mouth more than he hears them, blood rushing through his veins and beating to the rhythm of Danny Danny Danny loudly in his ears, drowning everything else. Danny grunts again, in the crook of Steve’s neck before he bends his back and licks at a nipple, making Steve arch and cry out, fingers tightening in Danny’s hair.
“Sensitive nipples, duly noted,” Danny breathes against them, and Steve squirms with the feel of it.
He would really love to retaliate, but Danny is strong and compact over him, restraining his movements - he could easily change positions if he really wanted to, but he doesn’t want it that much, not when he drags his fingers down Danny’s back, collecting sweat in the dimples just above his ass, reaching further down and groping, just because he can, just because he’s dreamed of running the pads of his thumbs over the silky soft skin of Danny’s ass for months. And Danny pushes into it, too, groaning lightly and biting on Steve’s nipple, twin moans echoing in the mostly empty room.
“God, babe, you and your kinks, I’m going to have so much fun.”
Danny pushes his hips forward when he straightens up, grabbing the hair at the back of Steve’s head and making him look up, too, their eyes boring into each other for a moment before Danny pulls Steve into a bruising kiss and changes his grip on Steve’s cock, pushing his own along and closing his hand around both their erections, slick, sensitive skin sliding together in a way that is certainly going to be Steve’s death. He can feel Danny smiling into the kiss but Steve can’t reciprocate, one of his hands flexing and relaxing around Danny’s ass and the other lost in Danny’s hair in a grip that is bound to hurt, but Steve has a feeling if Danny minded, he’d know about it.
Danny has never been a fair player, and Steve has never appreciated that more than he does right now, when Danny bites at his bottom lip, tugs on it with sharp white teeth that make Steve see stars just as Danny dips his thumb into the slit of Steve's cock, twisting just right, Steve has maybe enough time to feel his eyes cross before he's shooting all over Danny's front, hips stuttering and pushing his cock further into Danny's fist, coating both of them in come.
"Fuck, Steve," Danny groans when Steve's fingers tighten reflexively on his ass cheek, middle finger dipping further and pressing firmly at his entrance. Danny bows his head, his whole body tightening as he lets Steve's softening cock slip from his grip and uses the rest of Steve's come as a filthy kind of lube, stroking himself in frantic tugs until he's spilling with a strangled yell, ropes of come mixing with those on Steve's belly. Danny's other hand comes up and rubs the mess in, like he's marking him, branding him for Danny's use only, the only one allowed to see him like this, to reduce him to this quivering mess of loosened limbs and shaky stomach muscles as Steve drags in breath after panting breath.
Danny's been holding himself up off Steve's body with one arm locked on the couch's back, but it gives way now and he sprawls onto Steve's spreadeagled shape, tucking his face into Steve's neck and sucks in air as fast as his lungs will let him.
"I always said you'd be the death of me," he murmurs into Steve's skin, and Steve can't help it -- it starts as a huff of amusement, graduates to chuckles that he can't hold in until he's laughing full-out, a little hysterically, because if Danny thought Steve would be the death of him, Steve cannot even conceive of what Danny will be to him.
"You are such a goof," Danny says fondly, but he's laughing a little, too, curling forward around Steve's shaking body until Steve can feel the minute tremble of Danny's muscles as he tries to pull himself together.
Steve's still chuckling when he starts poking at Danny's side, harassing him until Danny looks up at him suspiciously. "I hear there's a perfectly good bed somewhere in this house. Surely you don't want to spend another night on a pull-out sofa?" Steve cajoles.
"You're way more comfortable to sleep on than a pull-out," Danny grumbles, but complies, pushing off Steve with a faint sucking sound of their skin unglueing. They make their way to the bedroom without closing doors or setting any alarms - Steve is pretty sure that Danny hasn’t installed one yet anyway. He’d take a shower, but the sticky sweaty disgusting mess he is right now makes him feel good about himself, makes his legs tremble a little as he walks - it’s a good feeling, and he’s not quite ready to let go of it yet.
Danny’s new mattress is a little hard but the sheets are soft, crisp clean, and Steve sinks in with a delighted sigh, muscles aching pleasantly. Danny grunts with surprise when Steve pulls him close, back to chest, Steve’s nose nuzzling the back of Danny’s neck.
“Oh, and you’re a cuddler, now? I learn things about you every day, McGarrett.”
“Shh, sleep.”
Danny grumbles some more, incoherent and irrelevant when he relaxes into Steve’s touch and slides his hand over the one Steve has slung over his hip. Steve only falls asleep when Danny’s light snores lull him into it, a smile on his lips and a content feeling in his heart.
--
Danny opens his eyes muzzily, aware that while it's warm enough for him to have company, only the scent of Steve lingers on the sheets, and his bed is empty of its other occupant. Danny would be worried, but he knew what he was getting himself into, and he has a few suspicions as to where his partner has disappeared to.
He pushes off the bed, unsticking the sheet from skin covered in a rather vile mixture of sweat and spunk that nevertheless makes him feel pretty serene, pads naked and barefoot to the window facing the ocean and peers out into the unsurprisingly sunny day to see a dark dot moving swiftly out through the waves. Apparently Steve doesn't care whose private beach he's swimming out of, as long as he gets to stick to his morning routine. Just this once, though, Danny kind of wishes he’d let himself off, that Danny could have woken up with Steve's body and his limbs wrapped around him, and pretended not to snuggle back into Steve's chest.
Then again, Steve wouldn't be Steve if he didn't pander to his first love -- the ocean.
Danny takes the time alone to take a cool shower, wash last night's adventures off his skin and pull on a pair of cotton boxer-briefs for propriety's sake as he potters down to the kitchen to get his first cup of coffee for the day. He unpacked the coffee machine last night, but it's still sitting forlornly in the corner of the kitchen, waiting for him to find it a new spot. He lifts it gently and plops it right in the centre of the counter, next to the wall socket which he plugs it in. The machine gurgles doubtfully for a few moments before he fills the tank with water and presses the 'on' button, whereupon there's a hiss of contentment from the back of it and the light flashes green. He takes his time getting his packet of ground Kona out of the cupboard where he stashed it last night, and packs it into the filter, slotting it in place. Then he pokes his head in the fridge until the water boils and he can finally press the 'coffee now please' button that has its picture outline almost rubbed out from repeated use.
There's not all that much in the fridge, food-wise, but he did get some eggs yesterday, and he'd better not hear one derogatory word from Steve on the subject, or he can scramble them himself. He heats the hob and plops a pan over the top, dicing a knob of butter into it to coat the base. Meanwhile, he beats the eggs into a bowl, adds salt and pepper and a little bit of thyme (must remember to buy a fresh pot) and lets the mixture swirl into the sizzling butter. He pokes at it with a spatula until the eggs are scrambled, cooked but still fluffy, and divides them onto two plates. He turns off the hob, places the plates onto the kitchen table, fetches his now perfectly brewed coffee, throws the back door open and settles in to wait. By the looks of it, Steve is headed back, but he can't be sure how long it will take him.
He kind of hopes he'll be able to come up with a timeframe in the coming weeks-months-years. And if that's a sappy kind of thought, well. He doesn't mind too much.
His eyes drift to the punching bag by his side, and he leans a hand on it, the cool leather fresh against his skin. All the memories of his past had rushed back the evening before when he found it there, knowing right away that it was Steve’s doing. He knows he should have minded, spared a thought for the fact that Steve walked into his space without permission, without even asking, but he didn’t. He’s never knocked before walking into Steve’s space, he just did, took a place that used to be empty and made himself comfortable into Steve’s life, adding his baby girl to the mix, involving Steve in their lives along with it. It’s only fair Steve could walk in just as freely now - Danny refuses to think about Steve walking out.
His arms and knuckles are still a bit sore from the heavy workout he'd dived into the day before, the gloves he’d been wearing keeping the skin from breaking but not keeping the memories from flooding in, and definitely not keeping the muscles from becoming sore. It felt good, though, it felt so fucking good, pent-up frustration and anger and helplessness leaving his body and mind as he punched the bag as hard and skillfully as he used to, years ago. Steve had broken open a dam with those pictures and the punching bag and his faces, too - Danny can still see him say I’m convenient, and it still makes him angry - but Danny is controlling the flow now.
The rest, Danny doesn’t really think about. He could have seen signs coming from a million miles away that this would happen, that the two of them were two cars going at high speed towards each other, and he could have known a crash would happen. He’d artfully avoided giving it much thought until he’d seen the way Steve was looking at him as he was working out, and then he couldn’t ignore it anymore. His stomach lights itself on fire as he thinks about it now, sipping his coffee slowly, forcing himself to stay calm and not run through the beach to join Steve in the water and maybe test how long Steve can stay underwater.
Coffee finished, Danny leaves the cup by his side and stretches, joints popping and muscles aching in a delightful way as he tilts his head back to the sun, moaning to himself. When he blinks his eyes open again he sees Steve walking towards him, shaking his head like a wet puppy, his swimming shorts clinging to him, riding up over his thighs.
“Morning.”
Steve drips all over Danny as he leans in and kisses him lightly, apparently just because he can do it, and Danny grumbles.
“Get away from me, you sea creature, you didn’t even have coffee, you’re not human I swear to God you’re not. Breakfast is cold now, I hope you’re happy.”
“You made breakfast?”
“I made eggs. I don’t want to hear one word, I'm warning you.”
"Okay, Danny," Steve says, deceptively agreeable as he crowds Danny back into the wall and presses the entire wet length of his body to Danny's. He finds Danny's mouth with his lips, nips gentle kisses along until Danny capitulates and opens to him with a groan of frustration, hands tightening on Steve's hips and pulling him in until there are no spaces left between them. If Danny has anything to say about it, that's the way it will be between them from now on.
"Would you be terribly angry if we left the eggs for later?" Steve murmurs against his lips, hips sliding insidiously against Danny's.
"Fuck the eggs," Danny groans, and pulls him closer.
Turns out the sandbag has another perfectly good use that for some strange reason no one publicises much; to wit, acting as something to brace against as one person wraps their legs around the other's waist and fights for breath.
"I guess I'll have to find another way to say 'thank you'," Danny says, much later, as he leans into Steve's side while passing him a fresh cup of coffee.
"Huh?" Steve says; the forehead wrinkled in confusion is disgustingly endearing.
"The eggs. They were meant to be a 'thank you' breakfast, for the sandbag."
Steve makes a pained face; Danny just knows he's thinking of ways to say 'that was a nice thought', and also 'your eggs as a 'thank you' gesture, really, Danny?' He gets an obscene amount of satisfaction from watching Steve flounder until Steve cottons on to what Danny's up to.
After that, well -- it's all fair play.
sirona_gs, beta'ed by stjarna1984. Much fun was had! Inspired by this picture, and this picture and this picture.Steve doesn't understand how it could be wrong for him to want Danny to live in a better place than his dingy, probably rat-infested, little apartment. He's just looking out for Danny, in his - and Gracie's - best interests. It's all out of love, really.
And life is being quite obliging to him on that one, because when he mentions to Mamo he's looking at apartments for his partner, Mamo tells him about this house he owns in Āina Haina, nice place, too. Steve jumps on the offer faster than if it is an ahi he wants to spear.
He visits the house first. It's a nice bungalow type, with a lana’i giving out to the sea that Steve just knows Gracie would love. Open kitchen, two real bedrooms, a big bathroom. Simple, clean, nice, exactly what Danny’s current living arrangements aren’t. Steve likes it instantly.
He can see Danny sitting out on the lana’i in the morning, steam rising from his first cup of coffee for the day while he dries himself from his shower and drapes the damp towel over the spare deck chair, shakes his hair loose for the last time before he forces it into its daily straitjacket of hair gel and stubborn willpower.
And on the weekends when he has Grace, Steve can almost hear her happy shouts from down by the waterline, running squealing away as a laughing Danny chases her.
Steve has maybe been thinking about this a little too much.
He just can't help it, though -- Danny and his daughter, even more than Kono and Chin, have become his substitute little family, something he would do any number of highly illegal things to protect and keep happy and smiling.
Now for a much more dangerous part of his furtive "Get Danny To Love Hawai'i" mission -- how to break the news to the man himself.
He waits until Friday rolls around, and he's in luck, because the week has been one of their less insane ones, and no one is so wiped out that all they can contemplate is the shortest route to their beds.
"Hey, Danny," he says, trying hard for nonchalant, and actually making it for a change. "Got a call from Mamo a little while ago. He's asked me to run an errand over at his old house."
"You mean where he used to live when you were kids?" Danny asks, patently not suspecting a thing. Steve pats himself on the back. "You want me to come with? It must be quite close to your house, right?"
Danny set him up nicely with that one. "Right, and then beers with the team at mine?"
"Sounds like a plan," Danny says, smiling fondly at him. Steve's heart only stutters a little, and he's reasonably sure that he managed to cover his reaction in time. It's getting harder and harder to do, the longer this thing between them simmers.
He drives the two of them to Mamo's bungalow in relative silence, which is interesting and a little unnerving. Steve is a little scared to start anything, spill the beans before Danny sees the house and comments on it. If he likes it, Steve will definitely bring it up, but in the meantime, he’s stuck in the car with Danny and he can’t say what he wants to say, has to let it run around his mind over and over, making it impossible to focus on the driving. He keeps stealing glances at Danny.
Danny doesn't look tired, or annoyed, or anything else than content, looking out the window with a small smile on his face, relaxing his features in a way Steve doesn't get to see often enough. It makes him itch to reach out and touch, graze his fingers along the laughter lines around his eyes and engrave them in his memory. He's in so deep it's not even funny, and he's pretty sure Danny is perfectly oblivious.
He parks the Camaro in front of the house, quickly stepping out and walking to the door. Mamo leaves his trust with the people of Hawai'i so much the spare key is under the welcome mat. Danny grunts lightly when he sees it, mumbling something about crazy Hawai'ians that makes Steve smile.
Steve fishes it out and lets them in through the fire-red front door. The inside of the house is just as immaculate as when Steve had gone to see it -- the living room spacious and drenched in sunlight as it is most of the day, since it faces South; a nice comfy sofa sharing space with soft-looking armchairs and a coffee table made from driftwood nailed and strapped together. Steve had worried about that last time -- Danny is not quiet when it comes to voicing opinions regarding Hawai'i's unique lifestyle -- but Danny barely spares it a glance other than to give it a suspicious once-over and raise his eyebrows in silent resignation.
"So what are we doing here again?" Danny asks.
Steve has had plenty of time to think about it on their drive over, but hasn't come up with much else than: "He asked me to pick up his old surfboard for a beginner student of his."
To his relief, Danny swallows the excuse and Steve heads out to the back of the house, hoping Danny's curiosity won't let him down now and he'll follow of his own accord. He does.
Steve grabs the board from its place off the edge of the lana'i and turns to see Danny gazing out into the ocean, the gentle breeze ruffling fly-away strands of hair that have made a bid for freedom. He looks even more content out here, tie tugged half-undone and shirt collar unbuttoned, eyes bluer than the ocean crinkling to keep the sun out, mouth tugged into a relaxed, happy sort of half-smile. It's mesmerising.
"So, d'you like the house?" Steve blurts out, all thoughts of breaking Danny in gently to the idea gone in a flash of Danny's teeth.
"Sure, it's nice, great location, and I bet your boy Mamo adored this little bay right here."
"You think the bay's nice?"
"It's all right for those that like it, I suppose. Why are you so keen for me to like this place?"
Steve shuffles his feet and looks away. "It's sort of on the market," he mutters.
"Yuh-huh," Danny says, eyebrows lifted in disbelief. "And how much's it going for, a couple mil’?"
"I meant it's out to rent. And before you ask, I've uh. I'vekindoftalkedtoMamoaboutrentingittoyou."
"What." Danny's voice has this dangerous edge that Steve has learned to know and fear. "What do you mean, you've talked to Mamo about renting it to me? That is what you said, right? It's not me filling in the blanks in your excuse for an offer?"
"Yeah, Danny, I mean, it's a really good price, Mamo has another house twice as big as this right by the Pipeline, he's not using this one, and he's very happy to rent it out to you for a very reasonable sum a month. It's miles better than where you're living right now, and Grace will love it, and I'm really close by, so you won't have to drive far to pick me up in the morning, and it's close to the highway so it'll actually cut the time it takes you to get to Rachel's to pick Grace up..." He kind of dries up around this time in the face of Danny's ominous silence.
Danny's watching him, a strange weight to his gaze. "I see you've given this some thought," he muses, still looking at him like that, and Steve's having to fight really hard not to squirm under the force of Danny's stare.
"I, I have. Sort of. Yeah, I guess. Just thought it'd be nice. It's not like you couldn't do with a better place..."
Steve is rambling now, trying to hide his discomfort, because he can't read Danny right now and it's hard, it's fucking hard not to know if he's pissed or not. Danny takes another sweeping look outside before walking back in, leaving Steve, dumbfounded, on the lana’i.
Steve tries to shake it off, the feelings he's usually so good at bottling up threatening to overwhelm him right now, making his shirt too tight around his chest and neck, as if it's trying to suffocate him. When Danny comes back out, Steve almost doesn't see him, the edges of his vision blurry with everything that he wants to say and do.
But then he takes a good look at Danny, through it all, and he sees that Danny's wearing a soft smile on his lips as he looks straight at Steve. When he reaches out and wraps a hand around Steve's arm, Steve releases a breath he hadn't realized he was holding in.
"It's actually really nice. How much would it be?"
Steve isn't sure he can talk, so he swallows a few times, scratching his throat to make sure his voice won't sound broken.
"I’m sure Mamo would love to talk about that with you."
"Okay. Hey, Steve, um. Thanks for this. It's really quite thoughtful."
"You're welcome," Steve says after a moment of swallowing down everything else clamoring for attention in his head. He chances a smile back at Danny, letting himself believe that yes, this is happening, he has finally won a solid victory in his campaign.
They spend the next half hour touring the house and taking down pointers on what furniture might be needed and how soon the rest of Danny's stuff can be shipped in from the storage facility in Jersey. Danny takes one look at the lovely wide double bed in the master bedroom and gets such a blissed-out look on his face that Steve is hard-pressed to keep from tackling him right in the middle of it.
The next room down the hall is a good-sized spare bedroom whose walls are already painted a pale lavender.
"She's going to want pink everywhere, you realise," Danny says conspiratorially, not even bothering to mention whom he's speaking about, secure in the knowledge that Steve will just know. It makes Steve feel warm all over, even as he starts planning a trip to City Mill in their very near future.
Danny makes the call to Mamo there and then. Steve doesn't even wait for the nod before he's calling Chin and asking him to help move Danny in tomorrow, "call Kono too, the more of us there are, the faster we can get him settled". Chin is amused but perfectly willing to be roped in, and he only ribs Steve about it a little.
If he's honest about it, Steve can't find it in himself to be bothered by Chin's gentle mocking. They both know, him and Kono, they're not blind and Steve wouldn't want it any other way. It's just Danny, for all the detective he is, that just won't see what's right under his nose, even if Steve is perfectly unsubtle about it, about how much he wants Danny. Or maybe Danny just doesn't want to deal with it, keeping their relationship as it is, a solid work partnership and friendship, easy, something they both slipped into as if it was a second skin.
Steve’s found it even easier to latch onto Danny and his exuberance, the loudness and frustration with the whole world that Steve loves to tease and poke at. Danny’s given him something he craves, a sense of family stronger than anything else Hawai'i has given him since his father died, since Mary left again. Danny makes him feel like he belongs, like he can stay in one place, build something stable, a life outside of the missions and restraints of the military.
He finds Danny sitting on the stairs down to the beach when they're both done with their phone calls. He joins him, wishing they had beers now, just the two of them for a while longer.
"Ready to go celebrate?"
Danny's smile is loose around the corners when he bumps his shoulder into Steve's, and Steve can only grin back, nodding as he keeps himself from wrapping an arm around Danny's shoulders.
"Yeah. Definitely."
---
It's not even eight o'clock in the morning and someone is already trying to knock his door down with their fist. Danny knows that knock. There's only one man in his acquaintance crazy enough to inflict it upon him at this hour on a Saturday.
His head is only a little tender from last night's three-too-many beers, but it had been impossible to decline, not least because Steve would have pouted like he'd insulted his home state again. And Danny can't deny he enjoyed himself thoroughly, lest he perjure himself.
"All right, all right, Jesus Christ, McGarrett, I still haven't collected my safety deposit, don't go knocking my apartment to the ground--" he opens the door, but while he expects Steve's grinning face, he does not expect the small army behind him. Kono waves at him cheerily while Chin looks on benevolently. Kamekona is cracking his knuckles and giving him that stupid 'hang loose' sign, while four other burly Hawai'ians square their shoulders behind him.
"What--" Danny starts, only to be interrupted yet again by Chin's clap on his shoulder.
"Kamekona asked his cousins to help with the move. They won't even charge you, either, since you're a friend."
"Wow," Danny says, genuinely speechless. "I'm touched, man, thanks!"
"Hey, 's all right! As long as you bring Gracie around more often, the boys want a re-match! The little minx won all their money off them last time!" Kamekona says, showcasing his trademark goofy grin.
"I'm not promising anything," Danny says automatically, but Kamekona and his crew are on a very short list indeed of people he would trust with his daughter.
Speaking of which, there comes the man occupying the top of it. "Let's get started, Danno!" Steve says happily, heading right for the pile of boxes Danny had spent an hour last night and another this morning taping together. It's depressingly small.
"That all?"
"Almost. Need to finish that closet. And the kitchen."
Kamekona goes straight to the boxes as Steve looks at the closet Danny just indicated, and seriously, there are too many people in his tiny apartment right now, they can barely move. Danny feels a little better, like he can breathe again, when Kamekona and his cousins grab most of the boxes lying about to get them inside the truck. Kono and Chin are inspecting the kitchen, carefully depositing silverware into a box and wrapping up bowls and plates. They're very much more efficient than Danny has ever been at eight o’clock on a Saturday.
"Please tell me you brought me coffee, at least? Or can I make myself one before you bag my coffee maker?"
Kono gives Danny an indulgent look, all the while handling cooking knives. It's disturbing, but in a way it's rather reassuring, too.
"I'll get you a coffee, don't worry about it!"
"Thanks."
He’s about to add some more, maybe a rant or two about how there is no reason for them all to be here this early, when there is a crash to his left, and Danny whirls around to find McGarrett - of course it'd be McGarrett - surrounded by a mountain of old pictures that Danny hadn't been able to leave in storage. The shoe box in which they were stashed is still in Steve's hands, and he's wearing his puppy dog eyes with such conviction that Danny is perfectly sure he can't be annoyed. It's Steve, Steve and his faces, the whole array of them; Danny knows when a fight isn't fair and Steve and his faces have never been one, Danny’s not stupid, nor emotionally stunted like his partner. Danny just sighs, because it is definitely too early in the morning for that and he gets it, he does, Steve wants him moved out of this rathole and into a nice bungalow overlooking the beach as quick as possible, but it's still too fucking early for this.
"It fell apart - I'll sort them out, Danno - sorry."
Danny sighs. "Only you, McGarrett, could be so fucking graceful one minute and a total clutz the next... I really did just say that, didn't I? Kono! Where's my coffee, my brain seems to be rotting away here."
"Coming, Danny," Kono yells back from the kitchen.
Steve is staring -- though not at him, which Danny supposes is a small mercy. But he is staring down at the pictures spilling across the worn floor. Danny glances down, too, and feels the tips of his ears heat. Goddamn it, he thought he'd gotten rid of those!
"I--"
"Don't say it, McGarrett, don't even think about it, I am not in the mood."
"You look so tough," Steve says, sounding strangled.
Danny is not expecting this.
"Uh. Thanks?"
"When were those taken?"
"Um. About ten-fifteen years ago? I don't keep track."
Steve keeps staring. Danny isn't sure what to make of the flex in his fingers, like he wants to--what? Tear them up? Stash them away for later?
"When you're done ogling my younger self, McGarrett?" he snaps, discomfited.
Steve splutters. It's not charming. "I wasn't 'ogling', Jesus, Danny, it's just, I've never seen you like this before. Did you stop boxing or something?"
Danny runs his tongue over his top teeth, thinking of all the reasons why he’s not boxing anymore, all the reasons that actually don’t make sense nowadays. He could start again, find a club somewhere in Honolulu, let off some of the steam he builds up working with Steve. But right now, they’ve got too many things to do and too many people around for Danny to want to carry out this conversation. Might be fucking stupid, but he can’t help feeling like this is personal, something he used to unfurl dark feelings that now just stick to his heart.
“Yeah, I did. Long time ago. Can you just clean this mess, Steven? That is one box that is going to the basement straight away.”
Kono pushes a mug of steaming coffee in his hands and Danny gives her the most grateful look he can muster, wrapping his fingers around it as he looks at Steve, scrambling around, gathering up the pictures. He stops for a few of them, though, Danny can remember when they were taken, why they were taken. It’s as though Steve has trouble imagining that Danny has ever been anything else than a tie-wearing, straight-arrow cop.
Danny averts his eyes when he sees Steve running his fingertips over one of the pictures, one of those of the time he experimented with his hair and wore dog tags as if they made him tough. There’s something so soft in Steve’s eyes that it makes Danny’s stomach twist, his muscles clench painfully. If they weren’t surrounded by large Hawai'ian people and two of their work colleagues, Danny might have allowed himself to question Steve about this, the look in his eyes and the meaning of his smile. Because they all make him feel something close to hope, and it’s exhilarating, scary and fucking stupid, all at the same time.
It’s only after the box is closed over all those snapshots of Danny’s past that he allows himself to relax, finishing his coffee before nodding to himself. He’s not about to let a bunch of other people move for him, he’s not that lazy, and besides, he hates owing people and he owes Steve way too much already.
---
Steve sits in the driver's seat of the Camaro and tries not to fidget. He literally cannot get those pictures of Danny out of his mind -- it's like they're burned into his retinas, burned somewhere deeper inside that has Danny's name written all over it. He opens and closes his mouth a couple times, bites back the questions that clamor to get out, trying so damn hard to respect Danny's privacy that he doesn't notice Danny giving him The Look, the one that says "I know you're up to something, and I'm just itching for a reason to call you a goof".
It shouldn't take him by surprise when Danny disregards his own evasion and plows right over Steve's desperate desire to put a 'why' to the fact.
"Okay. So my Uncle Jimmy ran this boxing club back when we were kids, and I was there all the time, anyway, and when he wanted to have some promo posters done, he asked me to do it, and I said yes."
Steve digests this. "You were kind of pumped up back then. You don't get that from sitting around, Danny."
"I know that, don't you think I know that?" Danny rolls his eyes, throwing him a sideways look. He seems to be thinking about something, but Steve doesn't even get the chance to wonder what before Danny's talking over his thoughts yet again. "Okay. Here's the thing. This may come as a surprise to you, but I was kind of an angry kid." He ignores Steve's snort of mock disbelief and rolls right over him. "It was just a good way to work through all my pent-up energy and frustration. Better to hit on people with protection and skills than on the other kids at school, you know?"
Steve hums noncommittally. He can see a young Danny, scowl fixed permanently on his face, beating the shit out of a padded opponent, driving and driving until there's nothing but an unyielding wall at the other guy's back.
"Why d'you stop?" he asks, thinking that he might as well push his luck while it's still holding.
Danny sighs, gets this faraway look in his eyes. "I got into police training, and found out there were other ways to punch the crap out of a person than just my fists. I had other things to think about than how fucking mad I was at the world. And then Rachel rear-ended me, and she wasn't too fond of finding bruises all over me that she hadn't put there herself, so I guess I never took it up again. I probably should have -- would have done wonders during the divorce, but there you go."
"So you think you might take it up again now?" Steve asks, genuinely curious. It would be good for Danny, no question.
Danny takes a while to answer, gazes out of the window with a distant look on his face before turning back to Steve. "You know what? No reason I shouldn't. God knows it'll help with the stress you pile on top of me on a daily basis, Aquaman."
Steve snorts again, rolling his eyes at the road, not trusting himself not to try and superimpose the images of Danny younger, ripped, all skin and muscles over this version of him, the one with ties and tight shirts. He doesn’t want to wonder what Danny looks like now, under these clothes; he's scared of how it makes his fingers twitch over the steering wheel.
“I do no such thing, you put the pressure on yourself, Danny.”
“Oh, please, I wouldn’t be bursting at the seams all the fucking time if you weren’t planting grenades under people’s chairs and jumping off roofs. My life would be much, much easier.”
“You’d find someone else to get angry at, D. I know it, you know it, I’m just convenient.”
Steve'd had no idea it would be so hard to say those words, but as they leave his mouth, they burn a hole through his chest as he realises that they’re true, that if he didn’t force himself into Danny's life, force him to become his partner, force his presence on Danny, all the time, even when they’re off work, just so maybe Danny will give him a little back, possibly; if he didn’t do that, then Danny would just find someone else to get angry at, someone else to rant at and call a goof and look at fondly from time to time.
Danny’s silent for a long moment, but Steve can feel his eyes on him. He waits until they’re parked in front of Danny’s new place before turning to Danny, and it fucking scares him to death how he can't decipher a single thing he sees in Danny’s eyes. Then Danny licks his lips, turning towards Steve fully, shoulder digging in the passenger seat of the Camaro.
“Have you seen yourself? You are anything but convenient,” he uses the same tone Steve had, and it makes something hot and tight pulse in Steve’s heart, “you are a hot-headed, gigantic dolphin mutant, and that does not make you convenient, Steve, it makes you stupid and goofy but whatever you’re thinking right now, just don’t. I’m not stuck with you, I would have gone back to HPD if that was the case, McGarrett.”
Steve ducks his head to break Danny's gaze, because he can't stand the weight of it, not when he's feeling so raw and open, not when Danny can look inside and see his every hope, every desire, every inappropriate thought Steve's ever had about him -- because he is a creep who thinks far too much about his unattainable partner, about how much he would love to suck biting kisses into every inch of those sturdy shoulders, about what Danny would look like as he drives into Steve, eyes boring down into his, cataloguing the most minute flutters of Steve's eyelashes. About wrapping his legs around Danny's hips and--
--And this is possibly the worst moment in the history of ever to be having these kinds of thoughts. Those pictures must have completely scrambled his mind. It's bad enough that he's letting what Danny said sink into him, warm the empty Danny-shaped spaces Steve has accepted are there right under his skin. It's just too much to know, to believe that Danny thinks Steve's someone special, too, someone he can share not just his job with, but maybe--
"Okay!" Steve yelps, far too high and fast for any kind of denial to hold true. "Let's get you settled in, partner!"
It might be just his imagination that Danny seems to hang behind in the car for that little while too long, but he somehow doesn't think so. Oh, God, if he's gone and screwed this up after everything they've been through, he might just go looking for those sharks and let them have at it.
---
Kamekona and his brothers are parked right outside the house, boxes piled up neatly just by the front door. Kono is already sitting on the stairs leading up to it, and Chin's talking on his phone further inside the shade provided by the roof overhang.
"Ready to get all this inside, brah?" Kamekona asks, picking up the nearest box like it weighs less than a feather, when Danny's positive it contains all his manuals on police procedure that he's been planning to brain Steve with the next time he's being an absolute idiot who jumps off roofs and tackles armed suspects with nothing but a paperclip left over from his mangled attempt at paperwork.
He walks through the tunnel everyone seems to be making for him, gets the key from under the welcome mat and unlocks the front door for the first time with a flourish, to a round of pleased applause.
"Come on in inside my new house," he says, just to be a pain in the ass, but he doesn't think Steve realises just how wide his grin has suddenly become as he bounds over to where Danny's standing and shoulders his way past him, carrying two boxes on top of each other that almost obscure his face.
"Those go in the kitchen," Danny yells after him, and smirks at how quickly Steve changes direction. Ordering Steve about is never going to get old, he thinks to himself, and if that performance in the car is any indication, there might be a whole new arena opening before him before too long -- or as long as Steve takes to get with the programme. Come to think of it, that might be a whole while longer than Danny's willing to wait. He makes a mental note to drop the subtlety altogether, since it's not a concept Steve's too familiar with.
It takes no time at all to get all the boxes inside; he'd better call his mother tonight and ask her to set the wheels in motion for the rest of his stuff to get shipped in, now that he has the space to house it. He trails into the kitchen to find Steve with his head in the fridge, out of which he magics a six pack of chilled beer that Danny knows for a fact wasn't there the last time he came round. When Steve had the time to sneak back in and put it there in between beers with the team and picking Danny up this morning, he's not going to think too hard about. There are too many people by half around for that particular discussion. It's going to have to wait until Steve is inevitably the last one left around tonight.
When he thinks about it, that's been happening more and more often recently. Is he really so dense that he's only just starting to realise just how deeply invested Steve is in his happiness? Some kind of detective he is.
"I can't," Steve says apologetically a little later, when Danny asks all of them to stick around for a few beers and a take-away pizza or five. "I've got something to do. Maybe I'll see you later tonight?" he adds hopefully, and yeah, Danny knows all about those faces of his, doesn't he.
The rest of the team of movers take their cue from Steve, and within fifteen minutes his house is his own for the first time. He wanders through the cozy rooms, makes a face again at the ridiculous coffee table, what was Mamo thinking, wait, no, he doesn't actually want to know, and back into the kitchen, where he rips the tape off the box at the top of the pile. The pots and pans his mom refused to let him move without are right there, nestled tidily into newspapers, along with Grace's favourite bowl, mug, and plate. He puts them away quickly, and finishes with the rest of the pile of boxes in less than half an hour.
The coffee machine from his old apartment takes up far too much space -- always has, but it's simple to use, and its buttons aren't so small that he punches two when he's trying to hit 'start'. He debates another coffee, but he's moved onto beer already, and he doesn't really need the high anymore. If he wants an adrenaline rush, that look on Steve's face when Danny had told him that he wasn't just someone 'convenient' to take his irritation out on would be enough to kick him into next week. How Steve could possibly think that, after everything, after Meka's death, and Victor Hesse, and Chin's bomb encounter, and the trek up the summit, and last month when Danny had honest-to-god thought that was it for him, Danny just cannot fathom.
Steve and his damn insecurities. It's like no one he's ever loved had stuck around for long enough to--oh.
Oh.
Well, that changes things, he thinks. That changes a lot of things, questions and doubts now taking shape into something different in Danny’s head. The annoyance he feels when Steve pushes himself in the line of fire, pushes Danny back, it turns into something that makes Danny’s heart swell a little. The little idiosyncrasies; coming over to Danny’s without any reason, inserting himself into Danny’s family like he belongs there - he does belong there - the small touches and little looks, they all make sense in a different way, now.
Danny moves from the kitchen to his lana’i - he has a lanai’i, since when is this his life, he has no idea, he’s never wanted to ever call a patio a lanai’i, fuck, the things he does for Steve - after grabbing the box of pictures someone left on the couch, sitting on the stairs after brushing sand off the steps. He toes his shoes off and lets the soft breeze of the late day soothe his overworked head. It all makes so much sense, and he guesses he’s got to be the one to do something about it, because until this afternoon Steve though he was just convenient for Danny, some sort of living breathing punching bag.
He’s so much more, he’s so fucking much Danny sometimes doesn’t know where to put his feelings; sometimes they take his heart apart with fear when Steve rushes headfirst into danger, sometimes they rip his whole being apart with want, pure unadulterated lust when Steve undresses as if he’s some sort of exhibitionist. Sometimes they threaten to drown him with softness and fondness and love, stupid, teenage love that he can’t quite contain within himself and it spills out in the way he rants and moves his hands about as he talks and smiles like an idiot.
Danny puts his beer to the side and opens the shoe box that keeps the pictures Steve spilled everywhere earlier, picking up the first one. He was young, silly, bright but angry, so angry, and Jimmy had channeled that anger into something that made Danny wiry, hard with muscles, wise too, ready to take punches and throw them, when the fight was equal. When he looks into his own eyes there, he can see the frustration, all the energy he kept packed inside himself; he can see the anger, through it all, through the smiles and the laughter. It almost feels like he’s watching someone else, but he knows better, the anger simmering under the surface, he still feels it. He remembers exactly how punching a sack feels, the sand shifting under his knuckles, and he remembers exactly just how much strength to put into a punch to break a jaw clean off. He remembers blood seeping through his yellow practice gloves, the skinny ones, and he remembers how it felt when Johnny Tortuga put a lead weight in his gloves. The pain, the exhilaration, the emptiness in his head, he remembers it all too well, all of it mixed together to form memories Danny is - now he realizes - incredibly proud of, because they made him who he is.
He lost himself in the anger once again. He knows that now, now that he’s moving on from Rachel, from the divorce, from the constant throb of heartache in his chest. He used the anger to keep walls up between himself and others, letting only a few select ones through. For someone who pretends to be as open as Steve is closed off, the roles are pretty much reversed -- Steve putting his heart on his sleeve, right there for Danny to take, while Danny kept himself and his past, his secrets hidden, at least those he could.
But now Steve knows about the boxing and, maybe, possibly, if Danny hadn’t realized how exactly Steve feels about him and how he feels about Steve himself, just a minute ago, he’d have felt violated by the whole thing, by Steve’s discovery and questions. But as it is, Danny can’t help but want Steve to come back, and to allow him to share some more, to tell him about that time he got his eyebrow split open and how he was the only one without a broken nose in the whole club. There are so many things Danny wants to say now, so many words wrapped around memories that he wants Steve to know about -- but he’s not a 15-year-old girl, okay, he’s not going to call him and leave the longest voicemail in the world - although he’s pretty sure Steve would pick up. When Steve doesn’t pick up his phone, you know something’s gone very wrong.
Danny’s not going to do that. He’s going to enjoy his new house, possibly go for a swim, once he’s made sure Steve hasn’t bugged the place. And when his muscles are warm and loose, he’ll go to bed, in an actual, real, honest-to-God bed, in which he’ll get to spread all his limbs around, starfish style, and he’ll probably jerk off to the sound of all these epiphanies echoing and clinking and clattering together in his head.
---
Steve considers knocking when he gets to Danny's front door again, lugging the huge lump behind his back and trying not to let it drag on the ground too much. Then he thinks about all those times Danny just walked right into his house, like he belonged, like he couldn't care less about the stubborn walls Steve had built between himself and the world, and grins darkly. 'Payback's a bitch,' he thinks to himself as he pushes the door open and creeps inside. There are no noises at all, nothing to indicate that Danny is still there. Steve wonders if maybe Danny's gone out or something, even if it is pretty soon after the move, but maybe he went to get groceries?
Regardless, Steve is pretty pleased with being the only one in the house right now, because otherwise the surprise would have been ruined. He's trawled through four sports shops before finding one big enough to take Danny's meanest punch (which he knows for a fact is not something to be mocked), before finally giving up and going to Boxing Products Supplier, where he'd seen this monstrosity lurking by the back wall. He'd purchased it on the spot, barely blinking at the exorbitant price. It would be worth it to see the look on Danny's face, to see Danny dance around it while he lets himself go enough to pummel the crap out of it.
He doesn't know what lucky deity is looking down on him when he surveys the place for a suitable spot and his eyes narrow on the hook in the ceiling of the lana’i, far enough back to leave most of it open for lounging, yet spacious enough a spot that Danny can do some real damage to the bag. He braces the load on his thighs as he reaches up to untie the cover from the top of it, then takes a deep breath and pushes, stifling a groan at the burn in his arms. The woven club slips right over the hook, and Steve lets go cautiously, not even sure if it's sturdy enough to take the weight and the punishment Danny's going to unleash on it. The hook holds beautifully, and Steve breathes a sigh of relief. He dusts his hands in satisfaction and makes his way back out of the house. He'll drop by to check on Danny later, and maybe, just maybe, Danny might let him watch. The thought burns a path through Steve's lizard brain, and he's not quite sure how he's going to make it home with such an uncomfortable restriction as there is now in his pants.
It's almost nine o'clock before he ventures back, almost not going at all because it's pretty late already, and Danny has had a very long day, mainly due to Steve being unable to wait to move him in to his new place. But he can't wait to see Danny's reaction to his housewarming present, and if he's honest, he's kind of gotten used to Danny being the last person he sees before going to sleep at night. It might be stupid, and pathetic, but it's not something that he's willing to give up -- it's not hurting anyone, and he's sure Danny doesn't notice, so it's not going to be a problem between them, not if Steve can help it.
Once again he walks right into the house, and he won't lie, it gives him an addictive little thrill to be able to step inside Danny's space without warning -- and to have Danny let him, every single time. There are sounds reverberating through the house now, thumps and grunts that have him worried until he remembers what he got up to earlier, and then the thrill is back and it's grown to three times its previous size. Danny is at the punching bag, letting it take his frustrations and unhappiness and tension, and all Steve can think about is a sweat-covered Danny, droplets trailing down his neck and shoulders, blond hair heavy with moisture plastered to his forehead, limbs loose and pliant as he leans against the bag to catch his breath.
Then he rounds the corner--and it's better, so much better than his fevered imagination could have ever come up with. Because even if Danny isn’t shirtless, he’s wearing this white wifebeater that is clinging to his back, sweat turning the fabric translucent in patches. He’s wearing gloves - not the big, heavy ones, but the small ones that Steve favors in training as well. They look old and a little battered, strips of material flailing around every time Danny punches the bag, his movements measured, on point, a dance that finds Steve enthralled. He’s always known that Danny could fight his way through anything, but he always thought it’d be in a scrappy, growing-up-on-the-streets-of-New-Jersey kind of way, not this balanced, thought-out strategy of hit and duck, precise and fucking beautiful if Steve has anything to say about it.
Danny’s hair is falling into his eyes, strands flying around, sweat making some of it stick and curl over his forehead, and Steve’s fingers tremble with the need to push them away, drag the tips of his fingers through Danny’s sweat. He looks so beautiful there that Steve can hardly breathe, looking on and feeling like he’s intruding on something as private as jerking off. He feels like a pervert, but he can’t take his eyes away from Danny, from the way he moves, as if he’s got no back problems and no bad knee, effortless, graceful.
Steve can find himself grow hot, and he scratches the back of his neck, the flush working its way up his chest to his cheeks, and he’d feel embarrassed if there was anything he could do about it - he knows what he likes and what he wants, and maybe it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, maybe most people are into flowers and romance and candles and fancy restaurants, but he’s never been, he’s always been into diamonds-in-the-rough and arguments and adrenaline that drives him through life. And fuck if Danny isn’t just pure adrenaline packed into an explosive body.
Steve bites his lip, almost turning around when his eyes meet Danny’s. The flush comes back full force, and Steve swallows when Danny stills, but then Danny smiles, loose and easy.
"Oh, I didn't see you there, babe. You all right? You're looking kind of constipated."
Steve's pretty sure Danny's fucking with him, but he has no proof other than the twinkle in Danny's eye that he's becoming all too familiar with.
"Sorry to barge in on you like this," Steve says, for form's sake, because he's not, could never be. "So... you like it?"
Danny grins, a happy curl to his lips. "It's damn perfect. Where on Earth did you find it so quickly?"
"Uh, I just saw it lying around in this shop--"
"Don't, do not even try that with me, McGarrett. I'm trying to say 'thank you' here, the least you could do is accept it graciously," Danny snipes mildly, shaking damp hair out of his eyes and undoing his gloves with clumsy fingers. His whole body is vibrating with released tension, it's like there's a cloud of satisfaction emanating from him. It's fascinating.
Steve watches the movements of Danny's hands as they tug off the gloves like he's been hypnotised. They are at chest level, and Danny's dark nipples peep through the sodden fabric. Steve's flush intensifies until he's positive his entire body's burst into flames without him noticing.
And Danny keeps watching him. It's disconcerting, and strangely arousing.
"See anything you like, babe?" Danny murmurs, and okay, Steve knows he's staring, knows he has to stop right now before he fucks everything up between them irrevocably, but that doesn't give Danny the right to mock him for his weakness--and then Danny's tugging his wifebeater over his head, and Steve's brain shorts out altogether.
His stomach clenches violently at the sight, and he takes a step closer without even thinking about it, his body on auto-pilot. He wants to talk, say something instead of standing there looking at Danny like an idiot, but he wants to touch so badly he can’t form words. Danny’s skin is shining with sweat, golden bronze in the light of the dying sun. Seeing Danny shirtless is rare, he's always wrapped in all these shirts and ties, and so Steve cannot look away, mesmerized by the soft-looking blond hairs covering Danny’s chest. He forces himself to stop, though, blinks the lust out of his eyes before he does something he regrets, before he realizes Danny’s just kidding.
“Maybe I should go. You had a long day.”
Danny shakes his head, looking a little dumbfounded. To be honest, Steve has no idea what he’s doing, either, but he has a feeling one way or another, he’ll be wherever Danny wants him to be. Danny moves closer, leaving his sweat-drenched shirt on the ground behind him.
“Steve, what the hell are you doing, don’t be stupid. C’mere, you doofus. You think I’d accept this from just anyone? Not only the punching bag, but the fact that you walk in here without knocking - don’t say a word - and the house, too. I mean, you found me a house. Just - c’mere.”
Danny holds out his hand and pulls Steve in when he’s close enough, the distance between them vanishing when Danny pulls and Steve pushes, the two of them ending up in the living-room, the sea breeze brushing past them from the open door giving out to the porch.
“I’m a Detective. I detect these things, Steve.”
“What?”
“But you, you, instead of simply, you know, buying me a few beers and offering to suck my cock in the back of your car, no, you find me an house. With a beach.”
Steve’s blood rushes all the way south of his body, his mouth going dry at Danny’s words. Whatever they’re doing right now, he knows for sure that Danny will make him lose his mind, but his brain is currently not firing on all cylinders for him to give a damn about it. He licks his lips before answering Danny, his voice a little low, as if unused for a while.
“What can I say, I’m a romantic?”
Danny snorts, and Steve relaxes, just for a second, because if Danny had such trouble dealing with this all, he wouldn’t be trailing his fingertips along the waistband of Steve’s jeans.
“No, you’re not.”
Steve flexes his fingers at his side, once, before he gives up all the pretense and the energy he’s been putting into not jumping Danny, rushes into the kiss he bruises Danny’s lips with, forceful and desperate, and he clings onto Danny’s biceps in an attempt at not losing all control, which he will, if he touches Danny anywhere else.
Danny, though, doesn’t seem to want Steve to keep control at all, pressing his fingers under Steve’s ears, curled around his jaw, thumbs brushing the day-old scruff adorning Steve’s cheeks. His free hand is moving from Steve’s neck down his chest to brush against a nipple, coming back up and then down again, under Steve’s shirt, dragging sounds out of Steve’s throat, making sweat break over his brow.
“Who knew seeing me beat the crap out of something would turn you on so much, huh?” Danny pants against Steve’s lips, his hand curled around Steve’s neck as he keeps their foreheads pressed together.
“Fuck, Danny, we stop now or we’re seeing this to the end, I swear to God -”
“Don’t plan on stopping, Steven. Don’t want to stop. Did you bring beer?”
“Huh? Oh. No. Sorry. Why? I mean - what?”
“You’ll need one after I’m done with you.”
"Danny," Steve whines reproachfully, beyond coherent, clutching at Danny's hips as Danny presses a string of kisses down his neck, the barest flashes of tongue peeking out at the most unexpected moments. It makes Steve's blood sing in his veins, makes his vision blur and his fingers tighten on Danny's skin, nails digging in. Danny grunts a little, presses closer.
Steve's knees give out the very moment Danny's fingers close around his cock, still covered by his pants.
"Whoa, whoa, hey, Jesus, McGarrett, you weigh a ton, come on, work with me here, the couch is like a foot behind you," Danny grumbles, but his grip is sure at Steve's sides, and his strong arms curl around his body like they were made for it. The backs of Steve's knees hit the couch and he folds right into it, helpless and desperate and undone by the feel of warm skin slipping against his.
"How is it that you walk around half-naked all the time, but the second I want you that way, that shirt is clinging to you like it's going out of fashion?" Danny mutters into Steve's dumbstruck silence, tugging at the hem of his top. Steve lifts his arms obediently, and Danny tugs it deftly over his head. "Touching makes you pliant. Who knew?" he teases gently even as Steve leans up and fits their lips together like he's dying for it.
Danny opens for him easily, like he, too, is dying for Steve's tongue in his mouth. He dips his head without Steve having to ask, angles his neck so that their noses press together sweetly as they kiss and kiss and kiss. Steve makes a broken sound at the back of his throat as his hands slide over Danny's shoulders, when their chests slip together slick with Danny's sweat, when Danny pushes between his legs and arranges him so their bodies align from shoulder to groin. His breath stutters when Steve pushes up helplessly into his weight, when Steve's hands bury themselves into Danny's hair and their bodies start moving like they've been doing this all their lives.
Danny's fingers slide to Steve's belt, sure and firm on the leather as they pull it out of the hoops. Steve's breath hitches when they brush against his belly, teasing at the fine hairs of his happy trail.
"Oh, God, please," he gasps breathlessly when Danny reaches for his zip and tugs it down carefully.
"Jesus, you're killing me here," Danny grunts when Steve's hands latch onto his hips and start pulling down his shorts. They snag on Danny's cock, thick and hard as it bounces a little with the pressure. Danny groans harshly, fingers scrabbling at the elastic of Steve's boxer briefs, and then Steve's free, too, and Danny goes right for the prize, curls nimble fingers around Steve's length, and Steve loses his mind a little.
“Fuck, fuck fuck,” Steve feels the words come out of his mouth more than he hears them, blood rushing through his veins and beating to the rhythm of Danny Danny Danny loudly in his ears, drowning everything else. Danny grunts again, in the crook of Steve’s neck before he bends his back and licks at a nipple, making Steve arch and cry out, fingers tightening in Danny’s hair.
“Sensitive nipples, duly noted,” Danny breathes against them, and Steve squirms with the feel of it.
He would really love to retaliate, but Danny is strong and compact over him, restraining his movements - he could easily change positions if he really wanted to, but he doesn’t want it that much, not when he drags his fingers down Danny’s back, collecting sweat in the dimples just above his ass, reaching further down and groping, just because he can, just because he’s dreamed of running the pads of his thumbs over the silky soft skin of Danny’s ass for months. And Danny pushes into it, too, groaning lightly and biting on Steve’s nipple, twin moans echoing in the mostly empty room.
“God, babe, you and your kinks, I’m going to have so much fun.”
Danny pushes his hips forward when he straightens up, grabbing the hair at the back of Steve’s head and making him look up, too, their eyes boring into each other for a moment before Danny pulls Steve into a bruising kiss and changes his grip on Steve’s cock, pushing his own along and closing his hand around both their erections, slick, sensitive skin sliding together in a way that is certainly going to be Steve’s death. He can feel Danny smiling into the kiss but Steve can’t reciprocate, one of his hands flexing and relaxing around Danny’s ass and the other lost in Danny’s hair in a grip that is bound to hurt, but Steve has a feeling if Danny minded, he’d know about it.
Danny has never been a fair player, and Steve has never appreciated that more than he does right now, when Danny bites at his bottom lip, tugs on it with sharp white teeth that make Steve see stars just as Danny dips his thumb into the slit of Steve's cock, twisting just right, Steve has maybe enough time to feel his eyes cross before he's shooting all over Danny's front, hips stuttering and pushing his cock further into Danny's fist, coating both of them in come.
"Fuck, Steve," Danny groans when Steve's fingers tighten reflexively on his ass cheek, middle finger dipping further and pressing firmly at his entrance. Danny bows his head, his whole body tightening as he lets Steve's softening cock slip from his grip and uses the rest of Steve's come as a filthy kind of lube, stroking himself in frantic tugs until he's spilling with a strangled yell, ropes of come mixing with those on Steve's belly. Danny's other hand comes up and rubs the mess in, like he's marking him, branding him for Danny's use only, the only one allowed to see him like this, to reduce him to this quivering mess of loosened limbs and shaky stomach muscles as Steve drags in breath after panting breath.
Danny's been holding himself up off Steve's body with one arm locked on the couch's back, but it gives way now and he sprawls onto Steve's spreadeagled shape, tucking his face into Steve's neck and sucks in air as fast as his lungs will let him.
"I always said you'd be the death of me," he murmurs into Steve's skin, and Steve can't help it -- it starts as a huff of amusement, graduates to chuckles that he can't hold in until he's laughing full-out, a little hysterically, because if Danny thought Steve would be the death of him, Steve cannot even conceive of what Danny will be to him.
"You are such a goof," Danny says fondly, but he's laughing a little, too, curling forward around Steve's shaking body until Steve can feel the minute tremble of Danny's muscles as he tries to pull himself together.
Steve's still chuckling when he starts poking at Danny's side, harassing him until Danny looks up at him suspiciously. "I hear there's a perfectly good bed somewhere in this house. Surely you don't want to spend another night on a pull-out sofa?" Steve cajoles.
"You're way more comfortable to sleep on than a pull-out," Danny grumbles, but complies, pushing off Steve with a faint sucking sound of their skin unglueing. They make their way to the bedroom without closing doors or setting any alarms - Steve is pretty sure that Danny hasn’t installed one yet anyway. He’d take a shower, but the sticky sweaty disgusting mess he is right now makes him feel good about himself, makes his legs tremble a little as he walks - it’s a good feeling, and he’s not quite ready to let go of it yet.
Danny’s new mattress is a little hard but the sheets are soft, crisp clean, and Steve sinks in with a delighted sigh, muscles aching pleasantly. Danny grunts with surprise when Steve pulls him close, back to chest, Steve’s nose nuzzling the back of Danny’s neck.
“Oh, and you’re a cuddler, now? I learn things about you every day, McGarrett.”
“Shh, sleep.”
Danny grumbles some more, incoherent and irrelevant when he relaxes into Steve’s touch and slides his hand over the one Steve has slung over his hip. Steve only falls asleep when Danny’s light snores lull him into it, a smile on his lips and a content feeling in his heart.
--
Danny opens his eyes muzzily, aware that while it's warm enough for him to have company, only the scent of Steve lingers on the sheets, and his bed is empty of its other occupant. Danny would be worried, but he knew what he was getting himself into, and he has a few suspicions as to where his partner has disappeared to.
He pushes off the bed, unsticking the sheet from skin covered in a rather vile mixture of sweat and spunk that nevertheless makes him feel pretty serene, pads naked and barefoot to the window facing the ocean and peers out into the unsurprisingly sunny day to see a dark dot moving swiftly out through the waves. Apparently Steve doesn't care whose private beach he's swimming out of, as long as he gets to stick to his morning routine. Just this once, though, Danny kind of wishes he’d let himself off, that Danny could have woken up with Steve's body and his limbs wrapped around him, and pretended not to snuggle back into Steve's chest.
Then again, Steve wouldn't be Steve if he didn't pander to his first love -- the ocean.
Danny takes the time alone to take a cool shower, wash last night's adventures off his skin and pull on a pair of cotton boxer-briefs for propriety's sake as he potters down to the kitchen to get his first cup of coffee for the day. He unpacked the coffee machine last night, but it's still sitting forlornly in the corner of the kitchen, waiting for him to find it a new spot. He lifts it gently and plops it right in the centre of the counter, next to the wall socket which he plugs it in. The machine gurgles doubtfully for a few moments before he fills the tank with water and presses the 'on' button, whereupon there's a hiss of contentment from the back of it and the light flashes green. He takes his time getting his packet of ground Kona out of the cupboard where he stashed it last night, and packs it into the filter, slotting it in place. Then he pokes his head in the fridge until the water boils and he can finally press the 'coffee now please' button that has its picture outline almost rubbed out from repeated use.
There's not all that much in the fridge, food-wise, but he did get some eggs yesterday, and he'd better not hear one derogatory word from Steve on the subject, or he can scramble them himself. He heats the hob and plops a pan over the top, dicing a knob of butter into it to coat the base. Meanwhile, he beats the eggs into a bowl, adds salt and pepper and a little bit of thyme (must remember to buy a fresh pot) and lets the mixture swirl into the sizzling butter. He pokes at it with a spatula until the eggs are scrambled, cooked but still fluffy, and divides them onto two plates. He turns off the hob, places the plates onto the kitchen table, fetches his now perfectly brewed coffee, throws the back door open and settles in to wait. By the looks of it, Steve is headed back, but he can't be sure how long it will take him.
He kind of hopes he'll be able to come up with a timeframe in the coming weeks-months-years. And if that's a sappy kind of thought, well. He doesn't mind too much.
His eyes drift to the punching bag by his side, and he leans a hand on it, the cool leather fresh against his skin. All the memories of his past had rushed back the evening before when he found it there, knowing right away that it was Steve’s doing. He knows he should have minded, spared a thought for the fact that Steve walked into his space without permission, without even asking, but he didn’t. He’s never knocked before walking into Steve’s space, he just did, took a place that used to be empty and made himself comfortable into Steve’s life, adding his baby girl to the mix, involving Steve in their lives along with it. It’s only fair Steve could walk in just as freely now - Danny refuses to think about Steve walking out.
His arms and knuckles are still a bit sore from the heavy workout he'd dived into the day before, the gloves he’d been wearing keeping the skin from breaking but not keeping the memories from flooding in, and definitely not keeping the muscles from becoming sore. It felt good, though, it felt so fucking good, pent-up frustration and anger and helplessness leaving his body and mind as he punched the bag as hard and skillfully as he used to, years ago. Steve had broken open a dam with those pictures and the punching bag and his faces, too - Danny can still see him say I’m convenient, and it still makes him angry - but Danny is controlling the flow now.
The rest, Danny doesn’t really think about. He could have seen signs coming from a million miles away that this would happen, that the two of them were two cars going at high speed towards each other, and he could have known a crash would happen. He’d artfully avoided giving it much thought until he’d seen the way Steve was looking at him as he was working out, and then he couldn’t ignore it anymore. His stomach lights itself on fire as he thinks about it now, sipping his coffee slowly, forcing himself to stay calm and not run through the beach to join Steve in the water and maybe test how long Steve can stay underwater.
Coffee finished, Danny leaves the cup by his side and stretches, joints popping and muscles aching in a delightful way as he tilts his head back to the sun, moaning to himself. When he blinks his eyes open again he sees Steve walking towards him, shaking his head like a wet puppy, his swimming shorts clinging to him, riding up over his thighs.
“Morning.”
Steve drips all over Danny as he leans in and kisses him lightly, apparently just because he can do it, and Danny grumbles.
“Get away from me, you sea creature, you didn’t even have coffee, you’re not human I swear to God you’re not. Breakfast is cold now, I hope you’re happy.”
“You made breakfast?”
“I made eggs. I don’t want to hear one word, I'm warning you.”
"Okay, Danny," Steve says, deceptively agreeable as he crowds Danny back into the wall and presses the entire wet length of his body to Danny's. He finds Danny's mouth with his lips, nips gentle kisses along until Danny capitulates and opens to him with a groan of frustration, hands tightening on Steve's hips and pulling him in until there are no spaces left between them. If Danny has anything to say about it, that's the way it will be between them from now on.
"Would you be terribly angry if we left the eggs for later?" Steve murmurs against his lips, hips sliding insidiously against Danny's.
"Fuck the eggs," Danny groans, and pulls him closer.
Turns out the sandbag has another perfectly good use that for some strange reason no one publicises much; to wit, acting as something to brace against as one person wraps their legs around the other's waist and fights for breath.
"I guess I'll have to find another way to say 'thank you'," Danny says, much later, as he leans into Steve's side while passing him a fresh cup of coffee.
"Huh?" Steve says; the forehead wrinkled in confusion is disgustingly endearing.
"The eggs. They were meant to be a 'thank you' breakfast, for the sandbag."
Steve makes a pained face; Danny just knows he's thinking of ways to say 'that was a nice thought', and also 'your eggs as a 'thank you' gesture, really, Danny?' He gets an obscene amount of satisfaction from watching Steve flounder until Steve cottons on to what Danny's up to.
After that, well -- it's all fair play.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2011-05-19 05:45 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-05-19 06:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-19 06:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-19 06:04 pm (UTC)I LOVED THIS SFM. *scatters confetti hearts all over this post*
:D
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Date: 2011-05-19 06:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-05-19 06:26 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-05-19 07:51 pm (UTC)I very much needed a healthy dose of pining!Steve today. and all his thoughts on "just being convenient" and pushing into Danny's life with the hopes of getting a little back..shit, woman. You're killing me with awesome here.
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Date: 2011-05-19 07:56 pm (UTC)I know, right?
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Date: 2011-05-19 09:32 pm (UTC)Totally adored this x
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Date: 2011-05-20 05:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-05-20 12:08 am (UTC)whew!
that was so what I needed .
you guys rock!
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Date: 2011-05-20 05:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 12:14 am (UTC)ALSO, WHY I DIDN'T KNOW THE FIRST AND THE LAST PICTURE ? THAT WHAT WAS MISSING FROM MY LIFE
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Date: 2011-05-20 05:49 am (UTC)ahahah those pictures, they make me so happy inside.
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Date: 2011-05-20 12:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 05:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 01:01 am (UTC)Guysss, this was so perfect! Pining!Self-depreciating!Steve is one of my fave-y fave things ever. Gah, gah, the "I'm convenient" line just about killed me. Ohgod, Steveee. You are not. And god, the image of Danny and the punching bag and sweating through his shirt and all the hot, sexy stuff that followed, just. Ugh.
I love thisss. You guys are amazing. ♥
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Date: 2011-05-20 05:51 am (UTC)That convenient line, lol,
Those images of Danny are happily living in my head FOREVER.
♥♥!!!
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Date: 2011-05-20 01:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 05:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-05-20 01:30 am (UTC)I have a thing for boxers so OMG Danno beating the crap out of that sandbag did things to me.
OH Steve, you pining adorable goof :')
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Date: 2011-05-20 05:52 am (UTC)Steve, I have all the hearts for him there, he was so much fun to write :').
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Date: 2011-05-20 01:50 am (UTC)Brava!
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Date: 2011-05-20 05:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-05-20 03:21 am (UTC)It was so sweet and cuddly (for them) and then the HAWT sex Jeez.
Death by reading is truly possible.
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Date: 2011-05-20 05:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-05-20 04:38 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-05-20 10:03 am (UTC)You did a fantastic job with the characterization, for serious the voices were perfect. The banter and the bitching and their suddenly serious heart-to-hearts were all spot-on. I love how boxer!Danny turns Steve's head into a mushy lust-filled lump of reptilian brain. I love Steve doing ALL OF THESE RIDICULOUS THINGS for Danny, finding him a house and buying a punching bag for him and ninjaing into his house when he's not looking. I love Danny looking at Steve's ridiculous faces and finally seeing what they mean, finally realizing what this all means to Steve.
I love a lot of the little details, too... like the whole bit where the coffee maker gets anthropromorphized.
TEN THUMBS UP, EVEN IF IT MEANS I HAVE TO BORROW FROM THE ZOMBIES AGAIN! ♥
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Date: 2011-05-20 10:17 am (UTC)The coffee maker bit made me so gleeful when
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