i need to figure out a late night story post icon
Fell asleep on my laptop with all my gdocs open watching South Park like a boss; woke up with this in my head. Reverse insomnia, what? I have got to stop doing this.
They're partners first, so it's partner knowledge, winding tendrils of it, drawing them together. It's the same everywhere, the way that grows--trust, rooted firm, because to take a bullet for a guy you have to know him, deep, intrinsic. Danny says things to Steve he wouldn't have said to Rachel, adrenaline high and busted-bare low, drunk on good beer and shit coffee and staying alive. He tells Steve things Steve hasn't earned, gets a rough tide of memories in response, and they build that way, repaving uneven ground. It's how this works, and maybe Danny wants to push some boundaries but even McGarrett knows these rules; trust your partner, watch your partner, don't let your partner fall. It's easy when everything else isn't. It's there, when everything else is gone.
Steve loads the dishwasher the wrong way and sucks cock like he's trying to win something; this isn't partner knowledge, but Danny has it even so. It slips in, nestling in grooves and chinks, things they've learned but didn't say--Danny takes the first shower, Steve sleeps on the side closest to the door. They piece it together by accident, mostly, and sometimes Danny looks up from his paperwork and knows better, knows that he should stop learning Steve this way, should step back and let it lie. But it's too late, because he already knows the way Steve's face would crumple and freeze, the way his own heart would never give up the ghost.
Someday, when Steve's gone gray and Danny's gone bald, they're gonna have weird memories. They're gonna mix up remember that time we fucked under the stars with remember that time we fucked up the case; they're gonna mix up cheating at Scrabble with cheating death, and be worse off for it. Partner knowledge has no place mixing with the other kind, the kind you're supposed to give freely, co-construct--it's a dangerous game, could kill them or get them killed.
But then Steve grins at him from the driver's seat, all reckless abandon and something like regret, like he's sorry already for what he's about to say. And Danny knows: they're too far gone to make any difference anyway, because he doesn't even mind. There's a right way and a wrong way to learn you partner and he's done both, read McGarrett upside down and backwards, wandered the halls of Steve long after closing time; there's a right way and a wrong way to fall in love, and he's done neither, winding down a stranger path instead.
"No," he says, "whatever you're thinking of, no," and Steve laughs, head thrown back, fingers loose.
"You know me too well," he says, and Danny thinks You have no idea, only Steve's eyes are sharp, scared, too fond, and hell, maybe he does.
They're partners first, so it's partner knowledge, winding tendrils of it, drawing them together. It's the same everywhere, the way that grows--trust, rooted firm, because to take a bullet for a guy you have to know him, deep, intrinsic. Danny says things to Steve he wouldn't have said to Rachel, adrenaline high and busted-bare low, drunk on good beer and shit coffee and staying alive. He tells Steve things Steve hasn't earned, gets a rough tide of memories in response, and they build that way, repaving uneven ground. It's how this works, and maybe Danny wants to push some boundaries but even McGarrett knows these rules; trust your partner, watch your partner, don't let your partner fall. It's easy when everything else isn't. It's there, when everything else is gone.
Steve loads the dishwasher the wrong way and sucks cock like he's trying to win something; this isn't partner knowledge, but Danny has it even so. It slips in, nestling in grooves and chinks, things they've learned but didn't say--Danny takes the first shower, Steve sleeps on the side closest to the door. They piece it together by accident, mostly, and sometimes Danny looks up from his paperwork and knows better, knows that he should stop learning Steve this way, should step back and let it lie. But it's too late, because he already knows the way Steve's face would crumple and freeze, the way his own heart would never give up the ghost.
Someday, when Steve's gone gray and Danny's gone bald, they're gonna have weird memories. They're gonna mix up remember that time we fucked under the stars with remember that time we fucked up the case; they're gonna mix up cheating at Scrabble with cheating death, and be worse off for it. Partner knowledge has no place mixing with the other kind, the kind you're supposed to give freely, co-construct--it's a dangerous game, could kill them or get them killed.
But then Steve grins at him from the driver's seat, all reckless abandon and something like regret, like he's sorry already for what he's about to say. And Danny knows: they're too far gone to make any difference anyway, because he doesn't even mind. There's a right way and a wrong way to learn you partner and he's done both, read McGarrett upside down and backwards, wandered the halls of Steve long after closing time; there's a right way and a wrong way to fall in love, and he's done neither, winding down a stranger path instead.
"No," he says, "whatever you're thinking of, no," and Steve laughs, head thrown back, fingers loose.
"You know me too well," he says, and Danny thinks You have no idea, only Steve's eyes are sharp, scared, too fond, and hell, maybe he does.