IDK fic.
Since literally everyone in the world has written a coda to 2.10 I figure I can just post this here and not make a fuss about it.
Title: Mine for the Taking and the Caretaking
Fandom: Hawaii Five-0
Pairing: Steve/Danny
Rating: R for language
Word Count: ~3.5k
Summary: Steve needs a hot meal, a massage, and eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, and he needs it now. [...] Luckily for everyone, Danny is a father. The first six years of Gracie's life was a crash course in how to get someone cute but unbelievably stubborn to eat, sleep, and calm the hell down.
Steve emerges from the hospital all juiced up on fluids, naps from being so bored he would text Danny sixteen messages in four minutes before suddenly dropping off, and a B-12 shot into his left butt cheek that Danny had unfortunately not been present to witness. After a forty-eight hour beating at the hands of a criminal mastermind in North fucking Korea, he walks out of a Hawaiian hospital three days later under his own power and has the gall to look pretty good.
"You're some kind of army medical experiment, aren't you?" Danny says, leaning back against the hood of his Camero, slight sting to his palms from the sun-hot metal. "They injected you with some super serum like in Captain America that makes you heal instantly, am I right?"
Steve smiles, and Danny had liked those smiles before, noticed them, commented on them. Even if he did dread the times when they meant Steve was about to do something balls to the wall crazy, they were nice. That was all. But then Danny had thought that the only smiles he'd ever see again would be the ones captured in the handful of photographs the team had ever managed to take without Steve's realizing there was a camera on him. After that little moment of frantic regret Steve smiling has been pushed into a category reserved for when Danny's daughter hugged him, or Rachel was tender with him for longer than thirty seconds. In short, it was something that turned Danny into spineless goo.
"I'm not a medical experiment and if I was I wouldn't be an army experiment," Steve grouses.
"Navy, whatever," Danny says rolling his eyes. "Get in the car."
Maybe he should have known something was up when Steve didn't even complain once about not driving, but he was too happy to be looking over and seeing the Hawaiian sun shining on Steve's skin to notice.
~~~
It takes a week, one week- and not even a full calendar week, no, just a working week, five days -for Steve to undo all the good work from the hospital stay. The slow descent from bruised-but-rested to flat out exhausted starts Tuesday. Next thing Danny knows Steve's got bags under his eyes that could get Rachel packed to and from her Mum's in Manchester for a week's visit, with extra outfits. Every day at three, like clock work, Steve gets crabby and irritable like Grace when she needs a nap and a cookie. But does Steve take this as a cue to stop, slow down, and take it easy? No. He barrels through to six o' clock through sheer will and blind determination. By Thursday Danny's all but convinced Steve's lost a little weight. He's been trying all week to get him to go out to lunch, but Steve kept insisting there was some bit of a case to work that needs catching up on, some lead that needs chasing.
"I'll grab something on the way," he promises every time.
Danny doesn't particularly like being lied to, but even though his knee-jerk reaction is to call bullshit and force the issue, Steve is a big boy and a proud one. Danny has to be willing to monitor things quietly and let it ride. Even if it is kind of an insult, considering that they all risked life and limb to get Steve back in one living, breathing, fully functioning piece. Saying something wouldn't be keeping up the status quo. What Steve seems to desperately want is a return to normality and Danny is willing to allow him that.
Willing at least, until on Friday afternoon he sees a slight tremor in Steve's hands. A god damned tremor in a former sniper's hands. Steve needs a hot meal, a massage, and eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, and he needs it now. Possibly he needs a few minutes of solid catharsis thrown in there, too. Danny can live with letting that one item on the list go. True, their medical benefits covered mental health, and Danny's anger management issues were very glad for it, but it didn't cover the security detail it would probably take to get Steve alone in the same room with a therapist. But the rest of it, the meal, the massage and the sleep, is now non-negotiable.
Luckily for everyone, Danny is a father. The first six years of Gracie's life was a crash course in how to get someone cute but unbelievably stubborn to eat, sleep, and calm the hell down.
Come five o' clock he knocks on Steve's door with a sharp rap of his knuckles, "Hey."
Steve's goes rigid at the noise, and Danny wants to kick his own shin for not thinking about the effect a surprise loud noise could have on a guy who watched a team member get shot in front of him. Instead he says "hey" again, a little softer this time. It takes a while, but least some of Steve's tension melts from his shoulders.
"Hey," Steve says back; three little letters imbued with far too much exhuastion. So much exhaustion that Danny is forced to think of words like 'imbued' like a stooge. "Need something?"
"Yeah, I do," Danny says. "I've decided that right now nothing on this planet would make me happier than a steak and a beer. So I need that. How about you?" Meat and beer. It would be downright un-American for G.I. Joe to refuse.
"I could go for a steak," Steve allows.
"Beautiful, because I was planning on using your grill. Not to mention your meat." Upon realizing he's just said he wants to use Steve's meat, Danny has to bite the inside of his cheek to suppress a reaction more appropriate to a thirteen year old boy.
"That's so?" The corner of Steve's lips quirk up, showing he didn't miss the slip up either. It's good, better than the pinched look he'd been wearing all day. But it's just a prelude to the smile Danny hopes to work out of him before the end of the night. A before-shock to the 8.6 on the smile Richter scale Danny is planning on triggering.
"That is so," he says, spreading his hands. "But I'm planning on bringing the beer. So, it evens out, right?" Steve looks skeptical but willing and that's all Danny needs to get started.
He tosses Steve the keys to the Camero, and the hand that catches it is almost steady.
~~~
Danny spends the next hour talking about the juicy, sexy perfection that red meat can attain when done right and his own ravenous anticipation of it. It's a trick he used to use on Gracie as a toddler only with vegetables. It is decidedly easier extolling the virtues of prime rib rather of peas and carrots, because Danny does in fact love a good steak. And the more he talks it up, saying things like, "you don't move fast enough and I'm going to end up eating yours as well," and "what you never grilled a tomato with your steak? That's sad. You gotta try it- little salt and pepper and you're going to die," the more pressure is off Steve to find the will to eat on his own.
Luckily, whatever roadblocks Steve's mind is putting up against eating, at the first taste of seared beef, steak fries, and tomato Steve's stomach stages a coup and starts giving the orders. In little more than twenty minutes, Steve's plate was clean and he was responsible for about four inches of bread disappearing from the Italian loaf Danny'd grabbed with the beer.
Danny knocks one thing off the list and starts on the next. He stops talking, lets them just sit in silence and digest. Grilling out on the lanai had turned into eating out on the lanai, and they were currently being treated to a saltwater breeze and one of Hawaii's infuriatingly perfect evening skies. Steve's thousand-yard stare is tuned out to the ocean, taking it in without comment. As for Danny, he has his back to the ocean, preferring as he did to take in Steve as surreptitiously as possible, loving the way his slight squint brought out his cheekbones, and the natural purse to his lips, red from when he'd licked them clean.
When his own stomach has settled happily, he drains his bottle and stands up. "Hey, you want another beer? I'm going."
Steve glances away from the horizon, tips his chin up slightly to meet Danny's gaze. There's a moment before he nods. A moment in both senses of the word: a very brief period of time, and an exact point in time. A point in time when there's something on Steve's face that Danny can almost but not quite identify, and everything all the likely suspects of what it could be are big. Big four letter words like want, and need, and that one Danny had once promised he was never ever going to use again about a person he wasn't related to by blood. But it's just a moment, brief and then it's gone when Steve nods, saying "Yeah, I'll have another."
Danny steps inside the house, and heads for the kitchen, moving about Steve's home with ease. After a year of stopping by, two crime scenes, and thirteen nights spent splitting his nights between the guest bedroom and the couch so he could listen to the TV over the waves, it was the most familiar place to him on the island besides HQ. Danny's got a new place again, trying to build up a home from scratch for the third time. At night the noises of the house, the cars on the street still seem strange, still put him on high alert. Here he knows which drawers contain silverware, the bottle opener, and the twist ties, knows the toilet in the hall bathroom needs an extra jiggle to stop it running, and which floor boards in the study creak when Steve gets up to go for his morning banzai warm-up of a swim and a run. Grace knows the house on sight, loves the little beach, and the forgotten collection of Mary's barbie dolls she found in a hall closet.
He opens the fridge and the weight of the door feels right in his hands, sighs, and tells himself he'll have that again, that rightness. He's just got to be patient.
He comes back two bottles in hand and presses one to the back of Steve's neck like tonight is about football on TV, or patting themselves on the back about a takedown. Steve jerks, and swipes a hand back at Danny.
"Sorry," he says, deftly avoiding Steve's hand and setting the bottles down on the patio table. "Couldn't help it. Not often you get so zoned I get to rag on you." He smooths a hand down Steve's neck like he's wiping off the condensation in apology. "Jeez," he says. "You made of stone or concrete?"
Steve's shoulders shift uncomfortably under his hand, but Danny pays it no mind. If Steve wanted his hand off, he would shake it off. Or break it accidentally. He squeezes Steve's shoulder in a manner as much like buddies as possible and Steve lets him.
"I take it back, you're clearly 100% titanium. Okay, this a life or death situation, here, c'mere." He pushes on Steve's shoulders, forcing him to lean forward away from the back of the chair.
"What? What are you doing?" Steve asks but it's a rote protest. He's already moving under Danny's hands, resting his elbows on his knees.
"What am I doing? You remember who you're talking to here? The mother of my child is a woman who wouldn't understand the concept of suffering in silence if you drew her a diagram. I know how to give a back rub." Danny commences doing just that, digging his thumbs into the tangled mass of steel cable in Steve's shoulders and neck that were supposed to be supple muscle. "So just sit tight and lemme fix this before you throw your back out picking up a pillow. Jeez, can't even do something nice without the third degree."
Steve would probably have said something smart-mouthed back if he hadn't been so busy clenching his teeth against a satisfied groan. Danny isn't doing his job just right if Steve is capable of clenching anything, so he puts a little more of his weight into it. Five minutes later, the skin under Danny's hand is pinking up with blood flow and Steve's neck was hanging limp between his shoulders. The running tally on pleased grunts and moans is up to four, then five.
It's close to fully dark out across the ocean, the only light now coming from the porch light and a slim triangle from the light Danny had left on in the kitchen. While he moves his hands down Steve's shoulder, Danny tries to work out the easiest way to get him up the stairs to his bedroom, or maybe just on the couch. It isn't worth doing all of this if after he leaves Steve stays up until three in the morning cleaning his guns, knives, and bayonets. That's one detail that made this type of thing with Grace so easy. When she passed out nothing short of a natural disaster was going to wake her up and it was nothing to scoop her up and move her to her bed for the night. Danny understands the physics of a fireman's carry but he isn't a big fan of the idea of putting it into practice.
Steve rumbles deep in his chest as Danny pushes the heel of his palm up along his spine. "See, babe, that's better, right?"
Danny smiles, knowing Steve can't see him, and pats Steve's back in a there-there gesture. To his surprise Steve reaches back and grabs his hand, and Danny holds his breath, waiting.
Steve doesn't turn to look at Danny, doesn't move his hand or Danny's, just says "You don't have to joke about it," like it's something he's confessing.
"Who's joking?"
"I'm just saying I-" Steve starts off like he's ripping off a band-aid and it takes everything Danny has in him to stay still and quiet. Fifteen excuses are ready as to why Steve's got the wrong idea, but Danny's got good instincts and they're telling him to shut the hell up right now. "I want this, too," Steve says to the ocean.
Danny takes a deep breath, in and out. "Want what?"
"The-" another false start. Steve shakes his head a little and tries again, "The stuff you're trying to sneak in under the radar tonight."
Danny almost sighs in relief. All he wanted tonight was for Steve to take care of himself.
"Evidence would seem to be to the contrary. If you wanted something other than protein bars and cat naps why didn't you bother before today?"
Steve licks his lips and swallows delicately like the words he's trying to say are made of glass or highly combustible chemicals. "I'm not talking about dinner. I mean, I am. I want dinner, I want you here when you want to be here, I want this-" he squeezes Danny's hand, presses it down against his shoulder. His thumb slowly works it's way between Danny's palm and his shoulder and it's almost like they're holding hands.
"All of it. With you," Steve stops again, resting like every word is a sprint. "I'm happiest when I'm at work. You know why?"
"The high potential for explosives and round house kicks?"
"I told you you don't have to joke," Steve says. Danny sucks In a breath at a sudden wash of guilt over him. He squeezes the shoulder under his hand in apology, curling his fingers around Steve's thumb.
"It's because I don't have to do it alone. I thought I-" Steve just shuts down and looks out over the ocean like he had never even spoke.
"What?" Danny prompts. "You thought what?"
"That I could manage without. I think I used to- manage, you know, but even if I could, now I-"
"You don't have to." And thank God, because that means Danny doesn't have to do without, either, and he's been doing without for way too long. Eating cold pizza over the sink because no one else in the world except Steve is up at two am on a Tuesday. Fold out beds, satisfyingly large beds, and pathetic hotel beds all seem the same when they're empty. Having something happen and his first thought is, 'I've gotta call Steve' followed by a second guess.
"Steve," he says. Danny's not stupid, he knows what a relationship is and isn't. It's work and it's hard and it's fighting and it yet it's also easily the best thing about a day, knowing you can come home and there's someone there that knows you. Lately Danny has realized that he's been saying goodbye to that feeling every time he drops Steve off after work. If he doesn't have to, if he can just have, his heart is already racing at the very idea.
Steve looks up, and look on his face is completely zen. Here Danny was thinking that pain, kidnapping, and torture were the things weighing heavy on Steve's mind and instead it was this, and now this was out in the open and Danny could knock another thing off his list of the care and feeding of Steve McGarrett.
"So," Danny says, grasping feebly under the weight of Steve's gaze. "We're doing this."
"Yeah," Steve says.
"Okay, um," Danny says pointlessly. He squeezes Steve's hand again, tugs on it. "Get up. I'm not doing this for the first time Spiderman-style."
"Spiderman-style?" Steve says getting up from his chair and turning and this was supposed to be seamless and easy. Flip of the switch, grab him and go. But it's like Steve keeps standing up, up and up until he's looming over Danny like some six-foot tall, tan, sexy mountain. Danny finds himself shifting on his feet, heart pounding and his head swimming like he's got vertigo.
"You waiting for anything in particular, Danny?" Steve asks, smug, because of course he is. Steve jumps out of planes without a thought, so this is nothing, except it's everything.
"Yeah, just waiting to see if this heart attack is gonna kill me."
"Heart attack or panic attack?" Steve's broad hand settles over Danny's heart like he can feel it beating through Danny's flesh and bone and 100% cotton. It helps, a point of a connection. His feet is on the ground, Steve's hand is on his chest, he can do this. He lifts his hands up to Steve's shoulders, and- God help him -pushes up onto his toes as Steve leans down.
It's amazing. Not the kiss itself. The kiss on it's own is just two guys a little out of their depth, familiar and strange, it starts too hard, then too soft when they both try to pull back. But it's still amazing because he can do that now, kiss Steve. Pandora's box is open, everything's been let out in the wild, this is something they have done. Can do again. Steve can cross his arms over the bend in Danny's back, pull him snug against him and Danny can part their lips with his tongue and they can figure out the way that works for them, and the third try really is the charm. Freaking amazing. Please God, let them do it all the time, in fact Danny would prefer they never, ever stop. So much so that he chases Steve's mouth as he pulls away, holds onto the kiss until he has to concede the limitation of his (perfectly adequate but not exactly generous) height.
He's feeling a little goofy, heavy lidded eyes and loose limbs, when he mumbles, tugging at Steve's neck, "Hey, c'mon," at the loss of contact.
Steve stands firm, smiles down at him, and it's not an 8.6 on the smile Richter scale, it's an 11. Catastrophic. It take the last bit of Danny's guilt and concern pulverizes it to dust. In it's place is this new awesome thing. This kissing thing, this together thing. Steve is his for the taking and for the caretaking.
"C'mon," Danny says again, grabbing a fistful of gray polo tee. "I'm gonna put you to bed,
okay?"
"You gonna be in this bed, Danny?" Steve asks, looming again in the best way.
"No, I'm gonna kiss your forehead after I tuck you in and leave. Of course, I'm gonna be in it. And I'm gonna hold you down and keep you there for the next ten hours." Danny doesn't miss the hot little bit of intrigue that flickers across Steve's face at the words "hold you down." Nor does he miss his own answering spark of arousal.
"Promise?" It's a joke, maybe, but Steve said they didn't have to joke anymore. Promise is another one of those big words, when you think about it, just like want and need and the one they haven't said yet.
"Yeah," he says, voice rough and soft. Danny pulls Steve down for another kiss, slipping in the words "yeah, I do" just before their lips meet for good measure.
Title: Mine for the Taking and the Caretaking
Fandom: Hawaii Five-0
Pairing: Steve/Danny
Rating: R for language
Word Count: ~3.5k
Summary: Steve needs a hot meal, a massage, and eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, and he needs it now. [...] Luckily for everyone, Danny is a father. The first six years of Gracie's life was a crash course in how to get someone cute but unbelievably stubborn to eat, sleep, and calm the hell down.
Steve emerges from the hospital all juiced up on fluids, naps from being so bored he would text Danny sixteen messages in four minutes before suddenly dropping off, and a B-12 shot into his left butt cheek that Danny had unfortunately not been present to witness. After a forty-eight hour beating at the hands of a criminal mastermind in North fucking Korea, he walks out of a Hawaiian hospital three days later under his own power and has the gall to look pretty good.
"You're some kind of army medical experiment, aren't you?" Danny says, leaning back against the hood of his Camero, slight sting to his palms from the sun-hot metal. "They injected you with some super serum like in Captain America that makes you heal instantly, am I right?"
Steve smiles, and Danny had liked those smiles before, noticed them, commented on them. Even if he did dread the times when they meant Steve was about to do something balls to the wall crazy, they were nice. That was all. But then Danny had thought that the only smiles he'd ever see again would be the ones captured in the handful of photographs the team had ever managed to take without Steve's realizing there was a camera on him. After that little moment of frantic regret Steve smiling has been pushed into a category reserved for when Danny's daughter hugged him, or Rachel was tender with him for longer than thirty seconds. In short, it was something that turned Danny into spineless goo.
"I'm not a medical experiment and if I was I wouldn't be an army experiment," Steve grouses.
"Navy, whatever," Danny says rolling his eyes. "Get in the car."
Maybe he should have known something was up when Steve didn't even complain once about not driving, but he was too happy to be looking over and seeing the Hawaiian sun shining on Steve's skin to notice.
~~~
It takes a week, one week- and not even a full calendar week, no, just a working week, five days -for Steve to undo all the good work from the hospital stay. The slow descent from bruised-but-rested to flat out exhausted starts Tuesday. Next thing Danny knows Steve's got bags under his eyes that could get Rachel packed to and from her Mum's in Manchester for a week's visit, with extra outfits. Every day at three, like clock work, Steve gets crabby and irritable like Grace when she needs a nap and a cookie. But does Steve take this as a cue to stop, slow down, and take it easy? No. He barrels through to six o' clock through sheer will and blind determination. By Thursday Danny's all but convinced Steve's lost a little weight. He's been trying all week to get him to go out to lunch, but Steve kept insisting there was some bit of a case to work that needs catching up on, some lead that needs chasing.
"I'll grab something on the way," he promises every time.
Danny doesn't particularly like being lied to, but even though his knee-jerk reaction is to call bullshit and force the issue, Steve is a big boy and a proud one. Danny has to be willing to monitor things quietly and let it ride. Even if it is kind of an insult, considering that they all risked life and limb to get Steve back in one living, breathing, fully functioning piece. Saying something wouldn't be keeping up the status quo. What Steve seems to desperately want is a return to normality and Danny is willing to allow him that.
Willing at least, until on Friday afternoon he sees a slight tremor in Steve's hands. A god damned tremor in a former sniper's hands. Steve needs a hot meal, a massage, and eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, and he needs it now. Possibly he needs a few minutes of solid catharsis thrown in there, too. Danny can live with letting that one item on the list go. True, their medical benefits covered mental health, and Danny's anger management issues were very glad for it, but it didn't cover the security detail it would probably take to get Steve alone in the same room with a therapist. But the rest of it, the meal, the massage and the sleep, is now non-negotiable.
Luckily for everyone, Danny is a father. The first six years of Gracie's life was a crash course in how to get someone cute but unbelievably stubborn to eat, sleep, and calm the hell down.
Come five o' clock he knocks on Steve's door with a sharp rap of his knuckles, "Hey."
Steve's goes rigid at the noise, and Danny wants to kick his own shin for not thinking about the effect a surprise loud noise could have on a guy who watched a team member get shot in front of him. Instead he says "hey" again, a little softer this time. It takes a while, but least some of Steve's tension melts from his shoulders.
"Hey," Steve says back; three little letters imbued with far too much exhuastion. So much exhaustion that Danny is forced to think of words like 'imbued' like a stooge. "Need something?"
"Yeah, I do," Danny says. "I've decided that right now nothing on this planet would make me happier than a steak and a beer. So I need that. How about you?" Meat and beer. It would be downright un-American for G.I. Joe to refuse.
"I could go for a steak," Steve allows.
"Beautiful, because I was planning on using your grill. Not to mention your meat." Upon realizing he's just said he wants to use Steve's meat, Danny has to bite the inside of his cheek to suppress a reaction more appropriate to a thirteen year old boy.
"That's so?" The corner of Steve's lips quirk up, showing he didn't miss the slip up either. It's good, better than the pinched look he'd been wearing all day. But it's just a prelude to the smile Danny hopes to work out of him before the end of the night. A before-shock to the 8.6 on the smile Richter scale Danny is planning on triggering.
"That is so," he says, spreading his hands. "But I'm planning on bringing the beer. So, it evens out, right?" Steve looks skeptical but willing and that's all Danny needs to get started.
He tosses Steve the keys to the Camero, and the hand that catches it is almost steady.
~~~
Danny spends the next hour talking about the juicy, sexy perfection that red meat can attain when done right and his own ravenous anticipation of it. It's a trick he used to use on Gracie as a toddler only with vegetables. It is decidedly easier extolling the virtues of prime rib rather of peas and carrots, because Danny does in fact love a good steak. And the more he talks it up, saying things like, "you don't move fast enough and I'm going to end up eating yours as well," and "what you never grilled a tomato with your steak? That's sad. You gotta try it- little salt and pepper and you're going to die," the more pressure is off Steve to find the will to eat on his own.
Luckily, whatever roadblocks Steve's mind is putting up against eating, at the first taste of seared beef, steak fries, and tomato Steve's stomach stages a coup and starts giving the orders. In little more than twenty minutes, Steve's plate was clean and he was responsible for about four inches of bread disappearing from the Italian loaf Danny'd grabbed with the beer.
Danny knocks one thing off the list and starts on the next. He stops talking, lets them just sit in silence and digest. Grilling out on the lanai had turned into eating out on the lanai, and they were currently being treated to a saltwater breeze and one of Hawaii's infuriatingly perfect evening skies. Steve's thousand-yard stare is tuned out to the ocean, taking it in without comment. As for Danny, he has his back to the ocean, preferring as he did to take in Steve as surreptitiously as possible, loving the way his slight squint brought out his cheekbones, and the natural purse to his lips, red from when he'd licked them clean.
When his own stomach has settled happily, he drains his bottle and stands up. "Hey, you want another beer? I'm going."
Steve glances away from the horizon, tips his chin up slightly to meet Danny's gaze. There's a moment before he nods. A moment in both senses of the word: a very brief period of time, and an exact point in time. A point in time when there's something on Steve's face that Danny can almost but not quite identify, and everything all the likely suspects of what it could be are big. Big four letter words like want, and need, and that one Danny had once promised he was never ever going to use again about a person he wasn't related to by blood. But it's just a moment, brief and then it's gone when Steve nods, saying "Yeah, I'll have another."
Danny steps inside the house, and heads for the kitchen, moving about Steve's home with ease. After a year of stopping by, two crime scenes, and thirteen nights spent splitting his nights between the guest bedroom and the couch so he could listen to the TV over the waves, it was the most familiar place to him on the island besides HQ. Danny's got a new place again, trying to build up a home from scratch for the third time. At night the noises of the house, the cars on the street still seem strange, still put him on high alert. Here he knows which drawers contain silverware, the bottle opener, and the twist ties, knows the toilet in the hall bathroom needs an extra jiggle to stop it running, and which floor boards in the study creak when Steve gets up to go for his morning banzai warm-up of a swim and a run. Grace knows the house on sight, loves the little beach, and the forgotten collection of Mary's barbie dolls she found in a hall closet.
He opens the fridge and the weight of the door feels right in his hands, sighs, and tells himself he'll have that again, that rightness. He's just got to be patient.
He comes back two bottles in hand and presses one to the back of Steve's neck like tonight is about football on TV, or patting themselves on the back about a takedown. Steve jerks, and swipes a hand back at Danny.
"Sorry," he says, deftly avoiding Steve's hand and setting the bottles down on the patio table. "Couldn't help it. Not often you get so zoned I get to rag on you." He smooths a hand down Steve's neck like he's wiping off the condensation in apology. "Jeez," he says. "You made of stone or concrete?"
Steve's shoulders shift uncomfortably under his hand, but Danny pays it no mind. If Steve wanted his hand off, he would shake it off. Or break it accidentally. He squeezes Steve's shoulder in a manner as much like buddies as possible and Steve lets him.
"I take it back, you're clearly 100% titanium. Okay, this a life or death situation, here, c'mere." He pushes on Steve's shoulders, forcing him to lean forward away from the back of the chair.
"What? What are you doing?" Steve asks but it's a rote protest. He's already moving under Danny's hands, resting his elbows on his knees.
"What am I doing? You remember who you're talking to here? The mother of my child is a woman who wouldn't understand the concept of suffering in silence if you drew her a diagram. I know how to give a back rub." Danny commences doing just that, digging his thumbs into the tangled mass of steel cable in Steve's shoulders and neck that were supposed to be supple muscle. "So just sit tight and lemme fix this before you throw your back out picking up a pillow. Jeez, can't even do something nice without the third degree."
Steve would probably have said something smart-mouthed back if he hadn't been so busy clenching his teeth against a satisfied groan. Danny isn't doing his job just right if Steve is capable of clenching anything, so he puts a little more of his weight into it. Five minutes later, the skin under Danny's hand is pinking up with blood flow and Steve's neck was hanging limp between his shoulders. The running tally on pleased grunts and moans is up to four, then five.
It's close to fully dark out across the ocean, the only light now coming from the porch light and a slim triangle from the light Danny had left on in the kitchen. While he moves his hands down Steve's shoulder, Danny tries to work out the easiest way to get him up the stairs to his bedroom, or maybe just on the couch. It isn't worth doing all of this if after he leaves Steve stays up until three in the morning cleaning his guns, knives, and bayonets. That's one detail that made this type of thing with Grace so easy. When she passed out nothing short of a natural disaster was going to wake her up and it was nothing to scoop her up and move her to her bed for the night. Danny understands the physics of a fireman's carry but he isn't a big fan of the idea of putting it into practice.
Steve rumbles deep in his chest as Danny pushes the heel of his palm up along his spine. "See, babe, that's better, right?"
Danny smiles, knowing Steve can't see him, and pats Steve's back in a there-there gesture. To his surprise Steve reaches back and grabs his hand, and Danny holds his breath, waiting.
Steve doesn't turn to look at Danny, doesn't move his hand or Danny's, just says "You don't have to joke about it," like it's something he's confessing.
"Who's joking?"
"I'm just saying I-" Steve starts off like he's ripping off a band-aid and it takes everything Danny has in him to stay still and quiet. Fifteen excuses are ready as to why Steve's got the wrong idea, but Danny's got good instincts and they're telling him to shut the hell up right now. "I want this, too," Steve says to the ocean.
Danny takes a deep breath, in and out. "Want what?"
"The-" another false start. Steve shakes his head a little and tries again, "The stuff you're trying to sneak in under the radar tonight."
Danny almost sighs in relief. All he wanted tonight was for Steve to take care of himself.
"Evidence would seem to be to the contrary. If you wanted something other than protein bars and cat naps why didn't you bother before today?"
Steve licks his lips and swallows delicately like the words he's trying to say are made of glass or highly combustible chemicals. "I'm not talking about dinner. I mean, I am. I want dinner, I want you here when you want to be here, I want this-" he squeezes Danny's hand, presses it down against his shoulder. His thumb slowly works it's way between Danny's palm and his shoulder and it's almost like they're holding hands.
"All of it. With you," Steve stops again, resting like every word is a sprint. "I'm happiest when I'm at work. You know why?"
"The high potential for explosives and round house kicks?"
"I told you you don't have to joke," Steve says. Danny sucks In a breath at a sudden wash of guilt over him. He squeezes the shoulder under his hand in apology, curling his fingers around Steve's thumb.
"It's because I don't have to do it alone. I thought I-" Steve just shuts down and looks out over the ocean like he had never even spoke.
"What?" Danny prompts. "You thought what?"
"That I could manage without. I think I used to- manage, you know, but even if I could, now I-"
"You don't have to." And thank God, because that means Danny doesn't have to do without, either, and he's been doing without for way too long. Eating cold pizza over the sink because no one else in the world except Steve is up at two am on a Tuesday. Fold out beds, satisfyingly large beds, and pathetic hotel beds all seem the same when they're empty. Having something happen and his first thought is, 'I've gotta call Steve' followed by a second guess.
"Steve," he says. Danny's not stupid, he knows what a relationship is and isn't. It's work and it's hard and it's fighting and it yet it's also easily the best thing about a day, knowing you can come home and there's someone there that knows you. Lately Danny has realized that he's been saying goodbye to that feeling every time he drops Steve off after work. If he doesn't have to, if he can just have, his heart is already racing at the very idea.
Steve looks up, and look on his face is completely zen. Here Danny was thinking that pain, kidnapping, and torture were the things weighing heavy on Steve's mind and instead it was this, and now this was out in the open and Danny could knock another thing off his list of the care and feeding of Steve McGarrett.
"So," Danny says, grasping feebly under the weight of Steve's gaze. "We're doing this."
"Yeah," Steve says.
"Okay, um," Danny says pointlessly. He squeezes Steve's hand again, tugs on it. "Get up. I'm not doing this for the first time Spiderman-style."
"Spiderman-style?" Steve says getting up from his chair and turning and this was supposed to be seamless and easy. Flip of the switch, grab him and go. But it's like Steve keeps standing up, up and up until he's looming over Danny like some six-foot tall, tan, sexy mountain. Danny finds himself shifting on his feet, heart pounding and his head swimming like he's got vertigo.
"You waiting for anything in particular, Danny?" Steve asks, smug, because of course he is. Steve jumps out of planes without a thought, so this is nothing, except it's everything.
"Yeah, just waiting to see if this heart attack is gonna kill me."
"Heart attack or panic attack?" Steve's broad hand settles over Danny's heart like he can feel it beating through Danny's flesh and bone and 100% cotton. It helps, a point of a connection. His feet is on the ground, Steve's hand is on his chest, he can do this. He lifts his hands up to Steve's shoulders, and- God help him -pushes up onto his toes as Steve leans down.
It's amazing. Not the kiss itself. The kiss on it's own is just two guys a little out of their depth, familiar and strange, it starts too hard, then too soft when they both try to pull back. But it's still amazing because he can do that now, kiss Steve. Pandora's box is open, everything's been let out in the wild, this is something they have done. Can do again. Steve can cross his arms over the bend in Danny's back, pull him snug against him and Danny can part their lips with his tongue and they can figure out the way that works for them, and the third try really is the charm. Freaking amazing. Please God, let them do it all the time, in fact Danny would prefer they never, ever stop. So much so that he chases Steve's mouth as he pulls away, holds onto the kiss until he has to concede the limitation of his (perfectly adequate but not exactly generous) height.
He's feeling a little goofy, heavy lidded eyes and loose limbs, when he mumbles, tugging at Steve's neck, "Hey, c'mon," at the loss of contact.
Steve stands firm, smiles down at him, and it's not an 8.6 on the smile Richter scale, it's an 11. Catastrophic. It take the last bit of Danny's guilt and concern pulverizes it to dust. In it's place is this new awesome thing. This kissing thing, this together thing. Steve is his for the taking and for the caretaking.
"C'mon," Danny says again, grabbing a fistful of gray polo tee. "I'm gonna put you to bed,
okay?"
"You gonna be in this bed, Danny?" Steve asks, looming again in the best way.
"No, I'm gonna kiss your forehead after I tuck you in and leave. Of course, I'm gonna be in it. And I'm gonna hold you down and keep you there for the next ten hours." Danny doesn't miss the hot little bit of intrigue that flickers across Steve's face at the words "hold you down." Nor does he miss his own answering spark of arousal.
"Promise?" It's a joke, maybe, but Steve said they didn't have to joke anymore. Promise is another one of those big words, when you think about it, just like want and need and the one they haven't said yet.
"Yeah," he says, voice rough and soft. Danny pulls Steve down for another kiss, slipping in the words "yeah, I do" just before their lips meet for good measure.