Oh Danny Boy (Oh Boy, Oh Boy) [PG] Steve/Danny
THIS HAS BEEN WRITTEN SO FAST MY FINGERS HURT BUT HERE IT IS, HERE IS A WEE DANNY/STEVE FICLET ABOUT ST. PATRICK'S DAY.
TITLE: Oh Danny Boy
AUTHOR: queenklu
BETA: NO TIME.
WORDS: 2k
PAIRING: Steve/Danny
RATING: alksdfjalskd PG
“God,” Danny groans, pressing the heels of his palms to the back of his eyelids. “I hate St. Patrick’s Day.”
Steve blinks; Danny can feel Steve blinking at him from across the office. “What’s wrong with St. Patrick’s Day?” he asks, the same tone he uses when Danny bitches about sand or giant bugs or pineapples, Danny, how do you not like fruit.
“It’s drinking,” Steve continues, and Danny lifts his head to watch Steve tick off the reasons. “Which you enjoy, especially when I bring my wallet, for some reason. It’s celebrating a country full of people known for their anger management issues-“
“Whoa, stereotyping-” Danny cuts in.
"You like being angry,” Steve says, “you can be angry for Ireland.”
“You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t know-fucking potato famines all over the place, decades of repression, slavery, tithes, don’t get me started on tithes, four fifths of everything they had got sucked up by the English and then ten percent of their remaining fifth went to the Catholic Church-“
“Case in point, Danno.” Steve folds his arms, eyebrows high and mock-patient as he hip-checks Danny’s desk. “Now, why are you the Irish Grinch?”
Steve can’t be unaware that this is not outside of the personal space bubble shared by two male members of law enforcement (and it’s like a triple negative word score up in here, Danny can barely keep track of his own train of thought). The point is, Steve has to know, he has to understand that half-sitting on Danny’s desk while their legs are close enough to touch if Danny’s swivel chair so much as twitches-this is not normal.
But maybe SEALs are different. Hell, maybe the Navy strips you of a personal bubble and instills in you a deep need to touch everyone, all the time, in order to prove your top-dog capabilities when your actions make those around you uncomfortable.
Not that Danny is uncomfortable. He would just like Steve to either bridge the three inch gap or kindly take three long steps across the room, is that too much to ask?
“Come on,” Steve says, and in the split second of remembering that he was supposed to be saying something, Danny much have misread the way it looked like Steve was going to offer him a hand-not the right-to-right, cross-body hand, but taking Danny’s hand in his, to hold sort of thing. “Let’s go for a drink,” Steve says, and Danny could not agree more.
~*~
“What the hell is this place?” Danny demands, stuck somewhere just inside the door. It’s not a bar-though there seems to be a more bar part area upstairs that Steve is not directing them towards-so much as it seems to be a restaurant. Which wouldn’t be bad, necessarily, a little confusing maybe, but it’s an insane sort of themed monstrosity. The hostess is seating them at a table beneath a giant plaster hammer-head shark suspended from the ceiling right next to a pair of legs wearing scuba flippers, positioned to give the entire restaurant the feel of being under water.
“The food is great.” Steve is wearing his Would It Kill You to Have a Good Time face. Danny shifts his gaze to his menu. “There’s a live band on later, and look, even the shark is wearing green,” he adds, pointing at the lime-colored bib someone strapped to the shark which says FEED ME, I’M IRISH. “Which is more that I can say about you,” Steve adds, one eyebrow higher than the other.
“Hey,” Danny says, “My tie is green.”
“Yeah. Sure. In a blue sort of way.” Steve shrugs, and then his smile slips out, the one that draws laugh lines all around his eyes.
Danny puts his head in his hands so he can’t be caught staring. “It was the greenest thing I own, okay?”
“How has no one pinched you?” Steve laughs.
Danny glares at him over the top of his knuckles. “Oh, I dunno, maybe because I am wearing a gun?”
“Uhh,” their waiter says, pen poised over his notepad. “Do you two…need a few minutes?”
“No.” Danny takes a few seconds to send This is why we can’t have nice things vibes in Steve’s direction. And then, because the kid doesn’t deserve this shit, he rubs his forehead and says, “Look, whatever you’ve got that looks vaguely cheeseburgery. And a Longboard.”
“Make that four Longboards,” Steve drawls, settling back in his booth seat. “We’re gonna be thirsty, Danno, don’t give me that face. And, ah…” What the hell is he doing, drawing it out like this? He flashes the waiter a grin honed and designed and solely for the purpose of pissing Danny off. “What’s the special?”
The kid looks uncertain, but smiles back. Danny dislikes him immediately. “Corned beef, mashed potatoes, boiled cabbage,” he rattles off. “$17.99.”
“We’ll take two of those instead,” Steve says, and Danny’s brain short-circuits so bad the waiter is gone before he can find the muscles required to shut his mouth.
“Did you just order for me?” he splutters. “Did that seriously just happen?”
“I want you to have the whole Patty’s Day experience!” Steve’s arms go wide, defensive. “Bland, boring food is part of it!”
“That is such-“ Danny’s actually quivering he’s so pissed off, because he remembers the one time he tried to order for Rachel and she went and couched him for it. He still cringes on the inside when he thinks about the new asshole she tore in him.
He also remembers (just barely) being the guy who thought he’d been doing something nice at the time, though, which is the only thing that stops him from breaking Steve’s neck.
“Steven,” he growls, “I will get what I want. I’m letting it slide exactly this once, but if you ever order food for me again I will personally punch you in the dick.”
“…Oh,” Steve says after a second, face falling into something that makes Danny’s insides pinch.
“Yeah,” Danny agrees, and thank god, here are their Longboards. All four of them. Danny takes a long, cooling swig of his first, watching Steve track the movement, face unreadable. “So,” Danny says, because apparently he can’t take it, “I bet you had some crazy St. Patty’s Days in the service.”
And he watches Steve grin.
~*~
Their waiter’s name is Jimmy, which is short for James, which is the non-Irish version of Seamus. It makes sense at the time. “SEAMUS!” Danny calls out, “Check please! Blarmy,” he adds when Seamus appears moments later, “y’get bonnier every time I see ye.”
As insane as it is in this moment, Danny is more sober than Steve, who is snickering into his fist, clutching the twenty bucks he just bet Danny to say that.
“I bet you say that to all the lasses,” Seamus says, eyelashes a-flutter, and Steve’s smile vanishes.
“I’ll take that.” Danny wrestles the twenty out of Steve’s hand and passes it directly to Seamus. “Tip,” he says, and then frowns blurrily. “There’s a joke in there, I can feel it.”
“Tip o’ the morning to ye?” Seamus offers, and salutes them with the bill. “I’ll be right back with your credit card.”
Danny didn’t even see Steve get out his credit card. He’s a stealthy drunk. Squinting at Danny, grinning again, all lopsided and gangly. And Danny knows that somehow that’s dangerous, he just can’t quite remember why.
“We should try standing up before he gets here,” Danny says, some of the vowels catching like a rusty gear-shift. The room spins and settles and Danny waits it out, careful not to lock his knees when he stands, hip and hand braced on the table. “Come on, babe, up up uppity.”
Steve’s tactility quadruples with drinking, even just the one or two drinks after a case. But after however many Longboards-and Seamus kept taking away the bottles, so Danny just stopped counting-well, Danny is only shocked that Steve restricts himself to grabbing onto Danny’s belt loops. And not just shoving a hand into Danny’s back pocket.
The man is huge, though, looming and swaying and what personal bubble, Danny’s got misplaced somewhere around the third beer, but there’s only enough equilibrium between the two of them for one person, which is math. Can’t argue with math. Danny leans on Steve and Steve leans on Danny and nobody falls over, and “It’s a metaphor.”
“What is?” Steve asks, resting his chin on Danny’s head, and Danny will kill him, just as soon as he finds his feet.
“…Dunno,” Danny sighs, “Hey, look, Seamus.”
Seamus is grinning at them like they’re pretty amusing, which must explain why Steve straightens up and snatches his credit card back with the hand not slung around Danny’s shoulders. “Hey,” he barks, all military as he tugs Danny closer and slightly behind him. “Don’t do it. He’s wearing blue-green.”
“I am,” Danny agrees, the possible embarrassment of their situation sinking in slow but surely. He gives Seamus an awkward smile and Steve an even more awkward pat on the back, because his arm won’t quite work right. “Come on, babe, let’s vamanos.”
“That’s not very Irish,” Steve sighs, but he sighs it into Danny’s hair, and Danny can finally start maneuvering them outside.
~*~
Danny pours Steve into a taxi and then follows him into the backseat, half because it looks really comfortable (seriously, there must be a government grant for taxi seats in Hawaii) but also because Steve just won’t let go, and pretends not to hear him every time Danny mentions the grip Steve still has on his belt loops. And he also just really cannot be fucked to figure out how to say his own street name when Steve can just rattle off the keymash of vowels, so they wind up at Steve’s house. Both of them.
And it’s nice out, it’s really nice, there’s like, a breeze and the water which Steve freaks out about when Danny mentions it, because apparently he knew a guy who knew a guy who went swimming drunk and drowned, and it takes Danny a long time to calm Steve down enough that Danny can promise to stay away from the ocean.
Steve huffs at him, not quite disbelieving, just scowling. “You’d ruin this holiday for me if you died.”
“I’d ruin it for me too,” Danny admits, and Steve just beams at him.
He has a hammock, this huge canvas thing that sways almost as much as they do, and Danny isn’t sure how he winds up in it with Steve, but whatever. They’re star gazing, in a hammock, on a beach, in Hawaii, and this is totally something straight guys do. Right.
“Oh Danny boy,” Steve starts, and bursts into giggles, completely unaware of Danny going rigid at his side. “Oh Danny boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy…”
Danny’s groan is loud, loud enough to drown him out, hands fumbling up to cover Steve’s mouth. “You just. You had to do that, huh?”
“Is that your issue?” Steve asks, gasping laughter as he fights Danny off. “That-really?”
“When I was little-No, shut up, okay,” Danny says, and ohh shit, they have to stop tussling or they’re going to fall out. Steve gets it too, or Steve just forgets they’re fighting; one of the two. “When I was little and our chores needed to get done, my folks would always say, you know, “The dishwasher is calling your name,” or, “Your homework is calling,” so the first time I heard Danny Boy-“
“Oh my god,” Steve chokes. “The pipes, the pipes are calling-”
“-I thought the plumbing needed fixing, yeah, shut up, okay, I have never lived it down-“
And Steve kisses him. Kisses him like he can’t help it, his hands in Danny’s hair, his tongue in Danny’s mouth, and Danny clings to him half-terrified he’s imagining this and half-terrified they’re going to fall out of the hammock.
“You’re adorable,” Steve says when he pulls back, all laugh-lines. “No, no, wait-You’re bonnie.”
“I’m beautiful?” Danny snaps, and then, “Seriously, this is when-“
Steve kisses him again, and again and again, to the sound of surf hitting the shore and the taste of Longboards and boiled cabbage, and Danny thinks Okay, Danny thinks, Whatever works, and Danny thinks-
Happy St. Patrick’s Day.
THE END
so many typos i'm sure omgggg but i need to run--off to an Irish pub! :DDD