Chapter Text
“So, what’s this one from?” Steve asks nodding to Danny’s neck, just where it meets the shoulder.
“Wha—?” Danny asks eloquently.
Steve helps—not really—by pointing at it, nowhere near Danny’s visual field.
Danny strains his neck until he sort of realises what Steve means. “Oh, yeah, that’s actually two combined.”
“Really?” Steve drawls, not convinced.
“Really.”
Danny settles back into his pillow, making room for Steve to drape himself on top of him—not without a quiet ‘umff’ escaping his lips; Steve is no feathery weight.
“You know, babe, I’m gonna have to insist that it counts as two questions, so now you owe me either two scars or a deep truth.”
“Is that so?” Steve smirks, getting comfortable and personal against Danny’s chest.
“Yup,” Danny smiles back, knowingly.
“God,” Steve scrunches his eyes, making him look about 10 years younger —in Danny’s opinion. “I hate it when you do that.”
“What ever do you mean, Steven? Pop the ‘p’?”
“Pop the—Yes, Danny, precisely that.”
“I don’t get it, you don’t seem that perturbed when other people do it, like, what is it about me, babe? Is that like your Neanderthal way of saying you love me? Or just plain OCD?
“No-no-no, don’t do that,” Steve nuzzles Danny’s neck and bites lightly over the faint scars on his shoulder, delighting on Danny’s shiver. Then adds, “explain these two, stop derailing the conversation.”
“You know what’s not fair? I’ll tell you what’s not fair. I have like a million tiny scars and they’re all stupid, and you just want me to tell you so you can later tell me about yours, which will all turn out to be from being heroic or something.”
Steve shakes him lightly. “C’mon it’s not a competition.”
“Yeah, right,” Danny rolls his eyes, but relents and clears his throat to tell Steve about his little faded scar.
“So, I was in Jersey, I must have been, I dunno, Grace hadn’t been born yet, so 22 I guess, kinda fresh out of college, but already a cop, if that makes sense.”
Steve shakes his head no, but because he doesn’t say a word, Danny takes it as permission not to comment on it and further deflect the question.
“So here we were, a couple of buddies from the station and I, pinned down in a rundown shed, when it happened, Matty appeared out of nowhere and just shot me.”
“Wait, what? Matty—
“Yeah, Matty! You think you’re competitive, you have nothing on my little brother—
“No, stop,” Steve scoots away, leaning on his elbow to take a better look at Danny. “Paintball? That scar over there is from paintball?”
Danny rolls his eyes heavenward and fixes them on the ceiling. “Alright, here we go, go ahead and mock me.”
“No, of course not, I mean, how could I,” Steve babbles, trying and failing to cover his amused smile.
“Yeah, yeah, c’mon, get it out of your system, you’re not going to get another chance.”
“Aw, c’mon, Danno, don’t do that, you know that when you set down rules like that, I have to break them, if only to keep tradition going.”
Danny lands his eyes on Steve’s beaming smile and has a fleeting thought about how lucky he is, and how beautiful Steve looks when he smiles like that. “I love you, you know that, right?”
Steve smiles and leans in for a kiss, which to Danny’s surprise turns out to be just a chaste peck on the lips.
“You only explained one.”
“What?”
“The scars, you only explained one.”
“OCD, babe, seriously.”
Steve arches his eyebrows.
“Fine, Grace was a fussy baby, who then got even fussier once she started teething, those little dots over here,” Danny taps one finger lightly over his scar, beaming proudly “they are a perfect match to Gracie’s baby teeth, she clamped down on me like a shark thirsty for blood!”
Steve thumps his head against Danny’s shoulder and just laughs.