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So it kind of just starts happening and it got out of hand before Danny even really starts to begin to understand what’s going on.
It almost seems natural that after you’ve had your ass kicked, pistol whipped, knocked unconscious for God knows how long, that when you come to and your partner is half past insane with worry and panic for him to be grabbing you by your shirt and hauling you up into a kiss.
Not completely natural, but almost understandable in a still half-concussed sort of way. “Hey hey,” he says, pushing gently on Steve’s chest. “I’m okay, I’m okay.”
“Sorry,” Steve says, resting his forehead against Danny’s.
And the thing is nothing changes at all in the slightest bit from that to the next second, him hauling Danny up to his feet and right back to bitching and fussing and bickering like they always do. It’s easy enough to just blink past the taste of Steve’s lips on his and pretend like maybe it hadn’t even happened at all.
The next three times it happens it’s all the same kind of thing, someone gets hurt, someone gets unconscious, someone gets shot, and it’s less of a kiss than a ‘hey, I thought you were dead, just checking’ kind of thing. Or that’s what Danny starts to think of it as, and it’s kind of amazing to think back on later and realize that’s how he was excusing this thing because that’s insane. Danny’s always been a little too willing to not accept the truth of the situation if it’s not something he knows how to handle, though.
The next time it happens is a bit less natural because nothing scary had happened at all. One moment they were sitting next to each other on the couch laughing at some stupid dumb shitty Adam Sandler flick and the next Danny was leaning over to grab his beer off the table and when he settles back in Steve’s looking at him with this look that pins him to the spot unable to move or react at all until Steve’s lips are on his.
Steve’s leaning in and Danny’s brain is starting to finally click back into working, slow from the beer and the comfort and the sheer dumbassness of Adam Sandler, and going ‘Woah. Wait. What’s happening. This isn’t life or death. This isn’t thank god. This isn’t just checking.’
Danny gets his hands between them and pushes Steve off of him and backs away slightly, drawing his leg up between them on the couch. “What the fuck are you doing,” he asks, breathless and confused and there are remnants of Cheetos crumbs dotting his lips because Steve had been eating them only moments before.
Steve shoves a palm into his eye and scrubs it a bit too roughly, to the point that Danny feels the urge to pull his hand away before Steve makes himself go blind, and then stands, clearing his throat. “Sorry,” Steve says, a half laugh and shrug. “Guess just used to watching movies with Catherine, they always turn into foreplay.”
Danny holds up his hands. “So not Catherine. Notice the blonde hair and the lack of breasts?”
Steve covers his mouth with a hand, laughs, and looks down at Danny. “Wanna just call this on the beer and let it go?”
Danny licks his lips and still tastes Cheetos. “Yeah, we can do that.”
It doesn’t happen again for the better part of a year, and when it does its because someone almost died and this time it’s Danny’s fault. This time it’s Steve’s fool ass trying to fall off of a cliff while chasing one of their suspects and Kono and Chin keep going for their guy while Danny stops and bodily hauls Steve back up to steady ground and grabs his face in his hands and kisses the hell out of Steve. He kisses him in a way that’s almost violent because it’s in the place of the punch that Danny could also just as easily be throwing right now.
Steve blinks at him and Danny rolls his eyes, shoving Steve away. “Shut up,” he says, walking in the direction Chin and Kono had gone. “It doesn’t-- It means I’m glad you didn’t die, fuck you, now come on lets get our guy!”
A guy throws a grenade their way and Steve covers Danny’s body as he throws them to the ground, landing on top of him as dirt and rocks spray around them. Danny reaches up to shield Steve’s head from the falling debris and Steve looks him dead in the eye and kisses him without ever blinking. Danny doesn’t blink either.
Danny shoves Steve down in the dirt and catches a bullet to the shoulder for his efforts and Steve yells at him, and then grabs Danny’s chin hard and rough in a vicelike grip and makes Danny look at him and angrily says ‘don’t fucking do that’ before kissing him. He then shoves him away hard enough that Danny falls flat on his ass as Steve stalks away to make sure the perp is dead or at least truly unconscious and unable to keep shooting at them.
They get stuck in a twenty foot hole in the ground and Steve kisses him to shut him up from his panic attack. It’s the first time tongues become involved, but it’s just because he’s going insane because the dirt walls are closing in on him and he’s going to die down here. And fine, it’s only twenty minutes before Chin’s voice can be heard above calling for them, but Danny can wind himself up in five minutes or less when he’s trapped in a confined space.
It had stopped happening when he was with Gabby, and if he’d thought about it harder it would have clicked that maybe it’s not really all that unplanned or just a knee jerk reaction if Steve holds himself back when Danny’s seeing someone.
It doesn’t stop happening when he starts seeing Amber though. In fact it happens in front of Amber – no, Melissa – in the hospital after her ex tries to kill them both. Steve comes into the room where he’s recovering, Amber hanging tight to Steve’s hand still crying. He reaches out to trace the bandage over Danny’s stomach and he leans over and kisses him gently right on the lips and says “Next time you go somewhere you fucking tell me where,” in a low growl, stroking a thumb across Danny’s cheek before letting go of Amber’s hand and backing out of the room and disappearing.
Amber blinks at Danny and her hands hover over the spot where the bandage is and Danny takes her hand. “It’s something that just seems to happen when one of us almost dies.”
“Oh, well that’s better,” she says, biting her lip. She’s really good at deadpan sarcasm, it’s part of why Danny likes her so much. “That it only happens when ya’ll scare the shit out of each other. Obviously it means nothing.”
It’s only then that Danny admits to himself that it’s not really nothing after all. Still nothing changes because he’s not ready to stop seeing Amber – no, Melissa-- but mostly he’s also not really ready to address this whatever the hell it is with Steve so he just lets it continue to be status quo.
(Parenthetical: That was a really hard transition to make, calling her Melissa instead of Amber, but he tries really hard to not hold that against her. She was abused, and scared, and recovering, and it really wasn’t her fault, but calling someone Am-elissa more than once really makes him feel like an asshole even if he does make her smile and grab his hand.)
It stops again when Catherine comes back for the wedding, and it’s the first time since admitting it to himself that this thing that kept happening— that he kept letting happen—maybe meant more than just a little. The first time that he allowed himself to really think about it because the flare of jealousy that happens when he sees Steve kissing Catherine on the dance floor burns deep, deep in his belly and is only moderately mollified when Steve grabs him and starts dancing like a crazy goofy idiot, grinning and laughing their way around dips and twirls on the dance floor while Kono howls with laughter.
It’s then he pulls back from Melissa, because at the time he’d buried his head in the sand and not let himself analyze it but usually it was Danny that pulled away but the only time Steve had was after he’d killed Reyes when he’d backed Steve up against the wall in the hotel room and said he was fucking tired of crying about Matty and inhaled Steve’s tongue into his mouth in some desperate attempt at blotting out the rest of the world.
He’d pulled back and bent his forehead against Danny’s and said soft enough that it was too easy to pretend it hadn’t happened, “Not like this, I love you too much for it to be like this,” and Danny punches a hole in the wall.
And there it is. Him sitting in the car as Steve says he’s going to propose to Catherine and realizing all these years, for all these years they’ve been playing this fucking game, and Danny’s waited too damn long.
But he loves him, and not just the selfish kind of love that means I want you for myself, it’s the kind of love that means I want you to be happy even if I’m a dumbass that didn’t see it until five years have gone by and its too late, so it’s honest when he congratulates him because he loves Catherine too and they’re good together and he thinks Catherine can make Steve happy.
But he’s sure as hell gonna have that Don’t Hurt My Boy Again talk with her because he loves her but not enough for that to be okay. It’s not until Steve texts him that afternoon and says ‘She left again. I’m done,’ that he realizes that ‘There’s nothing I want more” is not in fact the same thing as saying “I’m staying.”
So he forces himself to sit down and really think about this thing. Really evaluate what it means so that when it happens again he has some semblance of an idea of how he actually feels about it so he knows how to react.
Except it doesn’t happen again. Steve goes on a date and apparently has a really good time because they go for coffee and then they go on another date and another until Steve’s dating this chick that he refuses to introduce Danny or anyone else on the team to. Danny starts to think she doesn’t actually exist until one night he shows up at Steve’s house with beer and there she is, this gorgeous blonde with an attitude and a wry sarcastic smile.
“Oh, you’re Danny,” she says, her grin widening and in she goes for a hug, and he feels like a jackass because Steve hasn’t even told any of them her name yet.
“He’s been keeping you hidden from us,” Danny says, grinning at her even if he doesn’t feel it. “No wonder, look at you, I may have to try and steal you away.”
“Didn’t want to scare her off, Danno,” Steve says, shifting from one foot to the other. “Lynn, Danny, Danny, Lynn.”
Danny slings an arm around Lynn and grins at Steve. “So, Lynn. Tell me, you getting tired of my boy yet?”
Her smile is so fond, eyes soft and amused as she looks at Steve it makes Danny’s fingers clench just slightly. “Nah,” she says, and then drags them both out to the beach where they watch her swim and sit in the lounge chairs and drink the beer Danny brought.
“How’s Melissa,” Steve asks and Danny shakes his head. “You haven’t said anything about her in a while.”
“Broke up a while back,” Danny says, squinting into the setting sun.
“You didn’t tell me,” Steve asks, sounding hurt and just a little bit pissed.
Danny motions to Lynn and shrugs. “Looks like you moved on without giving me a chance to,” he says, and then gets up and walks off, leaving before either of them gets a chance to realize just exactly what he’d actually said.
When it starts happening again, it’s a slow spiral into madness because they’ve both become gunshy now that they’ve both almost admitted to it.
They get into a screaming match after the latest gun fight because Steve’s a hothead that charges head first into a shit storm of bullets and Danny’s a hothead that exorcises his worry with shouted words and aborted hand gestures. When his hands grab the front of Steve’s shirt and jerk him forward into a kiss the argument just continues into it, who can advance it first, who can make the other one’s knees buckle, who can mash their lips together hard enough to make the other one bleed.
Steve shoves him off and walks away without a word that time.
A late night stakeout where a spat over who’s better, Bon Jovi or Def Leopard, that turns into Steve’s tongue down Danny’s throat that gets interrupted by their suspect making a break for it and literally running headfirst into their car, where they weren’t even paying attention to him until the thunk happened.
Danny coming to after being knocked unconscious by a swinging boat sail as their perp swung from it like he thought he was Captain Jack Sparrow to Steve cradling his head cursing him out before bending forward and kissing him short and sharp like a smack to the back of the head.
Steve lying unconscious in a hospital bed, Danny’s lips to his fingers with his eyes closed repeating ‘don’t leave me’ over and over until his voice is hoarse.
And it happens again and again and again but neither of them ever talks about it until finally Danny’s crowding Steve into the corner, a drug runner within earshot, but he’s going so crazy over this whole thing he can’t wait until a more opportune time to say, “No but seriously, are we gonna do this or are we gonna keep pretending it’s just adrenaline?”
“Danny are you kidding me?”
“No, fuck this,” Danny says, hitting Steve in the chest with his elbow, “I’m tired of waiting for something shitty to happen because it’s fucked up that I almost want it to if that’s what it takes for you to fucking kiss me.”
Steve looks at Danny somehow simultaneously hungry and hurt and then there’s a spray of drywall over their heads because hello, drugrunner, and again they’re off running and ducking and doing somersaults to avoid being shot. Kono gets clipped this time so they spend the next five hours at the hospital. They’re so exhausted when they finally go home that Danny just silently slips behind the steering wheel when Steve gets out at his house and Danny heads home without so much as a goodbye.
When he gets out of his shower, bone tired and aggravated and more than a little sad, and sees Steve sitting on his couch flipping through the tv channels like this is a normal every day occurrence he has to blink several times to check and make sure he’s actually awake.
He sits down next to Steve after he’s put on sweatpants and a t shirt, hair still damp and curling around his ears slightly, and looks at the Real Housewives of who the fuck cares on his tv and waits.
“So Chin’s good,” Steve says. Danny frowns and looks at the side of his face. “And Kono’s gonna be good.” Steve looks over at Danny expression guarded. “And I’m good. You good?”
Danny shakes his head. “What is this, inventory taking?”
“So, shitty happened but it’s past us right,” Steve says, turning the volume down on the tv. “Because we’re all good.”
“Okay,” Danny says, nodding slowly and watching Steve for any sign of what the hell he’s talking about.
“So then,” Steve says, reaching forward and wrapping his fingers in Danny’s shirt and pulling him forward. Danny’s breath catches in his throat. “This is me kissing you not because something shitty happened but just because I want to, okay?”
Danny doesn’t quite get it until Steve’s mouth is on his, soft and gentle, a hand coming up to cup Danny’s cheek, nothing at all like the other kisses. No urgency, no fuck you, no god damnit, no rushing, just Steve’s lips against his.
“Five years,” Danny whispers against Steve’s mouth, feeling dizzy almost. “Why did we wait--”
“Do we really have to talk about why, Danny,” Steve says, pulling back and resting his forehead against Danny’s, breathing slowly. “Can’t we just… Do we have to talk about everything, can’t we just both admit we want this and not think and talk it to death?”
“Ok,” Danny says, sliding his fingers up the column of Steve’s neck to his hair, cradling Steve’s head and pulling him forward. “Yeah, let’s just--”
Steve tastes like toothpaste and smells like dial soap and Danny doesn’t want to taste or smell anything else ever again. He’s warm and vibrating underneath Danny as he kneels up to straddle him, lowering himself onto Steve’s lap and feeling a hard cock against his ass. He’s never felt that before and never thought he’d want to. Steve makes him think things he’s never thought before and do things he’s never done before so that this shouldn’t be any different either isn’t exactly a surprise.
“I’ve never,” Danny mutters against his mouth as Steve groans beneath him and Steve’s hands ghost down his back to land on his ass, fingers digging in and holding him tight against him.
“Me either, just want,” Steve answers, breathless, amazing, “just don’t stop, keep--”
“Yeah,” Danny says, bending his head to bite into Steve’s neck, loving the hiss that escapes out of Steve at that, digging his knees into the couch to push down harder into him, rocking his hips because it feels so, so good, so perfect.
Steve moans long and loud and his fingers dig harder into Danny’s ass, and there’s a sound stuck in Danny’s throat somewhere between a whine and a whimper that should be embarrassing except when he lets it out Steve goes crazy under him. Wrapping his arms around Danny and pulling him flush against him and his whole entire body moving like he just can’t get enough contact between them. Like maybe he wants to just crawl inside Danny. His breath is hot against Danny’s neck as his teeth leave bruises and his tongue licks them away and Danny’s coming well before he thought he would be but that’s okay because he’s pretty sure Steve is too.
“Haven’t come in my pants since I was a fucking teenager,” Danny laughs against Steve’s throat.
Steve hums against his skin and just keeps holding on and Danny’s not sure when this became a hug but he wraps his arms around Steve’s back and holds on just as tight.
“You okay babe,” he asks a short while later.
“No,” Steve says, and it’s the first time ever that Steve’s answer to that question was anything other than ‘I’m fine’ and it freaks Danny right the fuck out.
He pushes back to look Steve in the eyes. “Steve?”
“You want this, right,” Steve asks, his eyes a little wild and breathing a little fast. “You want… I want this. I want it always, and I can’t… but if you don’t, that’s fine, it is Danny--”
Danny sits back and shakes Steve’s shoulders. “Do I want this, did I not just come from rutting up against you like a god damnit fifteen year old? Do I want this?”
Steve swallows and looks away. “As a one off or as in, I want you to move in with me and never leave?”
Danny freezes. “Did you seriously just ask me to move in with you?”
“Danny, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing,” Steve says, sounding desperate as he shifts underneath him, pushing Danny off of his lap now and standing. “I don’t. I’m fucked up, I don’t know how to.” He jerks his hand around, flapping at the air like maybe he can bat the words around into his mouth. “Danny I don’t know how to love, I don’t even know what that means, and I can’t talk about things, I don’t, but I want to, with you.”
He’s rambling and pacing and Danny’s sitting there with come still leaking out of his dick watching Steve have an utter complete mental breakdown. “Babe.”
“My Dad shoved me away when I was 15 and I know now it was to protect me but that doesn’t make it hurt any less and my Mom whose not dead has never done anything but lie to me and I honestly think part of me hates her but I want her back because I also know I love her and my sister is a hot mess and I want to scoop her up and handcuff her to my house so she can’t be out of my sight ever again because I’m worried she’s going to get herself killed doing something stupid--”
Danny swallows. “Jesus.”
“So you have to tell me what to do,” Steve says, gesturing to him and finally coming to a stop, looking at Danny. “You have to give me instructions. Because all I know about you is you can’t leave.” He stops, swallowing, darting his eyes to the side. “All I know is stay, Danny.”
Danny leans forward and grabs Steve’s hand. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Everyone leaves me or dies, Danny,” Steve says softly, looking down. “And I didn’t mean to say any of this.”
“Oh, I believe you,” Danny says, laughing softly as he stands up and reaches out to grab Steve’s chin to make him look at him. “It took you a day to tell me you had a panic attack at a talent show and stopped playing guitar, believe me I know you didn’t mean to say any of that verbal diarrhea.”
“God, this is embarrassing,” Steve says, covering his face and yanking out of Danny’s grip. “Just forget I said all of that shit, Danny, it’s just post-orgasm stupidity.”
“No, it’s really not,” Danny says softly, but he lets Steve back up and put space between them.
Steve scrubs at his eyes like he always does when he’s stressed out. “God am I really the guy that flips out when he finally gets what he wants?”
Danny laughs lightly. “Seems that way, yeah.” Steve rubs the back of his neck and paces again. “But that’s the perk of hooking up with your best friend, right? They already know your shit.”
“Yeah,” Steve says, laughing slightly and slowing his breathing like he does when he gets too worked up over a case. In, one, two three-- Out, one, two, three. “Okay.”
Danny gestures to himself. “I’m going to go change pants, because I mean I just showered and a drying come stain is not that comfortable, if you want to you left a pair over here a while ago,” he says, backing towards the bedroom. “Want me to grab ‘em?”
Steve laughs then, big wide smile, a startled guffaw type of a laugh, and Danny grins from ear to ear back at him because he knows if he’s good for anything he’s good for a laugh. “You’re so crass.”
“Oh excuse me, says the man who publicly molested me fifteen different times this past month because he was too chicken shit to say hey, Danny, wanna go?”
“Hey, you’re a chicken shit too,” Steve fusses, pointing at him. “I didn’t hear you saying anything like that either!”
Danny’s hands spread wide. “Maybe I’ve got a voyeur kink.” Steve arches an eyebrow, grinning. “Steven, I do not-- Do not look at me like that, I am not fucking you in a bathroom at Five O Headquarters.” Steve’s grin turns even more lascivious. “Or anywhere in the vicinity of Five O!”
“What about after hours?”
Danny tilts his head. “Well….”
Steve points at him. “I knew it, you really do!”
Danny spreads his thumb and index finger about an inch apart and says, “Maybe a skoch,” he says, and then disappears into the bedroom.
He’s got one foot shoved in a leg hole when he feels Steve’s fingers on his hips, and then he’s being very unceremoniously shoved onto the bed. He turns to yell but it catches in his throat at the sight of a completely naked Steve.
“Seemed a shame to change into new pants already when we’ll just mess them up again,” Steve says with a shrug.
“Hey, Danny,” Danny says, motioning with a flourish. “Why don’t we not change yet, you could have said. Why don’t we fool around some more. Even, I’d like for you to be naked with me. All of those would have been valid choices. One does not have to come into my bedroom and shove me like a caveman and grunt at me.”
Steve grins and grunts, crawling up onto the bed, reaching out to grab Danny’s t shirt and twisting it up and off, pinning him to the bed and hovering over him. “Admit it. You like me as a caveman.”
Danny frowns and shakes his head at him, even as he feels his cock twitching with a ‘not quite ready yet but I’ll catch up, go ahead and get started without me’. “Nope,” he says. “Not even a little. I am a gentleman.”
“And a scholar,” Steve says, and then he pauses just as he’s about to kiss Danny and Danny grits his teeth and twists his hands in the sheet. “By the way? How hot were you as a professor, man, jeez… the glasses, the tie. I maybe was a little jealous Eric got to be the embedded student, I kinda wanted to be the one that got to watch you lecture about econ.”
“The tie,” Danny says, lifting up on his elbows. “What the… you have given me shit about the tie since the second you met me!”
“Context,” Steve says with a shrug, and then bends down and kisses him, so warm and languid and good. “Plus I kinda thought they were hot back then too.”
“Jackass,” Danny mumbles and reaches up to pull Steve to him, opening his mouth for Steve’s clever tongue, and curses himself for going five years without knowing what this felt like because he had his head up his ass. “God this is good.”
“Fuck yeah it is,” Steve growls and it makes Danny’s toes curl with desire as Steve’s hand traces down his torso. “I don’t know Danny, this isn’t such a great idea, letting me know how good this feels. Not sure I’ll be able to do much else except this.”
Danny laughs and reaches down to wrap his hand around Steve’s cock. “Then this is probably a horrible idea.” Steve groans and Danny watches his mouth fall open, his eyes close, the desperate way his hips buck. “Terrible, no good, awful idea.”
And then Steve’s hand is wrapping around his, and there’s no logical reason he should be ready to go again but somehow he is. The things he was going to say to continue to tease Steve die in his throat as he shudders out a breath. “Only way to make it better is to multiply by two.”
This time Danny gets to watch Steve come and even if Steve’s hand on him wasn’t perfect enough – which it is – watching him come would have been enough. “Ridiculous,” he says on a gasp, seconds away from coming as Steve finally comes back to himself and starts stroking his cock again in earnest, “you are so fucking ridiculously perfect.”
Then he’s coming and he can’t even help how loud he is, it’s just ripping out of him like he’s dying from it, and he thinks maybe part of him is a little bit. The part of him that felt like he’d never get to have this, that he’d never get to have happiness again, that he’d never find another person he thought he could spend the rest of his life with, or would want to. That part of him is dying, and it’s an amazing relief.
Steve slumps on top of him, pinning him to the bed. “Gah,” he grunts again.
“You fucking ape, get off of me, you’re too heavy,” Danny says, and he gets his hands on Steve’s chest to push him away but instead wraps his arms around Steve to hold him close.
“Seriously,” Steve says softly a few moments later, finally rolling off of him and turning to kiss slow kisses to Danny’s neck and nuzzle into his hair. “Move in with me.”
“Okay,” Danny says, and it was supposed to be sarcastic, it was supposed to be like ‘okay you crazy person’ or ‘okay no serious talks after I’ve just come my brains out’ or ‘okay shut up seriously just shut up’, but instead it comes out totally different. Instead, it comes out like ‘yes, I will marry you and have two point five kids and live in the house with white picket fences with you, forever and ever, amen.’ “Can we maybe take a nap first?”
Steve doesn’t answer because he’s already snoring.
Danny rolls his eyes. “Animal.”